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26 The PCB Design Magazine • May 2017 Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, and it seems that EDA has lost some of its luster. During the recruiting process, I've reached out to several software developers who previ- ously worked in the EDA industry who told me, "Sorry, I've moved on from EDA." I think there's an opportunity to re-invigorate EDA, be- cause it truly is the backbone of the tech indus- try, which makes all the products that we love possible, from iPhones to Teslas. Most of our applicants usually have no idea what the EDA acronym stands for before apply- ing. They apply because they know how diffi- cult it has been for them to find the data they needed to make PCBs, so they understand in- nately how much room there is to innovate. This is a good sign, because it shows with a bit of rebranding, we can as an industry make EDA a magnet for great talent again. Shaughnessy: How do you typically locate poten- tial employees? Baker: We're a startup, so it's important that we recruit team members who are a good fit for a smaller team. AngelList has been one of the best sources for this. For those who are unfamil- iar with it, AngelList is a website that connects startups, job seekers, and investors. Some of our investors are also from the PCB and EDA indus- tries, so they've made introductions as well. Fi- nally, we post jobs on our website, which gets millions of page views. So that has been an ex- cellent source of applicants as well. Shaughnessy: We've seen company owners offer- ing cars, signing bonuses, and all sorts of things to bring in new staff. Do you find yourself having to "sweeten the pot" to land a really skilled em- ployee? Baker: It's a bit too early for us to compete on perks, but we aim to be competitive compen- sation-wise. We bring people together who believe in our mission to help the PCB design community, and the future growth prospects of the company. They understand that they might not be getting Google-style free lunches today, but that's OK, because they have extremely re- warding work and strong ownership. Shaughnessy: Do you have a training program for new hires? Baker: Yes, but it's not at clear-cut as it might be at a large company. While our component en- gineers have a clearly defined training program in terms of our PCB library standards, and veri- fication processes, our software engineers have much less structure. And that's because our us- erbase is 50,000 times bigger than our software development team. I am in awe of what they've been able to achieve, but it requires them to wear many hats. One day they're adding new PCB export formats, and the next they're delv- ing into DevOps. Although some of these pro- cesses are documented, we're still in startup mode where they're constantly being defined and refined. As we grow our team, I expect we will segment the roles into more specific func- tions, and as we do that, we'll be able to set clearly defined training plans. Shaughnessy: How do you measure new employ- ees' performance? Baker: We have a weekly meeting where we re- view our metrics. Everyone has ownership of a SNAPEDA: RECRUITING TOP ENGINEERING TALENT IN AN AMAZON WORLD Natasha Baker