Show HN: TryCatch – Get offers only with your desired salary | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: TryCatch – Get offers only with your desired salary

trycatch.cc

124 pointsasadlionpk109 comments

This is a great idea, but there needs to be some substantial recruiter vetting in the background somewhere. Here in the UK the bad tech recruiters are renowned for advertising jobs that don't exist in order to get candidates to hand over their details, at which point the job suddenly vanishes but the recruiter spams you for the rest of your life with appallingly unsuitable roles.

For a system like this to work there needs to a way to verify that the recruiter is trying to fill a real job that actually pays what they say it pays. That bit will be exceptionally difficult. If trycatch can solve it though, then I hope they take over the entire job market. 100% of it.

User ratings can help too.

^Yes that's exactly what we are planning to do to make sure that developers only get genuine offers.

Recruiters do that to companies too. They have fake highly qualified candidates who disappear once you agree to engage. As such, most of "engineer X from Y is interested in your job" is irrelevant spam.

Could this be solved by only uploading resumes with unique/temporary email addresses that can be deleted if you get recruiter spam?

For now, we are rating employers based on candidates feedback but the idea of using unique/temp email address is really interesting!

I don't live in London since more than 4 years ago and still get mails from recruiters. Some of them, that I never contacted myself before.

At the end I decided to always answer asking me to remove me from their database and, if they don't answer me, I flag them as Spam.

Why is current salary relevant? In most cases, revealing your current salary will be used against you by the new employer, as it allows them to lower their offer if they had planned on offering much more.

One of the reasons is that we are using the delta (demand minus current salary) in ranking the profiles in our lists.

I feel I'm good enough at doing that myself, to where disclosing my current salary doesn't seem to have a benefit for me.

I fail to see how this benefits me as an job seeker.

It doesn't matter how valuable my current employer thinks I am. All that matters is how valuable my next employer thinks I am.

It is also inherently false to assume that two identical positions at two different companies are worth the same to each company. A software developer working at a company which sells software and a developer working at a company where they develop a product for an insurance company that enhances actuarial analysis are very, very different in terms of how much value the developer creates for the company - and how much value they create is the only legitimate criteria to test compensation against.

It also does benefit the employer. Your next employer will use your last salary in calculating your value.

The collection of this data mainly benefits employers.

As a hiring manager here's my concerns/issues with the current process of hiring/using a recruiter

- recruiters don't screen well enough technically or personality wise

- recruiters tend to lie about everything (candidate availability, salary requirements, etc)

- recruiters are hellaciously expensive

- you still have to do the full process for everyone that needs to be interviewed (regardless of source. Skipping steps has always resulted in a bad hire in my experience)

- resumes/profiles suck for determining coding ability. Sparsely filled github accounts and pet projects are far better indicators

As a person being hired here's my issues:

- recruiters lie (about opportunities, salary, etc). Notice a trend here?

- companies are cagey about salary. I'd rather know up front rather than waste everyone's time.

- lack of exposure to the team during the hiring process. Since I'll be spending more time with them than my family I want them to be people I like rather than neckbeards that aren't personable.

- recruiters don't screen well enough technically or personality wise - resumes/profiles suck for determining coding ability. Sparsely filled github accounts and pet projects are far better indicators

We are the same team behind https://remoteinterview.io. We encourage employers to screen on the basis of technical skills instead of resumes.

- recruiters tend to lie about everything (candidate availability, salary requirements, etc)

We are planning to implement rating system for employers by candidates.

- companies are cagey about salary. I'd rather know up front rather than waste everyone's time.

That's what TryCatch.cc is trying to solve.

- lack of exposure to the team during the hiring process. Since I'll be spending more time with them than my family I want them to be people I like rather than neckbeards that aren't personable.

Very valid point. It should be solved.

That Remote Interview looks absolutely brilliant. I firmly believe that the future lies entirely with remote workers and it's simply a matter of the right tools being available. Please keep doing what you're doing!

