Bring Your Own Team

Now here is an interesting idea: front-loading an aquihire by hiring a functioning team rather that a single person. As many of us know developers travel in packs anyway (I have worked with many former colleagues at new places) so bringing on a pre-existing team is an interesting idea.

Some immediate thoughts:

• Developers might travel in packs, but it is usually over time and not all at once.  If you imagine an entire team leaving a company this seems very disruptive; the entire idea makes more sense for people that have shifted to consulting but tend to still work with a core group.
• Navigating the waters of interviewing people individually vs. as a group: do you do traditional “tell me about your resume” interviews (ugh) or have them do a pilot project as a team?
• What do you do when you like half of the team? Once it is time to make the hire / no-hire you might find that one person doesn’t fit your expectations but is crucial to the overall team’s output.
• On that subject the post mentions engineering being the main focus, but what non-code-writing roles will they end up hiring for?  Would the person to lead the team be a pre-existing Stripe team member?
• Hiring an entire team means you could need work carved out for them already (this is hard apart from greenfield projects)
• Maintaining your culture would be harder as they would have a stronger pull towards whatever team culture they have already built.

Interesting idea; and some interesting feedback on the Hacker New comments.