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Comment by einarvollset | Hacker News Reader

Genuinely surprised at the usual "muah muah, can't swat them away" chatter.

Having basically the equivalent of an agent in your corner would be a very valuable service, but crucially this agent would need to have an impeccable reputation, hence any of the usual recruiters only "doing secretarial work" wouldn't work. They would need to be genuinely well connected professionals.

I can see an ongoing relationship with salary increase negotiation support, a bi-yearly in person strategy session ("It might be time to move on") as well as genuinely going to bat for you in terms of your contract ("hey, let'a push for a 7 year exercise window instead of 90 days")

Anyways. I don't know if such a service, but it seems like it should exist.

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These types of recruiters do sort of exist. Basically instead of doing contract recruiting by just cold calling or emailing they put together a talent network. Over time they get parts of their talent network into companies as hiring managers and VPs. Once they hit critical mass they become much more selective about who is allowed into the network while also pulling from their network to move guys between companies and also to find out who they should develop new relationships with.

If this sounds sketchy as fuck... it is. But it works, and you can basically tell the recruiter what you want to do and when that op shows up in their network he or she will advise you and help you get the deal.

Is this actually sketchy though? As everyone knows, hiring is difficult. It is time-expensive and the outcome of a bad hire can be catastrophic. So here we have a recruiter who is making it his business to make your life easier by making the process less time expensive and less risky, and we brand this sketchy?

In forming a good relationship between their hiring partner and interviewees - they know who is likely to be a "fit" and who will not be. This is no different to HR screening CVs based on fit, the only difference is that recruiters of take a personal vested interest in the success. Every hire nets them commission. Every good hire strengthens their network, every bad hire weakens their network. If they are truly a network-based recruiter, they want every hire to be amazing.

Yes, there will be weaknesses in this system. Yes, it leads a reduced hiring pool (if you opt-in to this style of hiring) and black-box hiring. The upshot is that as an interviewer and interviewee you save yourself time and find yourself a job that makes you happy, you only need find yourself the right recruiter.

Does not sound sketchy at all. Standard talent agency model.

This is how the best placements get made.

If you're an engineer there's a list of requirements that would convince you to switch jobs whether it be for working in a certain industry, with certain proven founders, your comp., certain tech, title a company can offer, remote/flexiblity, benefits, etc. When I meet a candidate and they tell me that list and a few months down the line I come across a job that matches well it's a win-win for both me, the company, and the candidate.

tl;dr recruiting can be a relationship-based game with many moving parts. At a certain point, with a complete and up-to-date dataset, you can provide tons of value for everyone as an information arbitrator.

I don't disagree actually, but it sort of clashes with my idealism that engineering is meritocracy based (it isn't, I know). If I joined an org thinking I was going to be working with the best and brightest and really it just ended up that they were all connected then I might be annoyed. I dunno... it feels "wrong", but it isn't wrong, and I do think it's a good methodology for staffing.

These kinds of services exist for contractors but, afaik, not for full-time software engineers. I wrote about why here: http://blog.alinelerner.com/why-talent-agents-for-engineers-...

TL;DR In this market, where there's a shortage of labor, the economic incentive isn't there. You get paid a lot more when you work for companies. It's the opposite of what you see in Hollywood, where there's a surplus of labor and a shortage of jobs.

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