Never hire senior developers*

*Unless you are starting or need to expand exponentially.

You're in for a ride when embarking on building a SaaS startup. You hear Mick Jagger singing Spread out the oil, the gasoline, I walk smooth, ride in a mean, mean machine. At the outset, your startup is a little mean machine preparing for the race of its life at the Startopia Racecourse. To win the race, your startup requires a crew of seasoned engineers —senior developers who bring technical expertise and strategic foresight. Because things will get heated. Some corners will get cut. Engines might break. Pitstops will fail. Your competition is tough. 

You make a grown man cry; you make a grown man cry.

Our advice for starting founders to take a headstart? Always begin with hiring senior profiles first. These early hires are the bedrock on which the startup's technical foundation is laid, steering the machine toward - hopefully - success. 

You want to hire experienced players to launch your product.

Start me up. 

It's lights out, and away we go!

Still hiring seniors? You're doing something wrong.

It's cheaper to hire one senior instead of 3 junior engineers; so why not keep hiring senior profiles only?

When the early days are behind you and you have a solid team of engineers—the hiring strategy shifts from relying solely on senior developers to creating a more balanced crew. 

You simply cannot afford to hire only senior engineers when your team expands to double digits and beyond. This pivotal transition marks a moment of significant growth, where the aim is to cultivate the talents within, preparing your existing developers to ascend the ranks and take on more significant challenges. 

This is the point where we like to make a bold statement:  If you only hire senior developers, you're doing something wrong**

When to welcome junior engineers

Junior developers are eager and talented, but their skill set is not at the level where they can add value from day one. Juniors offer potential value – they need mentoring and support from their experienced peers to level up. (Have you heard of the concept of staff engineers?) When a startup is still in its early days, those seniors just don't have the time or bandwidth to help. Hiring juniors in the early days is almost a guarantee they won't level up. Such an environment is terrible for all. Juniors need an environment with the bandwidth to support them. 

Reading tip: How to develop engineers into leaders

As a founder, how do you know your startup-machine is ready to hire junior developers? 

When you find your startup in Peacetime.

Once your architectural framework is solidly defined and your MVP phase has concluded—with a few customers actively engaging with your product—the sails are set for bringing junior developers on board. 

This phase is characterized by your senior developers having more bandwidth to dedicate to pair programming and mentoring, a critical component in integrating juniors effectively into the team. The key difference between senior and junior developers is precisely this. Senior developers are problem solvers, good communicators, mentors, technically proficient, adaptable, and continuous learners.

Another crucial aspect is onboarding. Ensure your onboarding process is smooth, well-documented, and optimized for newcomers. They should feel safe from the start, understand the business values, and feel the company culture from day one. Productivity comes next. Can they set up the project on their own? Is there a buddy system in place? Do they understand how the team operates?

Ideally, after having an established team that can free up time and resources to train and mentor new junior talent, your focus should shift towards hiring them, allowing your seniors to evolve higher up the ladder. They will embody the values and culture of your startup as they mentor the next generation. Let me expand on that.

Growing the next generation of talent

The call to "Never hire senior developers" resonates during this growth phase, underscoring that continual reliance on senior hires might indicate underlying issues within your company's culture or growth trajectory. 

Everyone who starts somewhere new, regardless of rank or job title, begins as a junior in their role in a new setting. A director is a junior VP. A VP is a junior C-suite. A "junior" is someone with potential for the next level but not quite ready.

It's up to the existing team members to step up and move up into seniority. Their promotion will leave a gap, and assuming the team has adequate senior talent, you can backfill promotions with junior people.

The idea is that you are always growing the next generation of talent. In growing that talent, you are embedding the values and culture of the team into the next generation. This is one of the key skills of being a CTO or engineering leader. Any fool can code. But can you deliver the values and culture of success across a long period of time?

If you notice your team is not ready to step up, hiring a senior person is like saying: "We need to change the culture and values or something else significant in how we run our company."

Wartime, rapid growth, and exponential expansion call for seniority

** The exception is, of course, exponential growth or your startup finding itself in wartime. It's hard to rank growth, but you know what to do when scaling to a multiple. 

When you need to move fast (and break things), you better get a couple of senior profiles on board next to your growing pool of junior talent. 

Conclusion: going full circle

The journey of a SaaS startup is a continuous cycle of growth, learning, and renewal. Starting with a core crew of senior developers and gradually integrating junior talent mirrors not just a strategy for scaling but a commitment to fostering a legacy. 

This process makes it easy to ensure new people don't learn the wrong methodologies and processes, which could shape badly their future skills.

Many junior developers are talented, hyper-motivated, and have vast knowledge, but it's all about proper long-term development. A lot of knowledge can be given and/or corrected by surrounding them with a supportive, more experienced team. 

If you start me up

Kick on the starter, give it all you got, you got, you got

Never stop, never stop