Spin this around so a company can test the water with a salary range and desired qualifications and get a percent of candidate pool coverage... Basically what fraction of an anonymous but hopefully representative group of programmer would consider this salary (a) acceptable and (b) below or above current salary.

Bonus point, filter by geography.

Thanks for the suggestion. We are trying different ways to generate anonymous list for employers.

This would be huge. Having both used recruiters to find work and to find candidates, from the employer side it's one thing for a recruiter to say "You need to raise your salary range by $20k to attract what you're looking for" - after all they get paid a percentage of base salary.

It'd be something else entirely we had a tool where increasing base salary by $20k showed us that it doubled the number of interested candidates within a given skill set.

I have some wiggle room on my dev jobs so I'm offering $X-$X+20 for someone with $Y-$Y+5 yrs of experience. I'm perfectly open to an increase and I work with a recruiter whom I trust, so I usually ask him if I'm low or high and he's honest with me. So much of success in things coming from not working with scumbags.

Are you hiring any .NET folks? :)

Sorry, php and golang developers and sysadmin types. But I hired two guys who were .net guys who were tired of it, they say that the grass is greener, sky bluer, and their wives and girlfriends are more beautiful. ymmv.

Very interesting. I agree this can be huge help. And we are working on delivering a similar experience too.

Better bonus point, allow providing 2 different salaries based on whether 100% remote work is permitted. If I have to move to an urban center where the cost of living is 3x where I live now, I need more money than if I'm going to stay where I am and work remotely. Plus, companies stupid enough to limit themselves to a geographically constrained talent pool have to be a lot more impressive to interest me.

I'd like to strengthen the case for this suggestion. At this point in my career I put an extremely high premium on being able to work remote. I wouldn't even be tempted to relocate again except for salaries that completely price me out of the market.

I'd be willing to take a non-trivial pay cut off my most recent salary for a fully remote position (possibly even a larger one for the right company/position), but would require an equally significant raise (plus relocation expenses) to consider relocating anywhere.

I'm wary of this without knowing exactly how your profile would be anonymized. I work in a very small niche and even if the company names are hidden, just seeing a list of job titles, time frame, and my skill set would really narrow me down. If my location is listed, that absolutely pinpoints me, as I'm the only person in my niche, in my area.

I didn't sign up, so I don't know if is possible to see and edit your profile before it goes public or not. But giving me that level of control would resolve most of my concerns.

It's a very valid concern and thanks for pointing it out. We will let you edit your anonymous profile first. We should add this in FAQs.

UPDATE: FAQ updated.

For a lot of companies, "salary" is usually a mixture of base salary, bonus and stock options/RSUs.

I guess there are also various perks (public transport ticket, food, ...), but those mostly don't end up scoring that high on the 'money' scale.

Are there any plans to take these things into consideration?

That's a good question. We are currently considering salary only but in near future we will add job position too. For example, a candidate can say: "Contact me only if some company is willing to consider me for VP of Eng.".

You should consider total compensation and salary vs. just a salary. If you're looking at finance, people will have requirements for both a base salary and the total compensation. Looking at them in isolation doesn't work. Same thing if a large portion of your offer from say Google is in RSUs, that's not cash; but is essential for evaluating the economics of the offer.

You have a valid concern. We are starting with salary to simplify things because cash is what matters the most.

In my opinion, you should add total compensation right from the beginning. This is because (1) You would be capturing data from many people (hopefully) and it would be difficult to fix later, (2) The site will be less useful without for many people including me, and (3) Some people will invariably confuse and put total compensation anyways which will introduce unnecessary variability in your data.

On the other hand, adding total compensation from the beginning cannot be too complex.

Depends what goes into "total compensation".

Things like startup options are basically monopoly money. If the salary is $30,000 but they offer two ten-thousandths of a company which is currently worth nothing, but they plan for it to be worth five billion dollars in five years, is that a $230,000 salary?

Recruiters will post bullshit if there's no downside; to avoid this you need concrete measures that can't be manipulated and can be audited.

