<story><title>The Programmer&apos;s Price: Want to hire a coding superstar? Call the agent</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/programmers-price</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mallyvai</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m the lead engineer and founder of &lt;a href=&quot;http://OfferLetter.io&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;OfferLetter.io&lt;/a&gt; - We guide engineers (and designers and PMs) by helping them navigate the &amp;quot;last-mile&amp;quot; - that is, the offer selection&amp;#x2F;negotiation process - in exchange for a fee from the candidates. (We got brief shoutout in the article along with Dave and our friends at HackMatch)&lt;p&gt;I want to specifically address 1) Sam Altman and 2) Chris Fry&amp;#x27;s respective points about the problems with regards to models that align with the candidate more directly (like ours):&lt;p&gt;1) Much respect for Sam, but he&amp;#x27;s dead wrong with respect to the &amp;#x27;negative selection&amp;#x27; problem - yes, good people have no problem finding work, but the key problem is that the &lt;i&gt;opportunity cost&lt;/i&gt; remains phenomenally high for suboptimal decision making. We have actually worked with outstanding engineers who are &lt;i&gt;at YC portfolio companies&lt;/i&gt;, simply because they wouldn&amp;#x27;t have known how to get what they&amp;#x27;re worth otherwise and push for more. And Sam is missing the point entirely with regards to worth - people in the industry are not getting paid based on their merit - not at all. The gender wage gap is perhaps the most stark example of this, but we see it, starkly, along many other demographic slices as well.&lt;p&gt;2) With respect to Chris Fry&amp;#x27;s comments - I was actually &lt;i&gt;in Twitter&amp;#x27;s eng org&lt;/i&gt; when Chris raised the internal engineering referral bonus from 2.5k to 10k because the company wasn&amp;#x27;t getting the volume of quality people it wanted. Chris is a really great guy, but I find his point about &amp;quot;[at] Twitter, you get the best résumés on your desk already [via recruiting department, referrals, etc]&amp;quot; somewhat misleading - there&amp;#x27;s no way he would have raised the referral bonus as sharply as he did if he really felt that. In fact, there wouldn&amp;#x27;t have to be an referral bonus structure at all. Twitter is wonderful, and I loved my time there, but even there we weren&amp;#x27;t getting all the high-quality people we wanted.&lt;p&gt;[#plug: check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://OfferLetter.io&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;OfferLetter.io&lt;/a&gt; - we all deserve to get what we&amp;#x27;re worth]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>anonymous30x</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m one of the developers Mr. Altman is talking about and have recently rejected an offer from 10x.  I have to agree with Mr. Altman&amp;#x27;s point of view: I&amp;#x27;m making 1.5 - 2.0 times the average developer&amp;#x27;s salary already.  Speaking with 10x, they told me that their average project was just 1 - 2 months long and that I should treat their service as a supplement to my income rather than relying on them to keep me booked.&lt;p&gt;The problem is they charge 15% of ALL of my income for that privilege and don&amp;#x27;t make any guarantees.  Why should I pay them over $2k a month for them to &lt;i&gt;possibly&lt;/i&gt; make me new sales when I&amp;#x27;m already capable of keeping myself booked the majority of the time?&lt;p&gt;The whole thing reeked of predation to me.  If they&amp;#x27;re really able to provide more value than they take from me, then they should only be charging me a commission on the sales they bring in.</text></comment>
<story><title>The Programmer&apos;s Price: Want to hire a coding superstar? Call the agent</title><url>http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/programmers-price</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mallyvai</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m the lead engineer and founder of &lt;a href=&quot;http://OfferLetter.io&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;OfferLetter.io&lt;/a&gt; - We guide engineers (and designers and PMs) by helping them navigate the &amp;quot;last-mile&amp;quot; - that is, the offer selection&amp;#x2F;negotiation process - in exchange for a fee from the candidates. (We got brief shoutout in the article along with Dave and our friends at HackMatch)&lt;p&gt;I want to specifically address 1) Sam Altman and 2) Chris Fry&amp;#x27;s respective points about the problems with regards to models that align with the candidate more directly (like ours):&lt;p&gt;1) Much respect for Sam, but he&amp;#x27;s dead wrong with respect to the &amp;#x27;negative selection&amp;#x27; problem - yes, good people have no problem finding work, but the key problem is that the &lt;i&gt;opportunity cost&lt;/i&gt; remains phenomenally high for suboptimal decision making. We have actually worked with outstanding engineers who are &lt;i&gt;at YC portfolio companies&lt;/i&gt;, simply because they wouldn&amp;#x27;t have known how to get what they&amp;#x27;re worth otherwise and push for more. And Sam is missing the point entirely with regards to worth - people in the industry are not getting paid based on their merit - not at all. The gender wage gap is perhaps the most stark example of this, but we see it, starkly, along many other demographic slices as well.&lt;p&gt;2) With respect to Chris Fry&amp;#x27;s comments - I was actually &lt;i&gt;in Twitter&amp;#x27;s eng org&lt;/i&gt; when Chris raised the internal engineering referral bonus from 2.5k to 10k because the company wasn&amp;#x27;t getting the volume of quality people it wanted. Chris is a really great guy, but I find his point about &amp;quot;[at] Twitter, you get the best résumés on your desk already [via recruiting department, referrals, etc]&amp;quot; somewhat misleading - there&amp;#x27;s no way he would have raised the referral bonus as sharply as he did if he really felt that. In fact, there wouldn&amp;#x27;t have to be an referral bonus structure at all. Twitter is wonderful, and I loved my time there, but even there we weren&amp;#x27;t getting all the high-quality people we wanted.&lt;p&gt;[#plug: check out &lt;a href=&quot;http://OfferLetter.io&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;OfferLetter.io&lt;/a&gt; - we all deserve to get what we&amp;#x27;re worth]</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>1337biz</author><text>From my experience in the entertainment industry I always wish I could hire a manager to represent myself in negotiations with employers&amp;#x2F;bosses&amp;#x2F;etc - even if this would mean having to pay a 15-20% management fee on my salary. But I just can&amp;#x27;t convince my boss to negotiate with my agent...&lt;p&gt;You can train and optimize your negotiation skills all you want, but in my opinion it is extremely valuable to separate the &amp;quot;talent&amp;quot; from the &amp;quot;money&amp;quot;. Top performers, no matter in what industry, are usually extremely passionated about their craft and undervalue the monetary value they can bring to the table.&lt;p&gt;Having a third party represent them puts a &amp;quot;neutral&amp;quot; monetary evaluation on them. Good management allows a much more strategic long-term development that focuses on value building and not just opportunity hopping.</text></comment>