Before a bunch of folks jump to a conclusion about the post/pre-game wait time, try to consider/remember WHY it is there.
This time exists to allow you to go to the garage and make changes to your mechs before playing the match (since you cannot change the internals, items, paint, etc. while a match is in progress).
Also, the "Ready" feature allows players the opportunity to control how many players are in the lobby when the match begins.
I would personally much rather wait around a few minutes, send some invites, and wait for a mostly full match before the game starts.
The auto-balancer in Hawken actually works very well when you start a match with a mostly full lobby of players. Matches where players are in a hurry to get started and ready up with only 4-6 players are the ones that turn into imbalanced ones.
The auto-balancer will create original teams of the 4-6 players that are well balanced, but when a new player wants to join the match, the auto-balance does exactly what it ought to do: it first puts the incoming player on the team that is short a player, then on the team that is losing. And that is exactly how it has to be. So, when you start a match without a mostly full lobby, you are simply asking for an imbalanced game - you have no control over the skill level of the next player to join in (and that, too, is how it should be) and if you have one team who is short a player getting the highest ranked player in the match... that's how the cookie crumbles.
So, in short, be careful what you wish for.