when you can change the course of someone’s life, and don’t.

My favorite, and least favorite part of the job: choosing people to employ. I love sending people money. I love seeing my developers build their lives and do fun shit. I love seeing people splash out and have stability and knowing it’s because of me.

It seems simple, right? Choose the best person for the business interests of the startup. That’s what a good job posting is: hi, I need you. Please meet this, this. In exchange, I will give you this.

The reality is harder.

Right now, Faura is hiring for 2 positions. In the day that we’ve had the positions available, we’ve had 100+ applicants. We will probably have thousands. Most of these candidates are not mid-level, but senior or principal. They are talented people, who have financial responsibilities and are hoping that this is an opportunity that would work out for them.

As CTO, I sit through and I minimize someone’s entire work history and intelligence into a paper that tells me if it would fit into our business needs. I do what I have to do for the sake of the company.

A wrong move, like hiring too senior of a developer who leaves abruptly for better pay or less stress, or hiring too junior of a developer who can’t pull through complex implementations, would take time away from needing to scale to meet the demand and could damage the team’s morale.

Truly, companies that provide good jobs in this tech job market right now have the power. Faura is offering 110–130k for a junior position, which is a strong salary for a start-up. That’s more than 2x what I make as the CTO. That’s a life changing sum of money to me, or anyone.

I wanted whoever worked for us to not worry about money, about health insurance, or about needing to come in. Instead of low-balling people and covering it with equity, I want our developers to work from a place of abundance and knowing they’re valued.

I’m a believer in the team that performs the best is the team you take care of the most. Yes, being a manager is about getting work produced from your team. But a truly good manager goes beyond the business’ needs. It is working directly with someone to find their goals, their dreams, what motivates them, and using that to advocate for the company.

But more importantly, using that to advocate THEM for what they want for themselves. A manager, of course managers. More often than not - they platform. As a manager, you manage when it’s needed, but you platform people to accomplish their own goals through the company.

I can’t lie, as a new CTO in a brutal job market, I’m struggling to parse through it all.

I, myself, years ago sent out hundreds of job applications in terrible positions just hoping that someone would give me a chance: hoping that someone would see me beyond the resume. And now, all I am seeing is the resume.

It’s become a curse to be negatively effected by practices and then to inherit them yourself. I’m not a fan in the idea that you should suck it up: that having bad experiences and being tough is the price you pay for access.

But, on the other side, I do see it. The numerous, terrible r/cscareerquestions posts coming to life. The overwhelming amount of people looking for a job, and the absolute power in the hands of tech companies to pick whoever fits.

In the US, someone’s job is their health insurance, livelihood, and where they spend a large portion of their time. Someone applying for a job is someone applying to provide their earned talent and time towards you: it’s someone trusting in you. I don’t take that lightly at all.

Rejecting someone’s application is necessary, but devastating.

I don’t have an outcome for this, but just a note in the process of learning how to be. I know how heavy the power I wield in hiring is, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

There’s a YouTube video somewhere about why people hate politicians, and the content creator made a good point: politicians are in charge of making insanely hard decisions where there is no winning. There is a loss, and another kind of loss. Either way you choose, you are responsible for choosing a loss.

I am rejecting hundreds of really talented people who put in the effort to reach out to me to make something happen. There’s no way to not make that fucking suck.

That’s what I’m starting to define as leadership: someone who chooses the lesser of two evils strategically.

I don’t have a good ending on this essay. I just hope I choose correctly.