MBA2720 Q&A Wednesday: How Do I Find & Hire A Senior Tech Person?

Summary

The $100 MBA Show

Host: Omar Zenhom
Episode: MBA2720 Q&A Wednesday: How Do I Find & Hire A Senior Tech Person?
Date: December 24, 2025

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Episode Overview

In this Q&A Wednesday episode, Omar Zenhom tackles a crucial question from listener Gustav: How do you find and hire a senior tech person? Drawing from his 20+ years of entrepreneurial experience—including building and eventually selling his software company Webinar Ninja—Omar breaks down his proven, step-by-step strategy for sourcing, evaluating, and successfully integrating high-level technical talent into your startup or growing business. The episode is packed with actionable insights, hard-won warnings, and practical hiring guidelines designed for founders who want to avoid costly mistakes and get their tech right from the get-go.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Cost of a Bad Tech Hire vs. The Value of a Great One

• Bad tech hires are costly: Hiring the wrong person for a senior tech role isn't just expensive; it can destroy your product through technical debt, poor decisions, or months (even years) of wasted time.

  "A bad hire isn’t just expensive. They can destroy your product. They can create technical debt you’ll have to pay off for years to come." — Omar Zenhom [02:00]

• You get what you pay for: Omar strongly advises against bargain hunting or searching for the “diamond in the rough” in technical hires.

  "Don’t try to find the diamond in the rough. It doesn’t exist." — Omar Zenhom [03:18]

2. Hire for Seniority, Even If It’s Expensive (It’s Not Truly Expensive)

• High hourly rates save you money: Senior engineers charge more but work exponentially faster, with better decisions and less oversight needed. Cheaper hires eat more hours and accumulate hidden costs.

  "A senior engineer who costs more per hour will actually save you money because they finish it in a fraction of the time and make better decisions for your company now and for the long run." — Omar Zenhom [03:48]

• Go where senior engineers are: Omar recommends Upwork, sorting by price high-to-low to draw out top-tier talent.

  "Sort price high to low. Trust me. I look for the most expensive engineers who match the skillset I need for the project. Why? Because expensive engineers are usually the best in the game." — Omar Zenhom [04:34]

3. Examples from Webinar Ninja

• Specialists for foundation-building: When launching Webinar Ninja, Omar hired senior specialists for different technical areas (infrastructure, scaling, UX, database optimization). These hires had backgrounds at major companies, and their speed and expertise paid major dividends.

  "They built major features in a weekend, they diagnosed bugs in minutes... they optimized our infrastructure in a single afternoon, which that alone saved me thousands of dollars a year." — Omar Zenhom [06:30]

4. Don’t Forget Communication Skills

• Technical prowess isn’t enough: Effective communication is critical for translating business goals into technical deliverables, ensuring correct implementation, and providing necessary documentation.

  "Skills without communication skills is basically useless." — Omar Zenhom [10:09]

• What to look for: In interviews, evaluate how well candidates listen, clarify requirements, explain trade-offs, and avoid talking down to you.

  "If you feel like the communication is bad, that’s a sign the whole relationship is doomed." — Omar Zenhom [11:46]

5. Set Technical Hires Up for Success

• Provide full context: Give hires specifics about your business, target audience, goals, timelines, trade-offs, and a limited set of non-negotiables.

  "Most founders try to hire a senior engineer and they hand them some vague instruction... No, that's a recipe for disaster... You must tell them what the business does in the first place." — Omar Zenhom [12:22]

• Importance of clarity: The clarity of your leadership directly impacts the results of your technical team.

  "Their talent really depends on the clarity of your leadership." — Omar Zenhom [13:48]

6. Sell the Vision—They’re Also Interviewing You

• Top talent has options: The best engineers are typically not desperate for gigs. Sell them on why your product and mission are exciting and meaningful, and why working with you will be fun and rewarding.

  "You need to sell them on the project, the mission, the impact that your product will make on the world." — Omar Zenhom [14:45]

7. Start with a Project, Not a Full-time Commitment

• Mitigate risks: Initiate the relationship with a well-defined, time-bound project rather than a long-term contract. Evaluate outcome, hours, cost, and collaboration.