Total compensation need not be included as a single number, it may/should be separated into actual factual numbers like base salary, fair market value of stock options / RSUs at the time of grant, cash bonus, etc. probably with a statement that the candidate is willing to trade one component for another to find a suitable mix.

Startups and big companies follow different norms, I am unsure if the latter should be ignored.

Wouldn't that be "compensation"?

Yes, but variable comp is variable because it isn't guaranteed, so it shouldn't be lumped into salary discussions.

In finance, at least, it is common to get an offer with a salary of X and a first year guaranteed bonus of Y.

> public transport ticket, food

Don't care, don't care, don't care. Unless the IRS is taxing it, I don't care about it.

You don't, but others do. There are more people in this world than just you.

I think he means that they might as well be included in the salary, unless there's a tax or bulk buying discount.

I find that relying on my employer for everyday stuff isn't conducive to building future proof systems: am I alone in finding it hard to budget for expenses when my employer is providing a large chunk of my expenses?

Whenever possible, I prefer taking a cash equivalent and buying my own. Insurance, food, living quarters, public transportation..whatever.

Well employers get discounts for getting a large amount of these expensive. Food might not be true, but if an employer would give you the exact amount of money he pays for insurance, you would get an insurance a lot crappier, simply because the employer gets discounts.

I am currently paying insurance out of the pocket, it sucks. When I'll reach 30 (no more catastrophic plans), I'll definitely will find another employer with health insurance.

I care about these things specifically because the IRS doesn't tax it. I save about 6k per year because my startup feeds me 5 lunches/3 dinners per week and pays for my public transportation. That's probably ~8k pre-tax dollars.

Not to mention, I would work at SpaceX for 1/4 (or less) salary of what I would work at Google for.

That scenario is true for many. The core idea is somewhat like "what amount of salary will make you think of moving to a new job". Also the employer gets your details only when you approve them (one by one), so this might work in this scenario too.

That is one of the reasons Elon Musk is such a great businessman :)

You can put a price on perks. Food? Provide something that matches what an urban centre provides for free? €10 per day by 240 days ~= €2,500 extra post-tax income per year (which you can round up to €5k pre-tax). Companies don't like when you point out how little the perk is actually worth.

I understand that this is your MVP and you are simply gauging the developer interest at the moment, but I would love to see what you are pitching to the employers. No, this is not about me not trusting you, I am just curious why would the other side use this (or how you will convince them to use it). Since you are building a marketplace, I would like to see how you are attracting both ends of the transaction

Great question. The biggest value employers get is significantly higher response rate from developers. Compare it with linkedin inmails where most of the interview offers are considered spam because developers don't see the incremental monetary value in offers.

Well ofcourse there ARE benefits to them, but I would just like to see you present it to them as awesomely as you presented to us devs

Yes we are slowly inviting the 'other side'. We do want it to be awesome and create real value!

What's in it for the companies? I presume easier and better candidates to interview. Many companies have to wade through a sea of rubbish applicants, interview some and get no-where. If they can make it easier for the companies to get people, that's what's in it for them.

companies will be able to get better candidates (who aren't usually applying for jobs actively) if they are willing to pay. Just like a free market.

Unfortunately, it's likely that in many cases the anonymity won't be preserved simply due to the probability of multiple candidates having the exact same job experience.

Take the example profile (which doesn't appear to belong to an actual person). We can create a google search that is something like the following:

site:linkedin.com AND intitle:" | Linkedin" AND intext:"Data Engineer" AND intext:"Distributed Systems Engineer" AND intext:"Software Engineer in Azure"

And, if it belonged to an actual person, would likely show up in the results. If there are multiple candidates with these titles, you can add more conditions, such as the employers to narrow it down.

Yes you are right. For that reason we are planning to show anonymous profile to candidates and let him/her edit it.

UPDATE: FAQs updated.

Salary is the wrong metric!

For example, I don't want to see a job below 125K but a job is posted at 115K and they subsidize X where X is important to me personally....then that can change everything.

It's obviously a much tougher situation to define all those little things, perhaps they should be valuing the total compensation package and not salary?

