Show HN: I built a zero-cost, ad-free alternative to LinkedIn
sellff.com
sellff.com
1. Let me make an online resume, publicly connect with past colleagues, and give and receive recommendations and skills endorsements.
2. Sell job postings.
3. Sell search tools for jobs & candidates.
4. Don't trick people into uploading their contacts.
5. Don't provide an Invite All feature. Require users to state the relationship type for every invitation sent. Allow me to opt-out of connections by type: acquaintance, family, friend, school, work,etc.
6. Respect my communication preferences. For example, don't rename the preferences and re-enable them every few years.
7. Don't break core product functionality. For example, don't remove the email archive button for a year. Use functional integration tests.
8. Provide discussion Groups with useful moderation tools. This would draw users to your site every day. Don't provide useless moderation tools and let all groups flood with spam. Recruiters must pay for every message they post to a Group.
New feature idea: Allow groups to curate comprehensive FAQs. It could be like Quora & Stack Overflow for professional questions. This could grow to be a very popular and bring a lot of daily traffic.
I'd also love an 'age out' functionality.
As far as LinkedIn shows, someone I work with at my current job shows up as the same strength of connection as a random person I chatted with once at a conference a decade ago. Time and number of interactions should play some role in the strength of connection as displayed in the UX (at least to me).
Slight adjustment: Recruiters must pay group members for every message they post to a Group.
Won't finish it anytime soon but might heat it up in a year or so.
I hope to leverage my influence there to start a linkedin competitor, and will set up a nice basic for having a more trusting/open relationship with the users around their data.
As is true in the real world, when making decisions about the people to work with, we all use a variety of inputs.
We would consider SELLFF to be successful if it helps you to discover and connect with trustworthy people who meet your criteria for the person/people you want to meet. From there, the decision is yours. Use the TRU Score as an additional data point in your decision making, not as the final determination.
I would consider this to be accurate whether you are promoting/selling your services or if you are a buyer and looking to hire a service provider.
If I cannot influence my TRU Score, then it's not really a reflection of anything about me, is it?
The screenshots I've seen of your site suggest you give this score the most prominent position on info cards about people. This suggests to me you are designing the site to let people use this information first and foremost in making decisions.
So, there is no direct way for a member to "manipulate" the TRU Score:
- Your activities on the site contribute to your TRU Score
- The community reaction to your activities will contribute to your TRU Score
- If a member invests the time to develop their profile and is active on the site, those activties [if viewed positively by the community] will contribute to an increased value for the TRU Score
I believe this is a fair, appropriate and transparent way to derive a score. My belief is that our members will not only rely on the TRU Score in making decisions. Instead, they will also review other parts of the member profile. In the same way you might look at a Yelp or Amazon review.
Guessing that you do not make decisions based solely on the star ratings when buying a product or choosing a service. But that you might also read some of the reviews and look at images of the product/service. Thank you for taking the time to comment and share your thoughts.
For many of the reasons you stated, we chose a much larger range of values. So, instead of 1-10 or 1-100, we selected 100 - 1,000 with a starting value of 400.
In anything we do, there is the starting point from which you determine if adjustments are needed. If the TRU Score is deemed to be in error or unfair or inaccurate, we will make the needed changes.
It is also worth noting that people who are selling services and trying to reach new customers are looking for new/better ways to connect. It is our belief that SELLFF can become an additional, valuable option for these providers. Instead of having a reliance on the mega platforms that might have already lost out trust.
If you crowdsource reputation, people will be able to buy it.
[I think] Crowdsourced opinions are an excellent way to make informed decisions about products/services. A great example is using Amazon.com for competing products:
Product A: 5.0 star rating | 32 reviews Product B: 4.5 star rating | 5,264 reviews
Which product would you weigh more heavily when making a buying decision?
Keep in mind that SELLFF is positioned as a Professional Network. Any response or feedback will be relative to you, in a professional capacity. This might include the quality of the service you provide, your communication skills, did you finish the job on time, etc.
Also, any reputation you earn as a seller works in your benefit when you consult with others as a buyer. People want to work with other people who they have confidence in. This is true on Uber,Lyft and AirBnB, where both parties "rate" each other.
