7 ms·

Top Coders Can Now Get Agents

156 points by rafaelc 14y ago

atomical 14y ago
They are also called recruiters. Nothing new here.
- chadgeidel 14y ago
  I've never met a recruiter that works in my interest. Maybe I haven't met enough recruiters?
  - altay 14y ago
    Well, you haven't met us yet. ;)
  - gm 14y ago
    The recruiter does not work for the talent, the recruiter works for the company.
    - stmfreak 14y ago
      No, recruiters work for the commission. Talent dislikes them, and Hiring managers dislike them. Except the good ones. But those are rare.
- malandrew 14y ago
  There is a big difference between a talent agent and a recruiter. A recruiter ultimately works for the company needing talent and has the needs of their client companies. An agent works for the talent and will scout out the most promising opportunities (pay well, interesting work, work that leads to greater opportunity).
- jdoliner 14y ago
  I wouldn't say it's new persay but I don't think they're quite recruiters. I generally think of recruiters as being paid by a company to find employees rather than the payed by an employee to find companies. Both agents and employees act as the middle man for the same transaction but they represent different people's interests. It's new in that this it's just now becoming the case that programming talent is valuable enough that 15% of it can actually buy a full time employee to represent the employees interests.
  - greenyoda 14y ago
    "... programming talent is valuable enough that 15% of it can actually buy a full time employee to represent the employees interests." I doubt that finding jobs for a developer requires anything close to a full time employee. If it were, freelancing and consulting (without an agent) would not be viable ways of making a living (you'd spend 100% of your time finding work and 0% working). I'd guess that each agent represents several developers and a large fraction of that 15% fee is pocketed by the agency as profit.
  - pacaro 14y ago
    The danger here is that their role can become muddled, this is a concern in every industry that has an agent model, in whose interest is the agent working? Good agents work for the talent, bad agents just try and get as much out of each deal as possible, word gets around... In other news, I think that you mean per se
- suyash 14y ago
  Recruiters trying to hide behind the name 'Agents'. They don't add any value instead headache for developers. I would recommend staying away as far as possible from these so called 'agents' who just want your 15%.
  - ericb 14y ago
    If they can provide steady dealflow, 15% is fine by me...
  - gm 14y ago
    I see it this way: The agent's more than earned his 15% if he gets me a higher paying gig than I could get myself (higher than 15% increase, that is). The benefit I get from not dealing with the stuff they claim to take care of is more than worth it. Unless you love doing your own billing. I'd go for it if I was a freelancer.
malandrew 14y ago
Amy Jackson has been using this model for designers for a while now[0]. Glad to see developers are now getting some talent agent options. [0] https://twitter.com/AJacksonTalent https://twitter.com/AJacksonTalent
startengine 14y ago
I think this is a great evolution for hackers. Talent should be a premium and the best way to get that is to have an agent. Granted this is only for the superstar coders who normally would get great comp packages. However, how do they know if they are fairly compensated ? Agents will and they are motivated to fight for the best deal. Go hire an agent.
ctide 14y ago
What's the difference between 10X Management and any other consulting agency? The article seemed to fluff it up a lot, but the fundamentals seemed the same. Just that the developer is a contractor for the agency instead of on salary?
- bbwharris 14y ago
  Yeah this sounds no different than a consultancy.
- quesera 14y ago
  The dev isn't a contractor to the agency. The dev just pays the agency 15% of billings. That's really the only structural difference, but it's important. 10X takes less than a typical consulting co, provides less tangible benefits, and has a better marketing story as long as they are smart about it. Recruiters and consulting cos have always been highly variable in quality, but the current tech hiring drama has brought out some especially bad ones. In the late 90s (the last time I worked thru a consulting co), it was possible to find a rep that you respected and would shop your skills to reasonable customers and handle the annoying bits professionally.
- altay 14y ago
