hiring-technical-help_skill

Overview

This skill helps non-technical founders hire and manage engineering talent, from one-off contractors to fractional CTOs. It guides you on when to use AI versus when to hire, how to write clear job briefs, run paid trials, vet candidates, and set up safe working agreements. The advice is practical, budget-aware, and tailored to early-stage SaaS founders. Use it to avoid common hiring mistakes and get reliable deliverables.

How this skill works

The skill inspects your needs and recommends whether AI tools can solve the task or if you should hire. It provides sourcing channels ranked by quality, red/green flags for candidates, and a template-driven approach to paid trials and job briefs. It also covers contractor management: communication cadence, tooling, payment structures, and simple legal protections. Finally, it offers budget ranges and decision criteria for contractors, part-time devs, fractional CTOs, and agencies.

When to use it

• You can’t get a working result from AI after 2–3 serious attempts
• You need complex integrations, performance tuning, or security audits
• You face data migrations, production incidents, or native mobile work
• You need ongoing maintenance and don’t have time to manage fixes yourself
• You’re scaling architecture or about to raise and need technical credibility

Best practices

• Define the problem first — hire for the problem, not the role
• Start with a paid trial (5–10 hours) on a real, self-contained task
• Require code to live in your repo and use small incremental deliveries
• Set a written working agreement: scope, payment, milestones, communication
• Budget for quality — avoid hires priced far below market
• Use AI tools first for landing pages, CRUD apps, auth, and simple integrations

Example use cases

• Hire a contractor to integrate an enterprise API with poor docs (paid trial + milestones)
• Get a fractional CTO for architecture reviews and coordinating multiple contractors
• Use the job-brief template to scope a Stripe integration or small feature
• Manage an ongoing 10–20 hr/week part-time developer for product iteration
• Ask AI to review contractor code for obvious bugs and security issues before acceptance