I think a digital reputation is a vital part of a healthy marketplace.
If your reputation system is taken seriously, people will buy their way into it.
Zero-cost and ad-free FOR NOW you mean. At some point you're going to have make money and the only viable options are 1) charity/donations 2) subscription 3) ads and data selling. #2 means you're not 'zero-cost' and #3 means you're not 'ad-free'. So you're going to rely on donations?
A percentage of revenue is I think a fair option. I am not referring to the previous comment about 30% [or even 10%]. I hate fees as much as the next person and taking a giant cut of your customers income is not the way to grow a business.
Also, as it relates to zero-cost, using your Visa card is free to you, but not the merchant. However, those fees are being included in the price you pay for the products/services.
A question for you: If you are making $100 per month from a service, what is a "fair" price for you to pay to continue having usage of that service? - Are you OK to look at ads, so long as your cost is zero? - Are you OK to pay $5.00 per month, so you do not have to look at ads? - Or, do you prefer to have no ads and pay a % of your monthly income that you generate from using the service?
There's no 'bait'. I don't have issues with ad-supported or subscription-supported services. I do think you should set realistic expectations, namely, today you are 'zero-cost' and 'ad-free' because you're starting out and need to get users for your social network. This is how every social network started as well. At some point, that will change because you have bills to pay.
>A percentage of revenue is I think a fair option.
Can you elaborate on that?
>A question for you:
I actually have no issue with the linkedin model: Free/ad-supported tier, and subscription tiers for those who want extra functionality. I'm not sure about taking a cut of revenues. That would be a logistical nightmare unless you're also the payment processor.
It's hard for successful founders to turn down a multi-million acquisition offer, but they should never forget the cost for society.
Because it feels like turning the individual into a commodity?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26456328
I remember an acquaintance of mine, Siqi Chen, built Friends for Sale back in the day on Facebook and that was a great launch pad for his career, where he did a lot more interesting stuff later :)
And you admit this every time you switch jobs or ask for a raise.
The former is a mutually beneficial exchange, not an ephemeral manifestation of trading chattel that masquerades as some indicator of competence or value in the job market as is the latter-IMO.
I am not a commodity, I sell my skills and talents as services by virtue of career-based contributions to my employer. Are those commodities? Arguably, probably so. Those are the table stakes.
Separate from the TRU Score, the platform provides the ability to connect with professionals across different service types, by "matching" services offered and services needed. So, you could offer your services and people could find/connect with you, independent of your TRU Score.
Prepare for an incredible wave of never-ending lawsuits from the large number of people who don't like 1) being traded at all or 2) don't like how they're trading / being represented. And the service will lose those lawsuits: it'll be demonstrated to cause reputational harm, and the service dies right there.
Out of all the article about FFS, I don't remember ANYONE mentioning it was offensive back then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_for_Sale
It shouldn't take more than a brief amount of thought to realize what imagery trading humans conjures up, and what happens next in terms of outrage and scandal and what will inevitably plague the service accordingly. Hint: will the trading all be perfectly fair? Without bigotry, without bias, without racism, without any accusations, and so on. Of course not, so it's obvious what will happen.
And there are losers who drop out
Takes money to make money
In pure Capitalism you aren’t supposed to rebalance things for “fairness”. Bailing out the losers just makes the market competition weaker. It’s survival of the fittest. What exactly is “fairness” in the context of Capitalism? Someone happened to be at the right place and make money. Now they are ahead. And why not?
Shares are traded in a fixed size of 100. Each BUY transaction increases the share price by 0.01. Each SELL transaction, reduces the share price by 0.01.
When you join the service, shares in your profile become available to trade by every other member. Members discover each other primarily based on services offered/needed. Today, if you like someone on a network, you might choose to "follow" or "like" them. We offer an alternative, whereby you "invest" in them.
A follow or like from you to someone else makes the connection and allows you to view their network activity. An investment on SELLFF does the same "and" allows you to benefit from any upside in the value of that investment. As the person you invest in goes up in value, so do you. Not a bad situation really.