There are jobs with certain benefits where either the same or less salary could still be compelling to someone.

Would you give up $10k a year in salary for a free parking space? What if that space's market value was $289 a month?

EG: I'm not sure what's getting subsidized here. If it's worth less than 7k is probably better to take the higher salary and pay for it yourself.

Fair point, my argument is that rather than saying salary is 100k, they should be saying total compensation is valued at 110k with 100k being salary, parking being valued at 7k and donations to the upper peninsula bird watching society covered by the company to the tune of 3k per year.

I don't trust anything that is Linkedin-based. I find their privacy policy impossible to understand, and I would just assume at some point my employer will know that I've signed up for this.

I understand, not everyone is a fan of LinkedIn. We will soon be adding email signup.

Please do. I'm not a LinkedIn user and I don't plan on changing that.

Thanks, I also refuse to use linkedin but would like to use this service. Also +1ing a geography filter request.

+1 for signing up without Linkedin, and adding geo support.

Like the concept, but have some reservations. What happens when recruiters start using it and spamming me regardless of whether they have something that pays the figure in question or not (one of those situations where the amount "magically" becomes 30% less than the recruiter said it was when you go to interview.) Like I said, I love the idea but I have doubts about how it will pan out when exposed to the seedy world of tech recruiters.

This happened to me. I said I'd only interview if the offer would be at least a certain amount. After going through the process, the offer was $15k lower than the recruiter had promised.

I think salary is a very important factor on choosing the employer. They need to be more open about it. In near future we may see that salary is a public information (not as much right now)

I've had this happen. When I got the offer from the CEO (small company) it was what I was currently making but with less job security. I stopped dealing with that recruiter immediately and ignore all correspondence from them (or anyone at their company).

I think what they hear is "I need my compensation to be X" instead of "I need my salary to be X". Big difference.

Well, many times as candidates, we're told to state our total compensation when asked about our salary.

That's surprising/confusing to me--I've actually never been asked that. This is in the US (east coast), so can't speak to other locales.

We have some measures to stop this. First, recruiter will have limited number of "pings" so he cannot start spamming.

Also, your identity is not revealed until you approve an employer.

And, when contacting you the recruiter is agreeing on the demanded salary atleast (see sample profile).

We hope these measures will reduce the spam in the network.

Maybe I should be able to leave feedback on a position or a recruiter saying that, even though the job listing said they offered X, I was only offered Y. Maybe it would show some basic info about you, so we can tell if you simply applied for a job out of your range, or if they tried to lowball you.

Liked the concept. It's like applying free market models for developers! But I'm curious about anonymity? How does it work?

Co-founder here. Thanks for the liking it. Our anonymizer is semi-automatic for now but listing for recruiters is automatic.

What does this mean?

This means that the process of removing identifying information is mostly automatic. But a person then reviews and removes anything identifiable and then the candidate himself approves the profile before we add it to our public list.

Heh, clever name (and reason for it).

> Why "TryCatch"?

> Because you are an _exception_

Ahhh I just got it. Cheers

Thanks! We love it when only devs can understand the hidden meaning :)

Great idea! I signed up, but I worry that there's no geographical adjustment for salaries. For instance, I make $200k and live in Cleveland. Even 20% more in NYC or SF is a very different lifestyle.

I agree that we will need to consider location and all the aspects related to it. We are already brainstorming on this.

Please don't forget the only location that is going to matter in 10 years: REMOTE!

Can't agree more. Remote is the future!

You should increase the salary on the sample to something more realistic. How about... makes $125 wants $150k?

Ok makes sense. Done :)

Developers only? Or are you just starting out with this role and plan to expand to others later?

Do employers sign up as "recruiters"? I would think not since the word "recruiter" has a very specific meaning.

This service helps employers save significant time on promising candidates that have wage expectations beyond an employer's budget. Worst case, employers can adjust both initial salary bands and corresponding expectations accordingly through the use of this service.

Noted. Thanks for the suggestion.

