Ask HN: Why did every YC startup move to hiring Founding Engineers? It seems like every HN Hiring post over the last 6 to 12 months is for "Founding Engineers". When you read the job ads, what they are actually looking for is a unicorn engineer who can build the entire product including Backend, FrontEnd and DevOps while also being an AI domain expert and any number of other demands. This post is a perfect example of this: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/roe-ai/jobs/CZrzxk6-founding-engineer They usually offer 0.25% to 2.0% equity and 150k to 200k per year. I guess I am curious if there is a reason they all started doing this at the same time? Was there some kind of YC memo telling them to do this? Why would someone with those skills and qualifications go work for a startup building their entire product for 2% or less vs just building it for themselves and retaining 100% equity? This whole trend seems super misguided and somewhat exploitative from the outside but it must be working if they are all doing it? |