Anytime you like, you can BUY or SELL more shares. The exchange is open for trading 24 x 7.
I don't mean to boast, but make a point that such a service seemingly won't add any value to folk like me. Just from past work connections alone, I get 1 or 2 phone calls a year from direct acquaintances wondering if I want to join a serious startup from the start. I also get a handful of linkedin messages a week from recruiters despite not having even looked at my own profile in 5+ years. It literally requires no effort on my part. All I've done through my career is find projects I'm inherently interested in, focus on the technical work with heart and conviction, and always try to be a friendly and helpful coworker.
Likewise, if somebody's resume primarily featured a social credit score like this above hands-on domain relevant experience, it probably wouldn't stack up too well against other resumes, unless their high score was specifically due to them cleverly gaming the algorithms and documenting it or something. That would make them an interesting candidate!
What about folks who have really bad luck and participate in organizations that are a bad fit for their personality? Their score immediately goes down, and then the odds of them finding a better fit plummet. There is no "fresh start," so to speak.
If everybody used this system to make a judgment about whether a person is worthy, it feels like we would immediately create a permanent caste system. There would be social outcasts that would only work with other outcasts, because, frankly who else would want to? They are, in a word, untouchable.
So, for me, it appears this system is unethical to the extreme.
Happy to be proved wrong, of course!
You are valued every time you go to an interview or ask for a raise. You can leverage your network in the same way as you can leverage "investment."
To me this is already a more transparent version of what already happens.
Because it is immoral. It is not because it is maybe commonplace, and valued in a capitalist society, that it is a good thing.
And, the more you apply that mindset in the workplace, the more you will do it outside the workplace.
we're just not as fungible as nearly a century of mass industrialization would have us believe. we devalue humans by trying to bucketize a set of skills and buy only those skills on the labor market, despite the vast richness that each person brings to the table. that we allow the labor market to be commoditized this way is already a huge imbalance between worker and corporation. we need fair and transparent labor markets for people, not corporations.
Does this matter for the vast majority of jobs? I have lots of skills. I am a published writer. I have won innovation competitions. I can build large cities with high property values in SimCity.
None of that matters for my employment. I am a software engineer. For the purposes of work I am a commodity. My past job replaced me fairly easily when I left. Companies are truly only buying a subset of skills on the labour market.
I do not play SimCity so am unaware of the difficulty of building cities of any size.
yeah, if you buy in wholesale and premise your argument that way, then of course arguing the premise seems ludicrous. i'm questioning that acceptance itself.
when it comes to value creation, it's rarely the skills list that makes a person, a team, a company, effective, but rather an unquantifiable synergy of individualistic and combined abilities. on a basketball team, you can assume every forward is interchangable with every other one, but then you'd never win a championship and presumably would never understand why.
Interesting. Basketball is an extremely team integrated sport. 100% of the time is spent playing as a team. Do you find workplace teams to be near that level of integration?
Maybe my thinking comes from not working on particularly integrated teams.
basketball is my go-to first-order microcosm of work life, but you can see the same representative dynamics in other facets of life, like a band. similarly, i think of pets as first-order humans, endlessly fascinating and instructive to observe and interact with. =)
And if I see someone with an outstanding score the first impression that it sparks won't be trust, but that this person must've successfully gamed it somehow.
A couple of other items to consider: [1] The TRU Score is updated 1x day [2] The TRU Score is a very slow moving value [3] As designed, it would likely take years for a member to make it above 900 [4] The TRU Score is primarily based on your activity on the platform and the community reaction to that activity [5] Outside of the algorithm used, we do not have any direct influence on the TRU Score
Additionally, we are not suggesting that the TRU Score is the absolute measurement of trust or reputation of a person. Instead, it is an additional data point that you can take into consideration when deciding if you want to work with someone. Or, if they want to work with you [both parties have their own TRU Score].
At time of registration, all members start with a TRU Score of 400. Therefore, even the most trustworthy/reputable person on earth will almost certainly have a lower score than you, if you have been on the platform for some time.
I welcome all suggestions on how you think we could be more transparent in determining the TRU Score. We all benefit if it were easier to make better decisions about who we choose to work with.
