Almost all the early employees I have met in successful startups have been towering contributors to say the least. Many of them enjoyed very very comfortable jobs in FANG (or equivalent money companies) before taking this up OR moved into one afterwards.
Unless the startup founders themselves are technically up to the bar required, I would think this is going to require huge motivation to make folks like that join. That can be either in the way of convincing them with your software potential enough for them to make the switch OR a ton of money/equity (And not FANG level money, even better). I would go with the latter in 90+% of cases, probably both.
IOW - I don't think we have a proper market place today that serves these high tier developers who will single handedly make or break it for you. I don't think the normal recruiting methods apply to excellent established candidates. You might luck into one, but it is going to be real hard unless you draw from known sources.
FWIW, I am very curious if there is one such premium marketplace as well. (Sorry if this sounds gentrifying, but there are a bunch of engineers I know whose gross comp is close to 1MM/yr or more and I don't think you are going to find them prowling LinkedIn or responding to regular methods anytime soon. Anecdotally I do believe many of them have the capacity to do magic technically though).
Unless the startup founders themselves are technically up to the bar required, I would think this is going to require huge motivation to make folks like that join. That can be either in the way of convincing them with your software potential enough for them to make the switch OR a ton of money/equity (And not FANG level money, even better). I would go with the latter in 90+% of cases, probably both.
IOW - I don't think we have a proper market place today that serves these high tier developers who will single handedly make or break it for you. I don't think the normal recruiting methods apply to excellent established candidates. You might luck into one, but it is going to be real hard unless you draw from known sources.
FWIW, I am very curious if there is one such premium marketplace as well. (Sorry if this sounds gentrifying, but there are a bunch of engineers I know whose gross comp is close to 1MM/yr or more and I don't think you are going to find them prowling LinkedIn or responding to regular methods anytime soon. Anecdotally I do believe many of them have the capacity to do magic technically though).