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Comment by jariel | Hacker News Reader

Maybe we need agents. Athletes pay x% of their income to agents because it's worth it.

I'll bet $1000 the same would apply to tech.

Most people have no idea what they are worth - which usually means undervaluing themselves, but just as bad, overvaluing.

Having someone who is objective and understands business just look out for you a little bit is probably worth 5% of your income. You'd earn more than that in the end. Esp if they had easy access to lawyers, or could mostly speak the language, etc.

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I've strictly used firms that are paid a percentage of my signed salary by the company upon hiring me. This heavily aligns incentives in much the way agents are aligned with athletes so that I maximize my compensation when I'm looking for work. Singlesprout comes to mind here. I'm still responsible for swatting down roles I don't like but when I see one I like I know they'll go to bat to maximize their own earnings.

Though I ultimately didn't take their offer because I was able to play it against a local company for a matching salary and bonus to avoid a move it was a good experience working with them and only mildly painful to break it to them that I would be taking another offer.

Gladwell the author talked about this in terms of real estate agents.

An extra 5% on $100k to you is $5000 but for the agent it's $250. They are not aligned to get the best price.

It doesn't mean they won't try hard but keep in mind $5000 means more to you than 250 will to a company.

Okay so we're directionally aligned but not in magnitude, fair point, yeah.

I wind up handling negotiation past the intro and initial position details myself anyway it's something I find best done by me as primary concerned party and apparently so very few people negotiate at all so there's usually wiggle room.

That's why I wound up using the offer they found me to push one I liked more locally because you're right they're only so aligned with me and being able to fall back on that offer let me likely top out the comp range at the local place.

You may be on to something. While complaining in a different thread, I realized recruiters today are not "agents" or "partners", they're "brokers" whose job is to complete a transaction in a way that grants them a big bottom-line.

The big recruiters have a continuous churn of entry level employees, so reputation does not play a part in their mission. Maybe this kind of relationship between 10x developers and representation would be beneficial for the entire industry.

Does this exist? As someone in the midst of some major career changes I’ve been wishing for a “career coach” sort of role. Someone to help with both compensation, but also to advice on which roles to take now to set myself up for my most desired roles in the future.

Just saw this posted in New: https://www.fastcompany.com/90604436/levels-fyi-leveling-tec...

Without sports type contracts where you can get released but you still get paid until a set date the risk shifts to the employees and increases employer leverage (hiring is cheap) thus driving down salary and stability.

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