The New York Times does a great job of covering the exciting businesses arising in the technology worlds of Silicon Valley, NY and Boston. There is a lot of money there, and I do think that many of the most brilliant people in the world gravitate to those areas to be a part of something big. There are many smart entrepreneurs outside of those areas, however, and they face some seemingly intractable issues, primarily in hiring technology workers to bring their dreams to reality. Are the hiring challenges they face insurmountable, or does looking closely at the “why” provide unique opportunities to find good people for those same entrepreneurs? I had an intense experience yesterday which had me search deeply for answers

Update:  if you are facing these same issues and want to join a support community, consider joining the “Outside Entrepreneur” mailing list.

I moved to Hinesville, GA, about an hour from Savannah, about five months ago from Portland, OR. Leaving Portland was a big decision, but it was made easier because I left for the most amazing woman in the world. Portland is the perfect city in my opinion: full of artsy people, people dedicated to making the world a better place, a place where there is so much crossover in the communities. I loved going to Burning Man and hanging out with Portland people from the radical farming movements, CEOs at tech companies, and Libertarians. I think that community crossover is a strength of Portland unmatched by other cities, and only happens because of the smaller size of Portland and the culture of openness and community that you won’t find in any other American city.

One of the challenges for Portland and the startup scene is that there are few people who have left a Google or PayPal and can make investments in risky yet visionary startups. I’ve heard it from others, and it was my experience in pitching several startups (my ideas only had the risk but I think I could have purchased the vision with some cash). But, Portland at least has a great pool of technology people. Other cities outside of the tech hubs don’t; it is very difficult to hire local people when you are an entrepreneur outside of those three large tech hubs. And, it has been made worse by the hiring war going on with Google, Facebook and every other startup out there who are pulling people from smaller cities or even hiring them remotely.

Sure, you can find cheap people on RentACoder.com, but then you’ll be working with people 10 timezones away, people who often don’t speak the language and have poor communication skills, and typically suspect technology skills. You can sometimes find solo coders that live in the US, but there is generally a good reason why they are not working for a larger company: depression, substance abuse issues, working on three distracting projects at once, the list goes on and on, and the impact on you is: no reliability around the technology side of your business. A startup is challenging, and many of the people creating these new businesses are dealing with their own set of stresses, so managing flakey people on top of your own challenges is an awful experience. I’ve tried all of the above options and rarely had a good experience except for extremely short stints and with costly transition costs. Yes, I have hired people with drug issues and depression issues, and I can spot people in a heartbeat who are working on three projects at once.

I recently was introduced to a man from this region, a man I’ll call John here. John came with his right hand man to a Japanese restaurant in Richmond Hill two weeks ago and we sat down to lunch, and then I met them again at their space last week. We had been talking about working together, and I had been probing him about company culture and process. Yesterday John called me and said: “You’ve been sending me all this theory shit, and I’ve offered you a job. Are you ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work? I don’t need this bullshit from you, I need someone who can get shit done.”

What John was referring to as “theory” were the several documents I had written up for him as I analyzed what he had and how we would work together.  It is impossible to look at a massive project and say “yes, I can do it!” without first researching the code, and more importantly, understand expectations around process, which is what I had been doing.  I had proposed a hiring process as he said he wanted stability around his technology staff, and I had proposed a management process (using a tool called Pivotal Tracker) which I said would give him clarity around how his business goals were being translated into the technology and also whether the people working with him on the technology side were doing their jobs effectively, which I had seen he clearly did not have insight into.

It was an intense conversation. I told him I did not want to be spoken to like that, which he did not want to hear. We ended our call and our relationship right then and there. The big disappointment for me was that I believe I had ways to get what he wanted:  I think I saw what was hidden to him but was special about his company that could have led to him finding people locally, and keeping those people happy. He didn’t see value in that, so there was a failure on my part in how I communicated what I wanted to do for him. I had told him I was not available for long term work because I am moving back to Portland eventually and wanted to find another way to help him because I identify with his struggles as an entrepreneur, and I think his reaction was one borne out of a long fruitless struggle to find people. I wrote this article to extrapolate on the things that make tech startups outside of those big areas special and highlight the opportunities to hire people that cannot happen in the big tech hubs.

But, first, if you just said to yourself: “What a fucking idiot that guy John is!” then you’ll probably get no value from this article. If you just had those thoughts, then that tells me that you’ve never been in a situation where you put several hundred thousand dollars on the line to build your dream. You might call yourself an entrepreneur, but if you’ve never burned through multiple people trying to find the right one, had to deal with your wife constantly angry at you because of missed deadlines, broken promises around revenue from your venture, or upset investors giving you advice left and right as you deal with massive structural problems in your dream project, then you have no idea what John is going through. If you’ve never spent years building something while paying other people and not taking an income yourself, then you don’t know what you are talking about. This article is for those people that have “some skin in the game,” the words John wrote on his whiteboard as one of his hiring goals.  I’ve sold two companies as a majority owner in the last two years, one for a mid six figures exit and another for a low six figures exit, and I have gone through these same experiences as he is going through now.  I don’t judge John for reacting that way, but I do wish he would see that it is unworkable for hiring, especially technology workers who have so many opportunities right now.