  "You never want to commit long term at the beginning of the relationship, start with one clearly defined project." — Omar Zenhom [16:18]

• No drama if it doesn’t work out: Short-term commitments make it easy to part ways if needed.

8. Seniority Is the Real Cost Saver

• Avoid costly mistakes: It’s far riskier (and ultimately more expensive) to rely on cheaper, less experienced engineers than to invest in top-tier talent for critical projects.

  "Most people think that hiring a senior engineer is expensive. The truth that I found is not. Not hiring a senior engineer is a whole lot more expensive." — Omar Zenhom [17:12]

• You're paying for outcomes, not hours: Senior engineers bring speed, clarity, and a big-picture perspective.

9. Final Words of Wisdom

• Don't overcomplicate it: You don’t need a full-time CTO or a 10-person engineering team to start. One right senior hire on a mission-critical project is all it takes.

  "You need that first right person doing the right work." — Omar Zenhom [17:48]

• Keep strategy over guesswork: Use the method Omar outlined—find, interview thoroughly, give full context, inspire, start with a project, and let the relationship evolve naturally.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On cost vs. value:

  "A cheap engineer can cost you months, if not years of work... a Senior engineer can save you an entire project, an entire product." — Omar Zenhom [17:19]

• On leadership’s role in tech outcomes:

  "Their talent really depends on the clarity of your leadership." — Omar Zenhom [13:48]

• On inspiring great engineers:

  "Show them that you’re building something worth building... I can guarantee you’re going to do the best work of your life on this project." — Omar Zenhom [15:00]

• On taking the first step:

  "You need that first right person doing the right work. Spend the time to find them." — Omar Zenhom [17:48]

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Actionable Steps [Summarized Action Plan]

1. Use Upwork or similar platforms.

   • Sort by highest price and skill match.
   • Look for experienced (even Fortune 500) candidates.

2. Interview 5-10 candidates.

   • Evaluate both technical and communication skills.

3. Don’t commit long-term initially.

   • Start with a narrowly defined project.
   • Agree on hours, rates, and deliverables.

4. Give detailed business context.

   • Explain your audience, goals, requirements, and priorities.

5. Sell your mission to candidates.

   • Convey the impact and excitement of your project.

6. Assess the working relationship.

   • If successful, consider further collaboration; if not, part ways easily.

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Essential Timestamps

• [02:00] – Why bad tech hires are so risky
• [03:18] – The myth of finding a cheap star
• [04:34] – How to search for senior tech talent on Upwork
• [06:30] – Real-life results from hiring senior engineers for Webinar Ninja
• [10:09] – Communication as a core requirement
• [12:22] – How to provide the right context for success
• [14:45] – Selling the project to top candidates
• [16:18] – Why you should start with a clearly defined project
• [17:12] – Seniority as a long-term cost saver
• [17:48] – Final motivational advice on hiring senior tech talent

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This episode delivers a complete, experience-driven blueprint for hiring senior tech talent—emphasizing premium skills, leadership clarity, meaningful work, and risk management. Highly recommended for founders preparing for crucial technical hires.

Transcript

[Omar Zenhom]

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[Mrs. Claus (Younger Sister)]

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[Drew Ski (Elf)]

Zoe, this thing weighs a ton. Kurski. Live with your legs, man.

[Omar Zenhom]

Santa. Santa, did you get my letter?

[Drew Ski (Elf)]

He's talking to you, Bridges.

[Omar Zenhom]

I'm not that.

[Mrs. Claus (Younger Sister)]

Of course he did. Right, Santa?

[Drew Ski (Elf)]

You know my elf Drew Ski here. He handles the nice list. And elf. I'm six' three. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T Mobile. You can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies, right, Mrs. Claus?

[Mrs. Claus (Younger Sister)]

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[Drew Ski (Elf)]

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[Mrs. Claus (Younger Sister)]

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[Capella University Narrator]

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[Drew Ski (Elf)]

My side of the tree is slipping.

[Omar Zenhom]

Kimber.

[Drew Ski (Elf)]

The holidays are better. T Mobile switch in just 15 minutes and get iPhone 17 on us with no trade in needed. And now T Mobile is available in US cellular stores with 24 month bill.