  Hey ctide, I'm one of the founders. To be honest, I'm a little nervous about the fluff, too, but I do sincerely believe we're doing something different with 10x. First and foremost, our clients are the developers. (Admittedly, this nomenclature gets a little confusing sometimes, but it's important for us to constantly remind ourselves that we work for you.) Rather than thinking of it as a consulting agency, we see our job as making freelancing suck less. In the process, we're building a network of freelancers who share best practices. They even share customers... our customer development has revealed that the #1 complaint from freelancers is that it's feast-or-famine. Since each person in the 10x network brings in his/her own dealflow, one person's feast can ease another's famine. Imagine a P2P network for gigs. Additionally, the article only briefly touched on the lifestyle design aspect, but that's really important to us. Just like managers in the music or movie industry, we're entering a long-term relationship with our clients, and strive to understand their goals and help them achieve them. For some people, that means we save them cycles that they can put towards their startups. For others, we enable them to travel more. (I started out as a client before we founded 10x, and I spent my time on music, e.g. recording albums, touring, learning the cello.) Also, my cofounders come straight from the entertainment world. They managed John Mayer from being an unknown singer/songwriter to playing sold-out stadium shows. They bring a really unique outside perspective to our industry. And finally, as the article mentioned, our cut is only 15%. My understanding is that consulting agencies often take 50%+.
krapp 14y ago
If they were really "top coders" wouldn't they be writing their own agents?
- altay 14y ago
  (Altay from 10x here.) Not exactly sure what you mean, but if you're suggesting this is a problem that can be solved with software, I actually think one of our competitive advantages is that we're approaching it as a high-touch, people-oriented, service business rather than a software problem. Obviously, this makes it less scalable, but I do spend my nights writing software for 10x to automate the things we find ourselves doing more than once. (I spend my days working on deals... still working out the balance; see PG's essay about maker/manager schedules.) And one of the things that's always at the back of my mind is how to maintain the high-touch, personal approach as we scale.
  - krapp 14y ago
    It's just a pun. >_> And I regret nothing.
    - stevelaz 14y ago
      :-). I lol'd at this
    - paulbunn 14y ago
      I got it. :-)
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- orangethirty 14y ago
  No, no. You have a point. A programmer could simply develop a system that would scrape the web to get leads. Then sort them in a way that the best gigs are on top. Then an automatic email would go out to these leads introducing the coder to the company. Then, depending on the answer, the coder would simply follow up on that introductory email. Magic? Nope. I have such system in place.
mpclark 14y ago
Top coders have had agents since at least the late 80s - an outfit called Marjaq, iirc, represented a stable of exceptional programmers in London.
altay 14y ago
Hi everyone, Altay from 10x Management here. Happy to answer questions here or at altay@10xmanagement.com or via our website (http://www.10xmanagement.com http://www.10xmanagement.com)
- jfb_1973 14y ago
  What skillsets are you looking for?
  - altay 14y ago
    We're open to talking to anyone, from web+mobile devs, to designers, to data scientists, etc. We even represent a guy who does bioinformatics. The one caveat is that obviously demand varies based on the skill. Our dealflow is steadily picking up as our network grows and as we get press like this, but customers aren't exactly knocking down our door looking for Erlang hackers... yet. (The bioinformaticist happens to also be a kickass iOS dev.) That said, if you have your own dealflow for your skills -- no matter how obscure -- and are interested in our services beyond just sourcing gigs, we're happy to work with you.
- leeny 14y ago
  Have you guys thought about applying this model to f/t roles (i.e. not just contract)? I know contract work may make more sense because of the shorter stints/more business, but perhaps with enough volume, this is something that could work. I'm a recruiter (used to be an engineer) and recently launched my own firm. This is something I spend a lot of time thinking about, as I find that the incentive structure created by the contingency model where the company is the customer encourages many of the poor behaviors that people associate with recruiting (spamming, cluelessness, bullying, etc.).
  - fecak 14y ago
    Recruiter here with similar ideas. I wrote about an agent model for perm hire last year, was on HN and ad some comments. Part I and II below http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/17/disrupt/ http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/17/disrupt/ http://jotipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/26/disruptii/ http://jotipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/26/disruptii/
jfb_1973 14y ago
Hmm, I've wondering why there isn't the concept of a recruiter who works for the developer. I'd like to have someone help me determine my worth and work with me to improve my marketability. I know companies pay a lot for this service, but it might be worth it. I know in the past I've not know how much I am worth and missed out on a lot of cash.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
