What's 🔥 in Enterprise IT/VC #241

Remote talent wars ⏩, more 💰, more opportunity, more competition

Jun 12

So what do enterprise startups with 💰💰💰 do? They hire, hire, hire. And what I can tell you is that the war for talent is getting even more intense.

First, let’s talk about finding talent. This is a tweet from earlier this year.

Ed Sim @edsim

There is so much 💰 flowing in enterprise that talent is the rate limiting factor to scale Great news with world going remote is access to talent is > than ever Bad news is your competition is now global Focus on recruiting, hiring, + retaining best talent must start on day 1

Yes, you can hire from anywhere but so can anyone else. Competition is fierce. Second, when you find the talent you want, closing speed and process matters. Zoom has accelerated everything.

Ed Sim @edsim

In today’s world, closing speed matters more than ever; for new hires, new investments…Best talent and investments go super fast, no time to dawdle, having a prepared mind and process going into the situation also helps

👇🏼 fore more on this - Time to Offer and Offer to Acceptance rates are two critical measures to understand how good your machine is.

Gagan Biyani @gaganbiyani

An extremely smart recruiter told me yesterday that startups time-to-offer should be 3 days. 🤯 That's time from first comms with a candidate to making an offer. What is time-to-offer at your company?

Because of all of this 💰 and need for talent, we will see more and more of 👇🏼 in the coming months.

Ed Sim @edsim

Its the "haves" + "have nots" in enterprise world - those who are🚀 + raising every 3-6 months + those who can't. Expect tons of private-private M&A - those who can build the right rationale + execute well will 📈 even faster but it can be perilous if not done right

And once you have the talent onboard, the need to retain them is even more needed! Grant Miller from Replicated, a portfolio co, is taking a bold stance with this.

Grant Miller @GrantM

Being a remote company shouldn't be a way to offload office expenses onto employees. @replicatedhq we're changing that... today! We're launching monthly recurring reimbursements for home office SPACE (and utilities etc). Find out more:

Fully Remote: Home Office Should Not Be a Financial Burden on Employees - ReplicatedWe’re excited to announce our new Replicated home office reimbursement program that we’ve recently launched for all employees.replicated.com

Finally, this is not what you want.

Teddie Wardi @teddiew

I assume this isn't what they mean when my portfolio companies say they want to hire "10x engineers"

Kat Maddox @ctrlshifti

this is one of the funniest hackernews comments i've ever read https://t.co/J8G3TYz9zK

Kat Maddox @ctrlshifti

this is one of the funniest hackernews comments i've ever read

HN comment:
I currently have 10 fully remote engineering jobs. The bar is so low, oversight is non-existent, and everyone is so forgiving for under performance I can coast about 4-8 weeks before a given job fires me. Currently on a $1.5M run-rate for comp this year. And the interviewing process is so much faster today, companies are desperate, it takes me 2-3hrs of total effort to land a new job with thousands to chose from.

So my two takeaways are this; build your people engine early from day one, culture, hiring, retention and over time as you scale and do not rule out the right acquisitions for talent, roadmap, acceleration, and more.

As always, 🙏🏼 for reading and please share with your friends and colleagues.

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