[Capella University Narrator]

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[Omar Zenhom]

Visit t mobile.com if you need to hire a senior tech person or any real expert. Here's a truth that I've learned over 20 years. You get what you pay for. There's no way around this. And when it comes to software development, a bad hire isn't just expensive. They can destroy your product. They can create technical debt you'll have to pay off for years. To come, they can waste months, maybe even years of your life. That's why today I'm answering today's Q and A Wednesday question from Gustav how to make a high level tech hire. I'm going to show you step by step how we exactly did it with our software company, Webinar Ninja, and how we made easy each hire along the way, starting from nothing until we sold the company after 10 years. Welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm your host, Omar Zenholm, where I deliver practical business lessons three times a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday to help you start, grow and scale your business. If this show has helped in any way, it would be amazing if you could drop us a quick review on whatever app you're using to listen to this podcast right now. It helps me and my team bring new episodes every week. And more importantly, more entrepreneurs will be able to discover our podcast so you can help someone else start their journey. Thanks so much. When it comes to the software game, you are only as strong as your team, so let's make sure you do it right. First, we have to establish that hiring technical talent is not like hiring for customer support or admin. If you're hiring the wrong person in a technical position, they can break your app, they can slow down your product, they can make the wrong architectural choices that can cost you thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars down the line. They can cost you months of delays. They can make your life a living hell. How do I know? Well, I made a hire that cost our company nearly half a million dollars. And. And worst of all, you won't know they're doing it until it's too late. That's why you want quality, not bargains. Don't try to find the diamond in the rough. It doesn't exist. A senior engineer who costs more per hour will actually save you money because they finish it in a fraction of the time and make better decisions for your company now and for the long run. Here's exactly what I do. The same method I've been using for years. I've been using upwork for over 20 years. Yes, they're a sponsor of the podcast, but I've been using them way before they became a sponsor. And this is not a sponsored episode. But if you want to save some money, go to upwork.com save now Once you're on Upwork, this is what I recommend you do. Don't sort by best match don't sort by most recent don't sort by price low to high Sort price high to low. Trust me. I look for the most expensive engineers who match the skillset I need for the project. Why? Because expensive engineers are usually the best in the game. We're talking about senior developers, CTOs at Fortune 500 companies that are like really experienced and know what they're doing. They could be the head of engineering. They can have 15, 20 years of experience. We're talking about people who are bored in their corporate job and want to have a little bit of fun on the weekend with a startup project like yours. These are people that who can do in 10 hours while others take 60 hours to do. I've witnessed this myself over and over and over. These people don't take side projects for the money. They do it for fun, for creativity, for a challenge. Right. They haven't been challenged maybe in a bit because they've been in a high level job managing, you know, hundreds of people in the department. Yes, they might cost 150, 200, maybe even $300 an hour, but, but if you save 40 hours of work, you just saved thousands. And I'm telling you, I've tried both ways. I've tried to find the diamond and rough. I've tried to find the person that's fifty and sixty and a hundred dollars an hour and they take two, three, four, five times as long. And therefore I'm paying more money and I'm losing out on the opportunity cost because the faster they can get out what I would need to get out, the more money I can make with my customers. So trust me with this. Go with somebody expensive, that senior that's experienced. When we started building Webinar Ninja, I didn't have a full engineering team at the start. I needed experts for certain areas to build the foundation of the software. I needed somebody to be able to set up my infrastructure, like server infrastructure on Amazon web Services. I needed somebody to help me scale my product so I can serve hundreds and thousands of customers. I needed somebody who's focused on front end design and implementation. I needed somebody who can take complex features and build them out quickly. I needed somebody to be able to optimize database so that I'm not spending a fortune every single month in, you know, usage of database on the servers. I found senior developers on upwork who worked for companies like Amazon, Salesforce, IBM, Yahoo. They built major features in a weekend, they diagnosed bugs in minutes and unblocked my customer support team with a nagging problem. And literally in a couple of hours they optimize our infrastructure in a single afternoon, which that alone saved me thousands of dollars a year and I wasn't paying for time. I was paying for talent. People that know how to solve real problems. A senior engineer might cost more per hour, but they cost far less per project because you guessed it, it takes them less hours to complete the project. If you got travel coming up, visiting family, heading abroad, or even a dream trip for the new year, imagine feeling confident greeting people in their own language. 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[Mrs. Claus (Younger Sister)]

Guys, thanks for helping me carry my Christmas tree.

