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Be honest. We're talking about a place that can't judge you in an interview. If you had the chance to work for 20% more being someone who mattered (since they

Be honest. We're talking about a place that can't judge you in an interview. If you had the chance to work for 20% more being someone who mattered (since they can't shop around), but they had no way to differentiate you from people worth less than 15 dollars an hour (non-coders pretending to be coders), you wouldn't accept an 8-hour "interview" doing something small but useful for them for 300 dollars? The up-shot is you would start working the next day at your 'monopoly rate', versus going through rounds and rounds of interviews at all sorts of other companies. Those other companies have tech ways of giving you interesting problems and being competitive. These guys just have money to throw at you. (But no way to differentiate you from non-coders). I guess I'm not thinking about an all-tech shop (like a web startup) so much as a business that needs a specialized dev and has no one technical enough to judge them on board.

anthonyb 14y ago
Points to consider: ★ The "work for less" argument sounds like a weasel game. If you're playing weasel games before I've even started working for you, what are the odds that you'll continue playing games? Pretty high, I'd say. ★ $100/hour for an SAP consultant or a Hadoop expert? Give me a break - that's the rate for a reasonable dev who can build a system themselves. ★ There's usually not a lot of opportunity cost for decent developers when interviewing, since they'll already be employed or doing lots of contract work (and turning more away). A couple of phone calls or emails, or an application or two is usually all it takes. So... remind me why I should come work for your hypothetical company again?
anamax 14y ago
> Be honest. We're talking about a place that can't judge you in an interview. Be real. That place is competing for employees with folks who aren't playing games. "Come work for us, we're clueless" isn't a selling point. > The up-shot is you would start working the next day at your 'monopoly rate', versus going through rounds and rounds of interviews at all sorts of other companies. Why do you think that those are the only alternatives?
rralian 14y ago
Big generalization here, but if you only need one specialized dev and have nobody on board who can judge them, then you probably don't need the best dev possible anyway. I'm imagining a non-tech company that just wants a functional website. If you're not looking for the best possible person, and just want to make sure you're not wasting money on some schmo, then this approach is probably fine. The responses you're getting are from the point of view of a tech-based company. Because your approach has no advantage for the top-notch dev, who at the moment is in a white-hot market and able to write their own ticket at a company that IS able to judge their ability and isn't going to try to get some cheap work out of them.

anthonyb 14y ago

Points to consider: ★ The "work for less" argument sounds like a weasel game. If you're playing weasel games before I've even started working for you, what are the odds that you'll continue playing games? Pretty high, I'd say. ★ $100/hour for an SAP consultant or a Hadoop expert? Give me a break - that's the rate for a reasonable dev who can build a system themselves. ★ There's usually not a lot of opportunity cost for decent developers when interviewing, since they'll already be employed or doing lots of contract work (and turning more away). A couple of phone calls or emails, or an application or two is usually all it takes. So... remind me why I should come work for your hypothetical company again?

anamax 14y ago

> Be honest. We're talking about a place that can't judge you in an interview. Be real. That place is competing for employees with folks who aren't playing games. "Come work for us, we're clueless" isn't a selling point. > The up-shot is you would start working the next day at your 'monopoly rate', versus going through rounds and rounds of interviews at all sorts of other companies. Why do you think that those are the only alternatives?

rralian 14y ago

Big generalization here, but if you only need one specialized dev and have nobody on board who can judge them, then you probably don't need the best dev possible anyway. I'm imagining a non-tech company that just wants a functional website. If you're not looking for the best possible person, and just want to make sure you're not wasting money on some schmo, then this approach is probably fine. The responses you're getting are from the point of view of a tech-based company. Because your approach has no advantage for the top-notch dev, who at the moment is in a white-hot market and able to write their own ticket at a company that IS able to judge their ability and isn't going to try to get some cheap work out of them.