paddy_m 14y ago
Finally. I had a similar idea. I wanted to start or have access to a company called Fuck You Pay Me. They would be contract salary negotiators that developers hire to negotiate their salary.
darkxanthos 14y ago
Wow that article is terrible on iPad. The styles just. Keep. Adjusting.
- eric-hu 14y ago
  I wouldn't doubt it. On FF in OS X, it took about 30 seconds before I could use my trackpad scroll. Keyboard scroll worked fine, though.
obviouslygreen 14y ago
After reading the article (though it is, as mentioned in other comments here, heavy on the fluff), I think this might be a little less like an agency than I'd imagined. However, one problem I'm seeing is this. You claim about 30 developers right now, and flash Apple/Google credentials... but if you're actually going to be having extremely reputable and experienced Hollywood talent managers selling software developers, and you're expecting to get top-caliber applicants at all times, your niche is fairly small, both in terms of the developers you'll interact with and the promoters you'll be able to hire to keep your reputation above that of a normal headhunter. Quantity aside -- niche business can be good business -- the major issue I'm talking about is finding talent like this that's not only happy to work for someone else, but available. Even my own standards for hiring developers are too high for the majority of available candidates, and most of the devs I know that would measure up are either running their own consultancies (not freelancing) or working for places that make retention a point. If you're sitting low in the double digits despite the promoter resumes you're touting and your business has been around for a year... I have to wonder about its growth potential. Not to say every business needs to be absolutely huge, but depending on your goals, you might end up with a fairly low ceiling.
papaver 14y ago
reminds of the old days at EA when the coders were the rockstars and in the lime light. loved the ads with photos of techies.
- yuhong 14y ago
  On that matter, I posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352969
michael10x 14y ago
Hi. Another 10x Founder here (Michael). Thanks for all the good comments and challenges. Our inboxes are blowing up from the posts here and on BW. In a nutshell, to my knowledge, the difference between 10x and EVERYONE else that lives in the ecosystem between technology creators and those who hire them is we work for the creators. We believe in the value of the problem solvers. All the others who do this work for the companies that hire the talent. With regard specifically to the other types of digital agencies, they try to get their customers to pay the largest amount possible for the work and then hire or pay their developers the lowest amount possible as they live in those margins. We work for the talent. For me, that is the main distinction and the one which is most important for this community.
- scottru 14y ago
  Hi Michael - Welcome to HN, and thanks for creating an account and then posting a minute later. We're happy to have you. I'm not sure you're going to get very far saying (to your knowledge) EVERYONE else doesn't give a hoot about the engineers they work with and only cares about squeezing every last cent, and only you care about "creators." Some of us have built businesses that have been around for a while caring about all parties involved. This is a challenging business. Best of luck to you.
Paul_D_Santana 14y ago
Do you regularly have clients who need developers for one-time development projects (kind of like a reverse elance.com), or is it strictly for Monday through Friday full time work? I would love to do small side projects for others, e.g. on weekends, but bidding on projects on elance, odesk, etc is a headache I would certainly pay A LOT to able to skip. If not, does anyone know of a service that does this?
ballard 14y ago
"On the next 'Hacker Entourage', Philipe doesn't like the shade of blue on the BMW the agent offered as a signing bonus."
shakeel_mohamed 14y ago
This brings a whole new meaning to the term: rockstar developer.
michaelochurch 14y ago
This is a really good idea. I know nothing about these guys, so I can't evaluate whether there's true success or just marketing, but the concept is great. One of the dirty secrets about Corporate America is that "your manager" is really only a manager. What do I mean? A manager is someone hired to make decisions pertaining to a financial asset someone else owns. Actors have managers who handle their reputations and Hollywood careers. Business owners have managers to run the day-to-day. Wealthy people have financial managers. In a corporate setting, you just have a boss. In a typical company, your manager is the firm's manager and your overseer. Important distinction. Talent really doesn't have representatives. Freelancing is the place to start with this, because they know they're on their own, whereas corporate denizens are still somewhat clueless, but I'd like to see this idea branch out. I hope it succeeds.