[Drew Ski (Elf)]

Zoe. This thing weighs a ton. Drew, ski lift with your legs, man.

[Capella University Narrator]

Santa.

[Omar Zenhom]

Santa, did you get my letter?

[Drew Ski (Elf)]

He's talking to you, Bridges.

[Omar Zenhom]

I'm not.

[Mrs. Claus (Younger Sister)]

Of course he did.

[Drew Ski (Elf)]

Right Santa, you know my elf Drew. He handles the nice list. And elf, I'm six' three. What everyone wants is iPhone 17 and at T mobile you can get it on them. That center stage front camera is amazing for group selfies. Right, Mrs. Claus?

[Mrs. Claus (Younger Sister)]

I'm Mrs. Claus much younger sister And AT T mobile there's no trade in needed when you switch. So you can keep your old phone.

[Drew Ski (Elf)]

Or give it as a gift.

[Mrs. Claus (Younger Sister)]

And the best part, you can make the switch to T mobile from your phone in just 15 minutes.

[Capella University Narrator]

Nice.

[Drew Ski (Elf)]

My side of the tree is slipping. Kimber the holidays are better at T Mobile switch in just 15 minutes and get iPhone 17 on us with notes trade and need it and now T mobile is available in US cellular stores.

[Capella University Narrator]

With 24 monthly bill credits for well qualified customers plus tax and $35 vice can action charge credit and balance to if you pay off Earlier Cancel Finance Agreement 256 gigs $830 eligible board in a new line $100/ a month plan with auto pay + taxes fees required. Check out 15 minutes or less per line.

[Omar Zenhom]

