Show HN: Shepherd – Get inside intros to dev teams with great culture
shepherd.com
shepherd.com
How does it not end up as a game of companies trying to pick the values they think are most in vogue?
The only real way to get the data points for “great team culture” is to ask literally everyone but the recruiters and managers.
We also think it is important to show what the leadership team wants their culture to be, how they spend time/money on that, and how that is going.
We are trying two things:
#1 - Interviewing companies to build a profile. We are working with ~25 companies to pull this information and build a profile of their culture. And, we are working to add more companies. You can see an example of the process and what we are trying to create on the other side of this at WorkDNA (https://workdna.com/ - email me at ben@workdna.com if you are interested). This process is largely self reported, but our team writes everything and we have a framework where we look for proof that time or money is being spent on a value.
#2 - Survey individual engineers to build a profile. We are in the early stages of working with companies to profile them by giving their entire engineering team a survey. This is a bottom up approach. We are also looking at ways we could collect individual data points from engineers. We both want to augment company profiles with this data but also use it to match engineers to team's that have what they want.
We were interviewing developers for a project and kept hearing how much they hated looking for a new job. We dug into why and it was usually because they couldn't find companies with the culture and work environment they wanted. They either had to invest a ton of time into research or trust a recruiter.
Our tool is different because it matches you with companies who have the culture and work environment you want. And, it skips the black hole that is the modern job application by having companies pitch you.
Privacy is very important to us and we built this so that you have complete control of when you share your personal info. You can anonymously ask interested engineering teams questions before you share anything.
Feedback requested: 1. Would you use this? 2. What are we missing when it comes to culture and dev environment?
What our product does is take your anonymized profile, present it to companies, and ask them if they're interested. If they are, you may then decline, ask questions directly while staying anonymous, or opt in to a conversation with them without even filling out an application.
For each technology, you could add a list that is a proxy for level of proficiency. Something like:
- just started learning
- used in simple side-projects
- used in complex side-projects
- used in simple professional/production projects
- used in complex professional/production projects
- proficient with years of experience
- deep knowledge
Like Hired, Vettery, A-list, and Triplebyte?
I assume you'd still need to do an interview.
Contrast this with traditional recruiters who at least know something about the field they're recruiting into beyond what's in vogue in SFO.
I tried them out a year or two ago, and found that there was literally no way to add keywords/tags as a user. So if Vettery didn't have an existing keyword for [language or skill you're good at], then you have no way to advertise that skill to companies hiring from Vettery.
Then Vettery basically just wouldn't leave me alone and one of their agents kept pestering me to finish my profile. I told them that I couldn't fill it out because I couldn't add the right keywords for my specialties, and they said something like "if you send me a list of your specialties, I can raise a support ticket to try and get them added to the list". I wrote off their platform as fundamentally broken right in that moment.
Vettery: "We use machine learning and real-time data to match talented job-seekers with inspiring companies. Our goal is to enrich and automate the recruiting process."
Yeah, right.
So a company can only see candidates that are a high match for the culture and work environment they create. And, then they can see candidates who match the position they are hiring for, i.e. an embedded hardware/software position or so on.
What do you mean embedded postings?
We don't file any support tickets nor am I sure what you are talking about, can you please explain? Are you sure you have the right post?
- I like the filters. - Maybe use ranges for things like OPT? - After filling the form out it ended abruptly.
Oh weird, it should go to thank you page, checking!