To use tech as an example, in the limit, regardless of how meritocratic we claim we are as an industry, my experience has been that folks hiring technical teams are more receptive to inquiries from someone with an Ivy League education in CS than they are from someone self-taught without a degree or who has a degree in something unrelated. I assume that reaching out to several hiring managers and getting zero response would hurt your TRU score, regardless of the quality of your messages. Meanwhile a traditional candidate with a higher response rate wouldn't see their score fall quite as much, even if they couldn't pass a simple fizzbuzz technical screen.
Having to work harder than a traditional candidate to get a response is expected in this scenario, but it'd be a huge bummer if the platform itself acted as a gatekeeper in this way.
I think you overestimate the willingness of people to participate in such a system.
And if you succeed in manipulating enough users into joining, would your conscience make you miserable?
To anyone who is interested in comparing the differences, you can find 100's of links from your favorite search engine.
If we step back a moment and look at this objectively, we are only focused on matching buyers and sellers. It's a marketplace for people who sell/offer services and people who buy/need services. For a marketplace to function, there needs to be access to information so that both parties [buyers and sellers] are on an equal footing. Else, one party would have an advantage over the other.
Everything we are doing is focused on making the buyer/seller interaction easier and more efficient. It seems the TRU Score is a concern evident in many of the comments. Yet, how is this different [or worse] than star ratings on Yelp, Amazon or any other rating service. Other than the initial calculations that comprise the score, all changes in the scores are based on the community of members.
I believe many members of SELLFF can obtain significant value if all they do is post "services offered" and "services needed." The application will "match" the parties so they can interact and decide if working together makes sense.
Is SELLFF different? Yes, in some ways [Ex. trading shares of people]. But isn't that part of the opportunity when creating something new? Why do the same thing as everyone else is doing? Do you really feel fulfilled when you follow or like someone? Does the opportunity to "invest" in someone appeal to you? Do you see any advantage?
Is SELLFF better than existing solutions? Maybe? Can SELLFF to iterate to meet the needs of buyers and sellers. For sure! Is SELLFF a social credit system. No, not even close.
And what's happening with Yelp and Amazon star ratings? There's abusive corruption within the community in these systems with the score-holders and/or score-takers gaming the system. Requests for 5 stars on packaging involving coupons that are practically bribery, enough corruption on Yelp to precipitate an entire South Park episode about it and many investigations, to the point people don't trust it anymore and comments on here talk about mentally adjusting google scores to equivalents that roughly fit to pre-corruption yelp scores. Government leaders of China and especially the citizens who report on each other or cooperate together in a high-visibility manner to gain status in the system are community members.
It's worse because it will affect the livelihoods of private citizens who cannot rebrand or close their store/seller account and start again somewhere else because web trackers will remember who they are by their face, ip, etc, and a history that starts mid-career might look too funny if this catches on. Please be part of the solution and take us a step away from an omni-corporate panopticon rather than closer. If a system like this is necessary for you to compete with linkedin because your potential corporate clients are requesting or suggesting it (because it adds value to them, extracted from workers who now have a direct, public, "employability credit score" to maintain), I urge you to reconsider if the field you're in is even truly ethical enough to be worth doing or if you have a personal, ethical imperative to get out, while you still can. God willing, you can remove the feature and create a decent platform that succeeds on merits without playing a handin further debasing the value of human labour in favour of our corporate masters (who already have so very much), for a new generation.
This part alone makes me not interested in this platform. As a software engineer, I do not want to be forced into some social dance on a networking site just to make me eligible for jobs, but it seems like these days that's what everyone expects you to do. We can't all be professional social media users and be good at our jobs too.
- When anyone BUYS shares in your profile, the price will increase by 0.01 - When anyone SELLS shares in your profile, the price will decrease by 0.01
Each trade is fixed at 100 shares
There are a few limits we placed for the launch: [1] A maximum of 1,000 shares in another member per day - So, if you wanted to BUY 5,000 shares, it would need to be spread across 5 different days - The same logic applies if want to SELL shares
[2] A maximum of 100,000 shares total in another member
At launch, all trades are 100% liquid and you are free to BUY/SELL as many shares within the limits indicated. Each trade moves the price up/down 0.01. I do not consider that to be necessarily worthless however.