Visit t mobile.com My next tip is to look for communication skills because skills without communication skills is basically useless. So don't do what many people do where they only evaluate skills. Senior tech people must be able to communicate clear what they understand what you want so that there is no wasted time and energy. You need somebody who can really understand your product vision, can translate it into code and explain their decisions so that you understand how your product's being built. They also need to be good enough communicators to build a document what they're building so they have proper documentation for your business and for your company. Because one day you might get acquired and that's going to be super valuable. So my advice is don't interview two or three people, speak to five to 10 people and find out who's got the best combination of technical skills and communication skills. So you might be saying, omar, what do you mean by communication skills? What should I be looking for in this interview? Well, you want somebody who listens. You want somebody who asks smart clarifying questions, somebody who can repeat back what you said so they can confirm they understand what you're saying and what you want. You want somebody that understands the customers you're serving. You want somebody that understands the product. You want somebody who can explain things technical trade offs. Because when you're building out software there will be trade offs where like hey, I can build this fast but it might be a little bit slow or I can really take my time and make it a super fast experience. And of course you don't want somebody who's going to talk down to you. You want this to be an enjoyable experience. And often I found when you deal with very talented senior people, it's a lot of fun. So when you're having these interviews, if you feel like the communication is bad, that's a sign the whole relationship is doomed. You shouldn't start this relationship. But if the communication is great, it might be the beginning of a brilliant relationship that's going to serve both of you for A long time. The next step is once you have agreed to work with them, you need to set them up for success. This is on you. Most founders try to hire a senior engineer and they hand them some vague instruction like I need the app to be faster or I want to add a calendar feature or I want to improve the ux. No, that's a recipe for disaster. If you're going to hire a senior person, a senior engineer, you got to give them as much context as possible. You must tell them what the business does in the first place. What do you do? Who do you serve? Who's your audience? Okay, what are your metrics? What are your goals? What's the purpose of the feature you want them to build? What are the trade offs that you care about, what's important to you and the experience for the customer? What's the timeline, how much time do they have to pull this off? And what are your non negotiable? And by the way, you can't have a million non negotiables need to be one or two. For example, if speed matters more than the ui, then you need to tell them that. If for example, you have a really bad bug that's costing you hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars, then you need to tell them, hey, I need a fast fix to this. Because they can fix it and solve the problem and kind of put a band aid solution and then later do the deep work. They need to fix it permanently, but they need to know that this is urgent. If scaling matters more than rapid release every day, then they need to know that. Because I found that when you're building software, there's often a lot of trade offs, like I mentioned, but there's often a lot of decisions need to be made by the engineer on what to work on. First, second, third, it's so important for you to communicate this because they need to know your priorities to make the right decisions. Their talent really depends on the clarity of your leadership. So as much as possible, be clear. Give them as much context as possible so that they have the full picture. There is one more step that many people forget. While you're interviewing them, they're interviewing you. Remember, these people already have great jobs, great careers, great incomes, comfortable lives. They don't need your job. You need to sell them on the project, the mission, the impact that your product will make on the world. You need to tell them things like why this product matters, who it helps, why building it is an exciting project, why it's going to be fun, and what they will get out of this whole experience? What is it going to be like to work on this project? How will their actual expertise and work be used in the marketplace and help other people? I found that great engineers love meaningful work. Show them that you're building something worth building. One of the things I used to tell people when I was having this conversation is that I can guarantee you're going to do the best work of your life on this project. And after we worked with each other for a bit, I would ask them, was that true? And they always say yes, because I want to make sure that we're building something that really allows them to feel that they're being creative, that they're adding value to the world, but also something that's just fun and exciting in the world. You know, when we built Webinar Ninja, we're helping empower small business owners, sell more product, impact people's lives, improve people's lives in health, wellness, fitness, business, book writing, whatever it might be, that was really exciting. Wow. You're going to help other people, Help other people. That's great. Yeah, that's why we built it right. And that's the kind of excitement you want to create on the call. So let me give you some action steps. The first thing is you never want to commit long term. At the beginning of the relationship, start with one clearly defined project. So for example, when you're having the conversation with the engineer, tell them specifically, I want this feature that does XYZ to be built. I want this infrastructure to be set up so I can save X amount of money. I want this bug to be fixed. Ask them how many hours it's going to take to do this project. If they say 20 hours and they cost $200 an hour, then you know that the project's going to be $4,000. Now, you know the budget, you know the expectations, you know the outcome. You can work together on this one project, and if it go, you can have a project too. If it doesn't go so well, at least you got a feature built out and you can move on. No drama, no sunk costs, no hiring disaster, no HR nightmare, no legalities. And what's great about a place like Upwork is that upwork kind of secures your IP and also becomes the person that pays them. And make sure everything's on the up and up. Legally, most people think that hiring a senior engineer is expensive. The truth that I found is not. Hiring a senior engineer is a whole lot more expensive. A cheap engineer can cost you months, if not years of work, a Senior engineer can save you an entire project, an entire product. You're not paying for hours. You're paying for speed, for clarity, for experience, for accuracy, for sanity. Somebody that gets it right. A great engineer doesn't just build what you want. They build what you should want because they have the understanding technically what you should build. If this episode helped you share it with another founder who might be struggling with a tech hire, you'll do them a huge favor. And you'll also be spreading the good word of the $100 MBA show. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. You don't need a full time CTO to get started. You don't need a 10 person engineering team. You don't need to break the bank. You don't need this and that. You need one thing. You need that first right person doing the right work. Spend the time to find them. Interview as many candidates as it takes. Give them as much context as possible so that they know what they're building and they're inspired to build it. Start with a project and let the relationship evolve naturally. Hiring tech talent doesn't require guesswork. It's strategy. The strategy I shared with you today. The strategy I learned the hard way so that you don't have to. If you found today's episode helpful and you want more practical business lessons to help you start, grow and scale your business, the best thing you could do is subscribe to this podcast. Hit subscribe or follow on your favorite podcast app, the one that you're using right now. Whether it's Apple or Spotify or ever, you listen to podcasts by hitting subscribe, you get our next episode automatically and it's the best way to support the show. It's absolutely free and it's a way for you to commit to growing your business. And now that you've subscribed, I'll check you in the next episode.

[Capella University Narrator]

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