When I'm trying to sign up:

Error: failed to find request token in session at Strategy.OAuthStrategy.authenticate (/app/node_modules/passport-linkedin/node_modules/passport-oauth/lib/passport-oauth/strategies/oauth.js:124:54) at Strategy.authenticate (/app/node_modules/passport-linkedin/lib/passport-linkedin/strategy.js:118:40) at attempt (/app/node_modules/passport/lib/middleware/authenticate.js:337:16) at authenticate (/app/node_modules/passport/lib/middleware/authenticate.js:338:7) at /app/linkedin.js:84:15 at callbacks (/app/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:164:37) at param (/app/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:138:11) at pass (/app/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:145:5) at nextRoute (/app/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:100:7) at callbacks (/app/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:167:11)

hmmmm weird. Can you give it another try. I just tried and it works. Will check logs after traffic reduces :)

Tried again, works now :)

Btw, Wouldn't a good anti-recruiter mechanism be that you only allow employer accounts when you verify that the user represents an actual company etc?

We plan on only giving access to accounts with @company.com emails (where company will be researched ideally by our staff to be a legit tech company). Can you think of any other mechanisms we should have in place?

How is this different from hired.com except that you reveal your current salary?

Hired.com is an auction site for limited time. It works when you are desperately in need of job switch. TryCatch.cc is not bound by time and our target developers are not actively looking for job switch but may change their mind for higher pay.

That seems more desirable. I tried hired.com on a whim but most of the jobs were the kind I would only accept if I were desperate. Then again, I have a lot of flexibility in my current role and would only leave for a job that fits very specific criteria, so maybe it just wasn't for me.

I once had an internship in college where I worked with Sitecore (a .net cms). When I was applying for jobs out of college, I mentioned it in my resume when I posted it to Monster.com.

It has been many years since I took that resume down, and that technology has been off my resume just as long. However, I still get recruiter spam asking if I’m interested in a 6-month contract-to-hire position on the wrong coast working with Sitecore.

This tool sounds like it fits a pretty good passive use case, but I just thought I should point out why I, particularly, love the limited-time model of Hired.com. It lets me avoid being considered “on the market” for all eternity.

People are creating job sites and announcing them here almost every day. Is this working? Isn't there a chicken-and-egg problem in there?

If it works, someone please tell me what is the magic strategy to get public for a general (no devs, programmers or IT in any form) job postings site that is simple, easy and works. Brazil is in need of it.

I'm open for new ways to find jobs but sadly my expectations aren't that high. I still signed up.

Good Luck! :)

Looks like an automated version of White Truffle. That said, looks straightforward and has an interesting metric.

Nice work.

Nice tagline. OAuth is blocked here. Will try from home.

> Why "TryCatch"?

> Because you are an _exception_

Thanks. I wonder why would they block OAuth ?

How does it choose what jobs I am "eligble" for? In the past 5 years I've done design, user experience, customer support, qa, devops, and programming.

Most recruiters want someone who has done one and only one thing for the entirety of their career, regardless of whether that's a sound strategy or not- do you rank higher for employees who have done the same thing for years or is it strictly a position-avialable:pay-requested rank?

This is purely upto the employer watching your profile. We don't use your consistency in our ranking.

If the employer feels like contacting you. You will get contacted along with complete details about the job position.

"firebase.js:18 FIREBASE WARNING: Specified Firebase has reached its Peak Connections limit. If you are the Firebase owner, consider upgrading. (https://remoteinterview2.firebaseio.com)"

Also, will there be a European version of this? My salary in Dollars has gotten quite low ( eur vs dollar ).

Co-Founder here. We got HN hug! And firebase is having trouble changing our plan. We will be contacting back everyone who is trying to login :)

Edit: We are back up!

Sorry, just USD for now. Will add more regions soon.

These job sites pop up frequently (each with a small twist) and they get developers to hand over their emails. But I'm not sure how well they succeed in getting good companies to pay for their service afterwards. It's an area I'm interested in learning more about.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com