The share price and trades reflect actual member activity and sentiment. It's an indication of interest, that was not available before. Why would you buy shares of another members profile? Why would they buy shares of your profile?
Until today, you could follow or like. Now, you have the option to invest. However, you are free to not invest any of your "trust tokens" [superficial points]. You could, if you like, only use SELLFF to perform discovery and direct communication of other members who may choose to participate in trades.
We thought the trade feature would be an interesting experiment, to see how people would react if they "could" invest in each other, just like stocks. This is a first version and we will need to see how things develop.
I appreciate you taking the time to comment. Is exactly the feedback I was hoping for as we work to build this marketplace solution.
There are a lot of services that you can pay to use. The problem with social networks (which this is) is that though you are willing to pay, others are not, and social networks are worthless without the 'network' part.
OK. Either this is a missed opportunity to satisfy a market need, or there is no market for that kind of social network.
Also, at this time, the service is zero cost. We are launching so that people might interact with the service and provide the type of feedback you are giving us. Any startup is, in many ways, a giant experiment.
We are looking at many different revenue models. However, we will not go with the traditional model we see today, where "we" are the product. We feel just as strongly about that as you do.
We are confident that better revenue models exist, that can support our service, without spying on our members, selling out their personal information or placing arbitrary monthly fees that are inconsistent with the value provided.
Not to "hate" on LinkedIn, but we are interested to explore other ways to build a marketplace that makes it easy for buyers and sellers to interact.
Example: If a high-reputation person vouches for someone, does it have more meaning compared to the endorsement from a person with no/low reputation?
Which is why the TRU Score is more than just the share price and your investments. It also includes other platform activities [Ex. member reviews, review scores, number of investors, etc.]. Not claiming we have solved this problem. But, we think it is a step in the right direction.
If you sell services and/or need to find a service provider, you need some method to perform [1] discovery, [2] evaluation, and [3] decision.
This is what we tried to build, in a manner which we hope promotes trust and good behavior. That said, as the platform develops, we will no doubt need to make adjustments.
But the focus will remain on maintaining an efficient marketplace for buyers and sellers to interact and transact.
A group of people that might deliberately attempt to manipulate the system would be relatively easy to identify. Obviously, that would not be acceptable behavior.
There are many ways to generate a score for a person. Our method involves the trading of of virtual shares, which are bought/sold just like stocks. Share price changes are reflected in that persons TRU Score. The investments you make in others is reflected in your TRU Score.
Perhaps the TRU Score is not the "perfect" solution, but I think it's far better than a simple star rating. How many times on HN do we see posts about people "buying" ratings or followers. As a result, people lose trust in the value of the rating system. So, we have created an alternative that we think people can trust.
A future release has planned to use Stripe Identity. Whereby, you will have confidence in the profile you are viewing and can make an informed buying decision. As designed, manipulation of the TRU Score [when combined with Identity], will be difficult.
The idea is interesting, and it's good that people experiment with such ideas, but I'm skeptical that this scoring concept isn't going to make people miserable and possibly going to be gamed easily.
A better way to compete with LinkedIn would be to simply get rid of the social media feed. I'd find LinkedIn much more pleasant if it wasn't full of trite platitudes, cringey corporate signaling, political grandstanding, dudebro philosophy around productivity, and so forth.
SELLFF offers multiple ways to support other members. You can write a review and go into details of your connection with another member. Buying shares of another member is an additional, low-friction way to show support. It's fast, easy and provides the added benefit that your investment might increase in value. Any investments you make are an input to your TRU Score. So, if you make good investments in other members your TRU Score will increase...even if your profile shares are not being traded.
this is like 99designs or toptal or any marketplace for providers. not like linkedin. ad-free is a lie as the entire platform is advertising. (syndicated ad-free more like it.)
because the platform depends on the TRU score, this form the social network between providers, and customers I suppose. This in and of itself is a privacy violation. The major problem with linkedin (from privacy perspective) is the information they have on you, which they monetise. They are the privacy problem, not syndicated ads, and you are not fixing that.
outside of the bubble, no one cares about the privacy angle, not in a real way. (they complain, a lot, but have no problem continuing to use privacy invasive services.) your pronouncement of being privacy focused, while not actually being so, is pretty bad.
i think you may have something here, you just need to pivot your messaging.