156 points by rafaelc 14y ago

atomical 14y ago

They are also called recruiters. Nothing new here.

chadgeidel 14y ago
I've never met a recruiter that works in my interest. Maybe I haven't met enough recruiters?
- altay 14y ago
  Well, you haven't met us yet. ;)
- gm 14y ago
  The recruiter does not work for the talent, the recruiter works for the company.
  - stmfreak 14y ago
    No, recruiters work for the commission. Talent dislikes them, and Hiring managers dislike them. Except the good ones. But those are rare.
malandrew 14y ago
There is a big difference between a talent agent and a recruiter. A recruiter ultimately works for the company needing talent and has the needs of their client companies. An agent works for the talent and will scout out the most promising opportunities (pay well, interesting work, work that leads to greater opportunity).
jdoliner 14y ago
I wouldn't say it's new persay but I don't think they're quite recruiters. I generally think of recruiters as being paid by a company to find employees rather than the payed by an employee to find companies. Both agents and employees act as the middle man for the same transaction but they represent different people's interests. It's new in that this it's just now becoming the case that programming talent is valuable enough that 15% of it can actually buy a full time employee to represent the employees interests.
- greenyoda 14y ago
  "... programming talent is valuable enough that 15% of it can actually buy a full time employee to represent the employees interests." I doubt that finding jobs for a developer requires anything close to a full time employee. If it were, freelancing and consulting (without an agent) would not be viable ways of making a living (you'd spend 100% of your time finding work and 0% working). I'd guess that each agent represents several developers and a large fraction of that 15% fee is pocketed by the agency as profit.
- pacaro 14y ago
  The danger here is that their role can become muddled, this is a concern in every industry that has an agent model, in whose interest is the agent working? Good agents work for the talent, bad agents just try and get as much out of each deal as possible, word gets around... In other news, I think that you mean per se
suyash 14y ago
Recruiters trying to hide behind the name 'Agents'. They don't add any value instead headache for developers. I would recommend staying away as far as possible from these so called 'agents' who just want your 15%.
- ericb 14y ago
  If they can provide steady dealflow, 15% is fine by me...
- gm 14y ago
  I see it this way: The agent's more than earned his 15% if he gets me a higher paying gig than I could get myself (higher than 15% increase, that is). The benefit I get from not dealing with the stuff they claim to take care of is more than worth it. Unless you love doing your own billing. I'd go for it if I was a freelancer.

malandrew 14y ago

Amy Jackson has been using this model for designers for a while now[0]. Glad to see developers are now getting some talent agent options. [0] https://twitter.com/AJacksonTalent https://twitter.com/AJacksonTalent

startengine 14y ago

I think this is a great evolution for hackers. Talent should be a premium and the best way to get that is to have an agent. Granted this is only for the superstar coders who normally would get great comp packages. However, how do they know if they are fairly compensated ? Agents will and they are motivated to fight for the best deal. Go hire an agent.

ctide 14y ago

What's the difference between 10X Management and any other consulting agency? The article seemed to fluff it up a lot, but the fundamentals seemed the same. Just that the developer is a contractor for the agency instead of on salary?

