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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this kind of what an Agent does in the world of Hollywood actors? I would actually love to have some person that I paid who was constantly out there scouting for actual roles that look lucrative and attainable, help with the rote filling-out of forms, help with company research and interview coaching, helping to grease wheels internally (if possible), and importantly, helping with compensation negotiation which I've always been bad at. Traditional recruiters really don't do much of this at all, and generally act in the best interest of the employer rather than the candidate. We should have agents who could work for us and had our own best interests in mind, for a change.

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> Isn't this kind of what an Agent does in the world of Hollywood actors

I was thinking this too recently. But the entertainment is a little bit different. Jobs are shorter (even TV shows take only a few months) and talent agents get 10 % of all your work - but would you pay your IT agent for 2-3 years (I'm guessing the average length of a programmer's tenure at a single company) 10 % even when he literally does nothing most of the time?

Yeah but we (developers, collectively) are a bunch of cheap asses that will spend hours automating something that was only going to take 20 minutes anyway. That's our whole reason for being. So while the agent model could work well, it'll always be a niche product, like selling an IDE or better debugger.

You can work with third party recruiters. They are incentivized to find you a good job as their payout is coupled to your salary and you staying there for at least a given time.

Yea, but most of them scale too much and have 1,000 clients looking for 1,000 jobs. That's not enough focus for me to pay for. I wouldn't pay $10K or even $1K for that level of service.

Ideally, my "agent" would have max 2-3 other candidates, and offer a totally white glove service: They know my comp preferences, my location (or remote) preference, my ideal company size, industry, desired job level. They would know my schedule and go out and do all the searching and filtering, the application legwork, and basically only get back to me when the interview is scheduled and I need to show up. Then, afterward, they would take care of all the salary negotiation/maximization and let me know the offer and starting date. I'd probably be willing to pay 5-15% of my first year's salary for that level of service.

Don't quote me on that, but as a rough approximation, I feel like the toil of job hunting is so extreme that I'd be willing to part with a significant chunk of change for someone who could actually reduce that toil and deliver a real job offer or two.

I know of precisely one company that does this: 10X Management. It's similar to the top Hollywood agencies like CAA in that it's extremely hard to get them to represent you.

I'm not sure why there aren't any "free agents" running around Silicon Valley like they do in Hollywood. If I had to guess, it's probably because the same skills you need to do that job in Silicon Valley pay more in other sectors, like Hollywood.

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