FWIW I think the TRU score is a) not innovative, and b) should be abandoned in favor of familiar 5 star scale. (like amazon or ebay: #stars plus #ratings)
If you really want to be "trustworthy", you will publish statistical data on ratings. Of course, everyone will have >4 star rating, so you can't do that. I don't think that's a hindrance to marketing "trustworthiness" though, even if it's baloney.
Where does the money come from?
As mentioned earlier, the focus is making it easier for buyers and sellers to interact, while maintaining privacy. I remain convinced that there are effective ways to monetize the service without going the traditional advertising route that is so common today.
For sure, billion dollar businesses have been build on the current model. My hope is that we can advance to a new model, where we do not sacrifice personal privacy for the sake of accessing a useful service. To be determined if we can be part of that new solution.
Which is the opposite model of linkedin. Sellers are free.. buyers pay.. plus upselling to both groups as premium offerings
We are adamant about exploring and discovering new models which do not involve traditional advertising or selling/sharing of member data.
We are also realistic and realize there are expenses to providing this solution. So, monetization is a requirement to keep the doors open.
A question for you, assuming this service becomes successful. [1] What would be a reasonable price to pay for promoting your services and being able to easily connect with trustworthy professionals?
- Is $1.00 per year fair? - Is $10.00 per month reasonable? - Is a % of revenue you generate a better model?
It doesn't work for all things but this is a perfect use case, in spirit of course. You always have to expect there to be two demographics, big tech and small tech.
Federated linkedin would allow for Mastodon-like instances for people who don't want to host their own, and selfhosted instances for more technical people. While also allowing for Linkedin-style endorsements (not sure what they're called in English) over federation.
So user@instance endorses user2@instance2 in skill:python for example. My hope would be to use ActivityPub to do that part.
AP federation already works really well for social media imo. Linkedin is essentially social media with skill endorsements.
Congrats! Launching a product is super hard, this is an impressive accomplishment. I'd imagine you would put this site on your profiles. :D
Much respect and love for: Bruno, Ivona and Kresho. They are an excellent representation of how the SELLFF platform can work. If you are looking for talented programmers, I can definitely recommend them.
The platform is zero-cost, ad-free and includes direct messages. I hope the UI is more easy to navigate and understand, compared to LinkedIn.
The TRU Score, while somewhat controversial, is more powerful than a star-rating system. Also, it works works for you as a buyer or seller.
Monetization is planned in a future release and includes [1] selling blocks of time to people who want to consult with you, and [2] promotions, where you [as a seller] pays the buyer for considering your services.
We believe it's a great time to build alternatives to the major networks that exist today. It should be easier for people to promote and sell their services. It should be easier for people to find trustworthy providers. And it should be easier to protect your personal privacy.
Isn't this just ads?
We envision a model whereby you select which promotions to participate in, based on your needs/interest "and" how much you will receive in compensation.
From the seller standpoint, we believe the costs to reach a consumer will be similar. Yet, the consumers they do reach will have a genuine interest in the offering. Thus the promotion has the potential to offer a better response. To be clear, the seller is able to select which members qualify for the promotion [Ex. based on location, occupation, TRU Score, etc].
From the buyer standpoint, we view this an an improvement over the current model. There is no privacy violation or personal data sharing with strangers. You have the freedom and choice of which promotions to participate in. Assuming it works as planned, it would allow you to make a more informed buying decision.
What does this actually mean? Would you be selling my time to someone else?
Do you have an import LinkedIn profile feature to reduce friction of adoption?
Also why doesn't your sign up support Google auth or any other identity providers? Another friction reducer opportunity right there.
So, if for example you sell accounting services and I am looking for an accountant, I will pay you $xx amount of money to have an initial consultation.