bbwharris 14y ago
Yeah this sounds no different than a consultancy.
quesera 14y ago
The dev isn't a contractor to the agency. The dev just pays the agency 15% of billings. That's really the only structural difference, but it's important. 10X takes less than a typical consulting co, provides less tangible benefits, and has a better marketing story as long as they are smart about it. Recruiters and consulting cos have always been highly variable in quality, but the current tech hiring drama has brought out some especially bad ones. In the late 90s (the last time I worked thru a consulting co), it was possible to find a rep that you respected and would shop your skills to reasonable customers and handle the annoying bits professionally.
altay 14y ago
Hey ctide, I'm one of the founders. To be honest, I'm a little nervous about the fluff, too, but I do sincerely believe we're doing something different with 10x. First and foremost, our clients are the developers. (Admittedly, this nomenclature gets a little confusing sometimes, but it's important for us to constantly remind ourselves that we work for you.) Rather than thinking of it as a consulting agency, we see our job as making freelancing suck less. In the process, we're building a network of freelancers who share best practices. They even share customers... our customer development has revealed that the #1 complaint from freelancers is that it's feast-or-famine. Since each person in the 10x network brings in his/her own dealflow, one person's feast can ease another's famine. Imagine a P2P network for gigs. Additionally, the article only briefly touched on the lifestyle design aspect, but that's really important to us. Just like managers in the music or movie industry, we're entering a long-term relationship with our clients, and strive to understand their goals and help them achieve them. For some people, that means we save them cycles that they can put towards their startups. For others, we enable them to travel more. (I started out as a client before we founded 10x, and I spent my time on music, e.g. recording albums, touring, learning the cello.) Also, my cofounders come straight from the entertainment world. They managed John Mayer from being an unknown singer/songwriter to playing sold-out stadium shows. They bring a really unique outside perspective to our industry. And finally, as the article mentioned, our cut is only 15%. My understanding is that consulting agencies often take 50%+.

krapp 14y ago

If they were really "top coders" wouldn't they be writing their own agents?

altay 14y ago
(Altay from 10x here.) Not exactly sure what you mean, but if you're suggesting this is a problem that can be solved with software, I actually think one of our competitive advantages is that we're approaching it as a high-touch, people-oriented, service business rather than a software problem. Obviously, this makes it less scalable, but I do spend my nights writing software for 10x to automate the things we find ourselves doing more than once. (I spend my days working on deals... still working out the balance; see PG's essay about maker/manager schedules.) And one of the things that's always at the back of my mind is how to maintain the high-touch, personal approach as we scale.
- krapp 14y ago
  It's just a pun. >_> And I regret nothing.
  - stevelaz 14y ago
    :-). I lol'd at this
  - paulbunn 14y ago
    I got it. :-)
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
orangethirty 14y ago
No, no. You have a point. A programmer could simply develop a system that would scrape the web to get leads. Then sort them in a way that the best gigs are on top. Then an automatic email would go out to these leads introducing the coder to the company. Then, depending on the answer, the coder would simply follow up on that introductory email. Magic? Nope. I have such system in place.

mpclark 14y ago

Top coders have had agents since at least the late 80s - an outfit called Marjaq, iirc, represented a stable of exceptional programmers in London.

altay 14y ago

Hi everyone, Altay from 10x Management here. Happy to answer questions here or at altay@10xmanagement.com or via our website (http://www.10xmanagement.com http://www.10xmanagement.com)

jfb_1973 14y ago
What skillsets are you looking for?
- altay 14y ago
  We're open to talking to anyone, from web+mobile devs, to designers, to data scientists, etc. We even represent a guy who does bioinformatics. The one caveat is that obviously demand varies based on the skill. Our dealflow is steadily picking up as our network grows and as we get press like this, but customers aren't exactly knocking down our door looking for Erlang hackers... yet. (The bioinformaticist happens to also be a kickass iOS dev.) That said, if you have your own dealflow for your skills -- no matter how obscure -- and are interested in our services beyond just sourcing gigs, we're happy to work with you.
leeny 14y ago
Have you guys thought about applying this model to f/t roles (i.e. not just contract)? I know contract work may make more sense because of the shorter stints/more business, but perhaps with enough volume, this is something that could work. I'm a recruiter (used to be an engineer) and recently launched my own firm. This is something I spend a lot of time thinking about, as I find that the incentive structure created by the contingency model where the company is the customer encourages many of the poor behaviors that people associate with recruiting (spamming, cluelessness, bullying, etc.).
- fecak 14y ago
  Recruiter here with similar ideas. I wrote about an agent model for perm hire last year, was on HN and ad some comments. Part I and II below http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/17/disrupt/ http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/17/disrupt/ http://jotipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/26/disruptii/ http://jotipsforgeeks.com/2012/09/26/disruptii/

jfb_1973 14y ago

Hmm, I've wondering why there isn't the concept of a recruiter who works for the developer. I'd like to have someone help me determine my worth and work with me to improve my marketability. I know companies pay a lot for this service, but it might be worth it. I know in the past I've not know how much I am worth and missed out on a lot of cash.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

paddy_m 14y ago

Finally. I had a similar idea. I wanted to start or have access to a company called Fuck You Pay Me. They would be contract salary negotiators that developers hire to negotiate their salary.

