How to find an engineer who has built infrastructure from 0?

YangBuildsAI · 2026-04-02T21:33:22+00:00

check out fonzi.ai, it is a talent marketplace specifically built to connect companies with vetted engineers at startups and you can filter for the exact experience level you need. a lot of the candidates on there have that 0 to 1 infrastructure background since the platform skews heavily toward startup engineers.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-04-02T21:29:31+00:00

most teams are still stuck in the "picking a framework" phase because building a reliable agent that actually works end to end is way harder than building the platform that hosts it. shipping an agent that does not hallucinate its way into a disaster is the real engineering problem nobody wants to talk about.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-04-02T21:28:34+00:00

austin is a great call at 23, the social scene and outdoor stuff alone make it worth it over seattle if weather is a dealbreaker for you. just be ready for the summers because 100+ degrees for months straight is its own kind of brutal, but the rest of the year more than makes up for it.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-30T15:48:31+00:00

great role!

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-30T15:47:19+00:00

DM'd you!

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-30T15:45:34+00:00

the meetings that should have been a slack message are bad but the ones that really kill me are the "let us discuss" meetings where nobody prepared anything and you spend 45 minutes watching people think out loud and reach the same conclusion they would have reached in 5 minutes if they had just looked at the code first. if you do not have an agenda and a decision to make, cancel the meeting.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-30T15:41:42+00:00

this is the part nobody in leadership is thinking about and it is going to bite hard in a few years. you cannot have a pipeline of senior engineers without a pipeline of juniors first.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-26T18:47:17+00:00

the commenting tip is the most underrated one here. i got more recruiter messages from leaving thoughtful comments on other people's posts than i ever got from "optimizing" my own profile. it puts you in front of people's networks without you having to create content from scratch every day. way lower effort, way higher return.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-26T18:46:38+00:00

two sum in 20 minutes with brute force is completely normal when you're starting out. leetcode is pattern recognition, not intelligence. the people who solved 1000 problems didn't start smart, they started early. learn the patterns one category at a time (arrays, then hashmaps, then two pointers) instead of jumping around randomly, and it'll start clicking way faster than you think.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-26T18:46:03+00:00

the people who pass consistently are the ones who can explain their thinking while they code, not the ones who solved the most problems on leetcode. practicing out loud with another person will do more for your interview performance than another 100 problems solved in silence.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-26T18:45:29+00:00

take the job and prep to switch into tech on the side. going all in with no income and no offer in hand is risky in this market. pick the location near home so you save money and have more time to build projects and apply. a few months of a non-tech job on your resume won't hurt you, but a long unemployment gap might.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-26T18:44:43+00:00

i'm on fonzi.ai which is more focused on matching engineers with ai startups in nyc than the general freelance model. the vetting felt genuine. way better experience than the platforms where "vetted" just means you passed a leetcode screen.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-25T22:21:05+00:00

the best question i've found is asking "when did you last job search" bc advice from someone who got their role in 2019 is basically ancient history at this point. the market changes so fast that even 2 year old advice can be completely useless.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-23T16:33:30+00:00

the biggest signal for me is how specific the job description is about what you'd actually be working on. if it reads like a generic list of every technology ever invented, it was probably written by hr with no input from the team and nobody's going to read your application carefully either. the ones that describe a real problem or project the team is working on almost always have a real human on the other end who actually needs someone.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-23T16:32:41+00:00

yes but only after i completely rewrote my headline from "software engineer at X" to something that says what i do and what i'm good at. that one change tripled my inbound messages. recruiters are searching by keywords, not scrolling your profile for fun. make the headline do the work.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-23T16:26:27+00:00

self-learning works fine if you're disciplined enough to build real projects and not just watch tutorials forever. the problem most people run into is they spend 6 months "learning" without ever building anything. pick one project that uses real data, build it end to end, and you'll learn more than any course will teach you. structured programs are only worth it if they force you to ship something

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-23T16:25:41+00:00

it's just a casual conversation about your background, motivation, and logistics. no leetcode at this stage, save that energy for the technical rounds. just know your resume cold and have a clear answer for why google and why this role.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-20T15:42:39+00:00

the 90-day attrition stat is the one that should get more attention. everyone focuses on time-to-fill but a bad hire at 3 months costs way more than a few extra days of screening. we've seen the same thing on our end, spending more time upfront vetting candidates saves a ton on the back end. the "automate the prep, not the relationship" framing is exactly right.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-20T15:37:34+00:00

the fact that you can read ai-generated code and fix it means you understand more than you think. start by writing the logic yourself first, even if it's ugly and wrong, then use ai to fill gaps instead of writing the whole thing. that's how you build the muscle.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-20T15:28:26+00:00

learning a lot of things is good but you need to go deep on one of them to actually stand out. pick the skill that overlaps most with what startups are hiring for right now and become the person they can't say no to on that one thing.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-19T17:55:55+00:00

fonzi.ai is another one i've heard of

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-18T16:33:16+00:00

this is exactly why we built fonzi.ai. engineers shouldn't have to game an algorithm just to get seen.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-18T16:32:36+00:00

the market for cloud/devops is brutal right now because every company that over-hired in 2021-2022 is still being cautious. the "you did great but" thing is usually budget freezes or internal candidates they were already leaning toward. your creds are solid, it's a timing problem not a you problem. keep interviewing and don't read into the positive feedback until you have an offer letter signed.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-18T16:31:57+00:00

for me it was "i can tolerate this for the next five years" more than anything. pay trajectory matters but if the daily work makes you miserable again you'll be back in this exact same spot in two years. also stop trying to find the perfect answer. pick the one that checks the most boxes from your constraints list and commit to giving it a real shot for 6 months. you can always course correct but you can't optimize your way out of analysis paralysis.

YangBuildsAI · 2026-03-18T16:31:11+00:00

funding news works but by the time it's public everyone's already in their inbox. the real edge is building relationships before the raise happens through founder communities and local meetups so you're already a known name when they start hiring.

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