You may prices your services high or low, depending on supply demand. But, for me as a buyer, it's a transparent low-risk way for me to meet/evaluate a professional that I am considering to hire.
The platform would take a % of the consult fee paid, which would take place off-platform [Ex. Stripe].
If you really want to sell me on your privacy stance, you'll convince me (with something structurally binding) that once successful you're not going to sell out and have my data subject to new rules I didn't sign up for.
I this point I've been trained not to trust any company that's not charging me.
Until we can get to the next step, we provide this: [1] https://sellff.com/terms [2] https://sellff.com/privacy
Also, my assurance that our intentions are good and that we will try very hard not to screw things up. Additionally, would welcome any suggestions you have for how we could meet this higher standard of trust you are looking for. Thx.
People are currently replacing the harder questions like "can I trust this person to do what he says he can" with simple or shallow ones based on status and image.
Good luck with this!
I'm not sure about that. I think any system that potentially brings value will be gamed quickly.
A good read about it is: https://apenwarr.ca/log/20201227 (if you're short on time, you can skip to "Chicken-egg problems" section)
"The defining characteristic of a chicken-egg technology or product is that it's not useful to you unless other people use it. Since adopting new technology isn't free (in dollars, or time, or both), people aren't likely to adopt it unless they can see some value, but until they do, the value isn't there, so they don't."
I like the vector. Looking forward to the progress. I think your solution space will give you other opportunities down the road even if sellff struggles.
Thanks to HN "Who wants to be hired" I was able to connect with 3x amazing devs in Croatia who built the solution. I have learned so much from HN over the last couple of years. Lots of value in this community and grateful to be a small part of it.
Please give us another chance later today or tomorrow as we work to restore the services. Thank you for your patience.
No. Stop. Just stop. Holy crap No, No, No, No, No.
The SELLFF TRU Score is based on your on-platform activities and is determined only by members of the SELLFF community.
Thanks, but no thanks
Who pays for it, if not me?
The VC market is super hot right now - VC firms are being flooded with cash, and they need to deploy it. Companies are raising massive amounts of money at unprecedented valuations. A large chunk of that money is going to hire developers. The recruiting industry is seeing a huge surge in hiring in the past couple of months (source: I run a technical recruiting company (1)).
Because demand and cash available to hire developers has increased significantly in the past few months, but the supply is basically fixed, companies are offering higher salaries to attract talent. They have the cash for it.
Keep in mind that new money raised from investors will raise the value of your stock options, but rarely translates to salary increases for existing employees.
What a time to be a software engineer.
So they need somewhere else to put it.
Maybe it is also driven by perception of overvaluation among publicly traded equities?
i don't think it will be stable long term, but it's been a slow boiling of us largely oblivious amphibians. the froth of unrest we've seen here and there in the last decade is pockets of us frogs realizing something is wrong, but we haven't reached that 25% awareness/action threshold to unlodge us toward a new equilibrium.
But the way they structure the RSUs makes that way harder, it kinda feels like I might as well wait for IPO and buy shares then.
Lack of job security is big too, but I guess that's to be expected at any startup.
I'm not trying to troll or be obnoxious, I'm curious how people think about this. Does tokenism really make people feel included, or does it just give white people something to be moral and self-deprecatingly righteous about?
I'm Mexican and when americans do the 'latinx' thing is makes me want to vomit, but I'm a mennonite so I guess I'm not a 'normal' Mexican, I'm not the one who they're trying to include. This is so interesting to me
It definitely would, but for different reasons. Black people seeing only white people would assume the platform will be racist, white people seeing only black people would assume that the platform is inferior.
Mind you I'm also not 'normal' in terms of faith let alone ethnic demography where I live, plus I'm what they call "neurodivergent". I've grown up being very, very accustomed to being out of place one way or another. Maybe it would bother White people who are very used to being in the majority where they live and work, and can't cope with a stronger subliminal desire for ingroup dominanance. Dominance is comfortable for the dominator, and we have a nasty habit of liking comfort, so, to get a little religious, we do have to resist the flesh and aim for higher values found in sacrificial love.
I'm genuinely curious what it's like for you being Mennonite in Mexico. How does it affect your life?