At the very bottom of this article is the Craigslist job posting I wrote for John’s company (with a few bits redacted to respect his anonymity).  I wrote this with the belief that technology workers have many opportunities in the large tech hubs, so the ones that have not moved there are looking for something else in life.  And, with the belief that there actually are good people who have chosen not to live in Silicon Valley, NY or Boston (I consider myself one of those people).  John kept telling me his venture would make shitloads of money, but I’ve had people offer me shitloads of money at stable companies like Google or Amazon.  The good people outside of those tech hubs are motivated by family concerns, health and lifestyle concerns and finding a culture that aligns with their values and beliefs.  You can find those people only if you focus on providing them something within those goals.  That primarily means creating a culture that they want to step into.  People in this area refer to the lifestyle here as “island life” and they are talking about the opposite of the life you get on another island called “Manhattan,” a life of stress, commuting, late nights in bars and chaos and crime. Search for what people want and give it to them.  John does not care about that, apparently, and I was saddened initially to hear his reaction to my suggestions, but happy that we had that conversation early, because it was never going to fit for me.  If you are an entrepreneur trying to find people, you’ll need to look inward and see what you are offering to those people, and perhaps more importantly, think about what you are communicating about your values when you invite people to work with you.

Here are the three big things I think good technology workers require that are non-obvious to many new entrepreneurs, especially those without technology backgrounds, and each one has a specific big opportunity for entrepreneurs outside of large cities, entrepreneurs I call “outside entrepreneurs.”  You can definitely find people without offering these three things, but I think you’ll have the same experiences John has had:  journeymen interested only in money, people who jump the first time they are offered even the equivalent in compensation, people without loyalty or connection to your vision and the opportunity, and that makes building your business all the more difficult.

• A defined process which management and the technology workers have aligned around.  A startup is full of chaos and changes and this is inevitable.  But, you need a process that keeps you adaptive and not reactive.  Programming requires focus like no other job out there; it is almost like meditation and requires a process which keeps distractions at bay and minimizes random requests for reactions to changes to the product.  It is simply unworkable to have a boss who changes direction every day, or who is unaware of the impact of asking that developers react constantly to changing features.  Many programmers also probably have at least mild Aspergers syndrome or HFA which is what allows them to focus like they do, and having Aspergers makes reacting to changes and breaking focus very painful.  This is another reason I am marrying my fiance, she gets this like no one ever has, probably because she has studied meditation herself.  Using something like Pivotal Tracker with scheduled weekly “acceptance” meetings provides a good balance to getting things done and transparency for management.  Many new entrepreneurs see a process like this constraining their options to succeed, but that perspective is driven by stress more than reality; this process will keep technology workers happy and building things, which is a huge problem for startup companies no matter where they are.  Opportunity for the outside entrepreneur:  The opportunities for the startups outside the traditional large cities is that you can create this environment with fewer destructive pulls that you find in larger cities; people in smaller cities have fewer distractions.
• The opportunity for personal development.  Pair programming and constrained time around development mean that technology workers can improve their skills.  Most companies forget to do this, and treat their workers like wage slaves.  Companies that provide this to their employees retain people, and companies that offer this get people.  Google’s 20% time rule is a brilliant example of this.  When people are given the opportunity to learn at work, they use those skills at work, and the proof is in the pudding: Gmail was a product started in that 20% time.  Opportunity for the outside entrepreneur:  In the Savannah area wages are depressed, and there are many artist and design focused people because of the influence of the Savannah College of Art and Design.  You can train talented people into the positions you want (rather than hiring a jaded remote worker) if you are willing to invest in them, and you can pay them a lot less than a solo coder worker from NY with many other opportunities.
• The opportunity to work with genuine and authentic people.  What John could offer to me was the opportunity to work with real people rather than via Skype with a Project Manager in Boston.  There really is nothing more fun than building something with a group of creative people around a whiteboard.  I think Portland is a very friendly city, but I love that here in Hinesville I wave to everyone passing in their cars as I walk my dog around the golf course, and that did not happen in Portland often.  There is a real connection to real people that I am finding is one of the things I love about this place.  John offered what I can get at any crappy technology company:  anger, manipulation and ego.  Opportunity for the outside entrepreneur:  Genuine and authentic people are rare everywhere, but the stresses of city life are greater in my opinion, and face time builds connections.

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