Who is your current customer base? Why don't you go after more of them?
147 karma · joined September 24, 2018
Has a candidate presented by a recruiter never been a dud? Most recruiters I have worked with aren't able to assess my experience anyways.
It is absolutely possible that this can be gamed but the game won't last long. And it's possible that some level of vetting will need to be built anyway. We'll see.
> As a hiring manager,you would literally be taking value away from me since I would be reaching a smaller pool of candidates
No one is saying you're forced to use this as your only solution. Obviously you won't.
The chicken and egg is real. My plan to counter that is to only focus on the dev side first and find leads for them by brute force, i.e., initially I don't expect any employers to go to the platform.
I want to keep the verification light by design. Most employers aren't going to trust a platform's verification anyways. All these guarantees of top 2% devs are bullshit. I believe that basic resume review and occasionally asking an extra question or two takes care of the 80%. I think that's not a bad place to be since no platform is going to be perfect. My goal with verification is to make sure the platform isn't infiltrated by early career or devs who wouldn't pass the muster of most recruiter resume reviews.
You're exactly right. I want to build the whitepages of experienced devs. I'm not under any delusion that employers will just flock to this. I think if it at all works, much of the finding will have to be done on behalf of the employer, i.e., they tell what they want and we go scour the directory and send them leads.
I'd love to get your thoughts on the above.
meaning you think a new platform will have a hard time finding traction right now because there's an oversuppply of devs?
I can fully relate to this. For this reason, I generally prefer to work with just one "primary" client at a time.
Doing any moonlighting alongside a job though is playing on hard mode.
With regards to finding a full time job, how do you go about it (when you do)? Just hit up your network?
Not sure I understood this. Meaning someone who can find contract work for you? Or find you a dev?
But the part I'm not understanding is that you seem imply that recruiters are better at selection/vetting than a directory or platform that's run by experienced engineers who are selecting other experienced engineers.
I also don't think this is an either/or. Most managers only care about quality candidates coming through the door. So there can be multiple solutions. This isn't a winner take all market by any means.
It's a crowded field so getting noticed will be a challenge.
I think you're way overqualified for most platforms/directories. It makes sense that you're represented by 10x. But between where you are and the early career dev, there are tens of thousands of devs who have good bit of experience and places they've worked at and yet have a hard time finding good work and relevant roles.
It's a myth that every experienced person has a strong network and lands their next gig/job through it. I'd say that only applies to 20% of devs. Most are still found by recruiters or apply cold.
I talked about the vetting part here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38997274
It's not going to be foolproof. Just because someone has good experience in their background doesn't mean they're good. But neither are interviews foolproof. They can be gamed.
I wouldn't need to prove to companies that the vetting is valid. They can see the results themselves. The platform would die if the bar isn't maintained.
LinkedIn _is_ a free for all. This would also be anon by default and double opt-in for devs.
Why do you not see it not working?
1. anon by default 2. double opt in. Your details won't be available to anyone that you haven't given access to.
what's so hard about your current experience? what will prevent you from listing yourself on a directory like I proposed?
I look at income and spend post-facto by once-a-month pulling in statements from my bank, card, and any other spend accounts (like venmo). I wrote a simple app to analyze this on a month-to-month basis.
But I'm trying to understand - why does organizing within folders or tagging with labels not work for you currently?
There are of course bad and average eng managers who have skills that are subpar. Let's keep them out of this discussion - they should be fired.
But the majority of eng managers who have the chops probably can't be in the weeds (even if they'd like to) because their plate is full of other nonsensical shit. Meetings, reviews, more meetings, planning, more meetings, and so on that effectively fills up the productive and creative part of the brain and day. At the end you're left with very little brain space to dig into, understand, and guide complex technical decisions.
No one needs to cry a tear for them or empathize but I suspect that's the reality.
You were paid a salary for your services while you were employed. You didn't give more, they didn't pay less. Now you're not - that's the end of the contract.
Yes, it's a nice thing some companies do when they lay people off but that can't be an expectation.