At Intervue.io, we speak to hundreds of founders every year who are wrestling with the same problem: how to build their first engineering team. It sounds simple on paper; hire smart people, give them work, build fast, but anyone who has been through it knows it is one of the hardest parts of starting up.

Every hire at this stage is high stakes. The right person can set the tone for how your culture evolves, while the wrong one can drag you back months. Somewhere in these conversations, the word “subordinate” often appears. It comes up in job descriptions, in casual conversations, or even in founders’ heads when they imagine their org chart.

But what does subordinate meaning really imply and is it even the right frame when you are a five-person company trying to find product-market fit?

The dictionary definitions are straightforward. A subordinate is “a person of lower rank or position” or “someone under the authority of another.” In grammar, a subordinate clause cannot stand alone without a main clause. The word has roots in Latin subordinatus meaning “placed under order.”

It makes sense in armies, government offices, or even large corporations where hierarchy is the backbone. But when you take that language and apply it to the messy, unpredictable and often chaotic world of early-stage startups, it starts to feel out of place.

The problem with the subordinate framing is subtle but dangerous. It signals a top-down, command-and-control mindset. That can kill innovation before it even starts.

Studies back this up. Harvard Business Review has published multiple reports showing that teams with flatter structures and empowered members consistently outperform those with rigid hierarchies.

Gallup’s famous workplace surveys add another layer. They found that only 20 percent of employees worldwide feel engaged at work and one of the top drivers of disengagement is the feeling of being undervalued or seen as “just a cog.” When your team is five or ten people, you cannot afford disengagement.

Early hires are not there to simply follow orders. They are there to co-create. If you treat them as subordinates, they will wait for instructions. If you treat them as owners, they will surprise you with ideas you never considered.

So, how should founders reinterpret the word?

At Intervue.io, we encourage leaders to see “subordinates” not as people beneath them, but as partners in the mission. Yes, someone might formally report to you. Yes, you will make the final call in tough moments. But the day-to-day should feel more like collaboration than command.

That shift in mindset changes how you hire. Instead of scanning résumés for pedigree, you start looking for curiosity, problem-solving and resilience. Instead of trying to fill rigid roles, you look for generalists who can grow into whatever the company needs next.

Here are a few practical principles we share with founders who are hiring their first ten engineers:

1. Go beyond your immediate circle. Referrals are useful, but don’t limit yourself to who you already know. Great early hires often come from hackathons, tech communities, or even side projects you stumble across on GitHub.
2. Look for passion, not polish. Some of the best startup-ready engineers may not have a perfect résumé. What matters is whether they’ve built things before apps, games, automation scripts, open-source contributions. Passion projects often tell you more than internships at big firms.
3. Test for ambiguity. In interviews, create scenarios where the problem is open-ended. For example, give an incomplete product requirement and ask how they would approach it. Watch how they deal with uncertainty.
4. Hire for trajectory, not just current skill. The person who is average today but hungry to learn may become your best engineer tomorrow. In a startup, growth potential often outweighs experience.
   
5. Keep the hiring bar high. It is tempting to hire quickly because you are desperate to move faster. But a bad early hire can be far more costly than a delay. Protect the quality bar, even if it slows you down in the short term.

Rejecting the subordinate mindset does not mean rejecting structure. Chaos without clarity will burn out your team.

What you need is a hiring process that gives you consistency and fairness while still leaving room to evaluate intangibles like adaptability and hunger. This is where we come in.

At Intervue.io, we provide:

• Live coding environments that simulate real-world startup problems.
• Structured rubrics that help you compare candidates on curiosity, ownership and problem-solving, not just technical skills.
• Access to external panels that can remove bias from the process.
• Reporting that shows you not only who can code, but who can thrive in a startup setting.

The goal is to replace gut feel with data while still honoring the human qualities that matter most in early hires.

Here is the truth: the dictionary isn’t wrong about the word subordinate. In a strict sense, someone does report to someone else. But in the startup world, we need to update the meaning.

A subordinate isn’t “beneath you.” A subordinate is someone who supports the mission today and grows into leadership tomorrow. They may report to you on paper, but in practice, they are co-architects of the company.

At Intervue.io, we believe this is the single biggest lever for founders. Get early hiring right, and you build a foundation of owners, not order-takers. And that is how tomorrow’s category-defining companies are born.