darkxanthos 14y ago

Wow that article is terrible on iPad. The styles just. Keep. Adjusting.

eric-hu 14y ago
I wouldn't doubt it. On FF in OS X, it took about 30 seconds before I could use my trackpad scroll. Keyboard scroll worked fine, though.

obviouslygreen 14y ago

After reading the article (though it is, as mentioned in other comments here, heavy on the fluff), I think this might be a little less like an agency than I'd imagined. However, one problem I'm seeing is this. You claim about 30 developers right now, and flash Apple/Google credentials... but if you're actually going to be having extremely reputable and experienced Hollywood talent managers selling software developers, and you're expecting to get top-caliber applicants at all times, your niche is fairly small, both in terms of the developers you'll interact with and the promoters you'll be able to hire to keep your reputation above that of a normal headhunter. Quantity aside -- niche business can be good business -- the major issue I'm talking about is finding talent like this that's not only happy to work for someone else, but available. Even my own standards for hiring developers are too high for the majority of available candidates, and most of the devs I know that would measure up are either running their own consultancies (not freelancing) or working for places that make retention a point. If you're sitting low in the double digits despite the promoter resumes you're touting and your business has been around for a year... I have to wonder about its growth potential. Not to say every business needs to be absolutely huge, but depending on your goals, you might end up with a fairly low ceiling.

papaver 14y ago

reminds of the old days at EA when the coders were the rockstars and in the lime light. loved the ads with photos of techies.

yuhong 14y ago
On that matter, I posted this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5352969

michael10x 14y ago

Hi. Another 10x Founder here (Michael). Thanks for all the good comments and challenges. Our inboxes are blowing up from the posts here and on BW. In a nutshell, to my knowledge, the difference between 10x and EVERYONE else that lives in the ecosystem between technology creators and those who hire them is we work for the creators. We believe in the value of the problem solvers. All the others who do this work for the companies that hire the talent. With regard specifically to the other types of digital agencies, they try to get their customers to pay the largest amount possible for the work and then hire or pay their developers the lowest amount possible as they live in those margins. We work for the talent. For me, that is the main distinction and the one which is most important for this community.

scottru 14y ago
Hi Michael - Welcome to HN, and thanks for creating an account and then posting a minute later. We're happy to have you. I'm not sure you're going to get very far saying (to your knowledge) EVERYONE else doesn't give a hoot about the engineers they work with and only cares about squeezing every last cent, and only you care about "creators." Some of us have built businesses that have been around for a while caring about all parties involved. This is a challenging business. Best of luck to you.

Paul_D_Santana 14y ago

Do you regularly have clients who need developers for one-time development projects (kind of like a reverse elance.com), or is it strictly for Monday through Friday full time work? I would love to do small side projects for others, e.g. on weekends, but bidding on projects on elance, odesk, etc is a headache I would certainly pay A LOT to able to skip. If not, does anyone know of a service that does this?

ballard 14y ago

"On the next 'Hacker Entourage', Philipe doesn't like the shade of blue on the BMW the agent offered as a signing bonus."

shakeel_mohamed 14y ago

This brings a whole new meaning to the term: rockstar developer.

michaelochurch 14y ago

This is a really good idea. I know nothing about these guys, so I can't evaluate whether there's true success or just marketing, but the concept is great. One of the dirty secrets about Corporate America is that "your manager" is really only a manager. What do I mean? A manager is someone hired to make decisions pertaining to a financial asset someone else owns. Actors have managers who handle their reputations and Hollywood careers. Business owners have managers to run the day-to-day. Wealthy people have financial managers. In a corporate setting, you just have a boss. In a typical company, your manager is the firm's manager and your overseer. Important distinction. Talent really doesn't have representatives. Freelancing is the place to start with this, because they know they're on their own, whereas corporate denizens are still somewhat clueless, but I'd like to see this idea branch out. I hope it succeeds.