

Developer Auction raises $2.7M for exactly what you’d think - allangrant
http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/14/developerauction

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ritchiea
I was a developer in the most recent auction and it was a great experience.

As a developer it appeared the only required field for employers was salary.
Often equity, vacation days and perks were listed but sometimes they were
listed as negotiable. All but one of the offers I received were for
significant raises above my previous salary. And the offers included some from
high profile companies.

Once you receive an offer you have the choice to either interview with the
company or decline to interview. I actually chose to decline three of the six
interview offers I received because one company looked like a horrible fit off
the bat, one company offered a small raise but required moving to the bay area
(which I was open to for the right circumstances but not that one) and one
company offered me a salary below my current salary (Developer Auction allows
you to set a minimum salary it would require for you to consider moving to
another company, I actually listed my minimum as below my current salary to
try to leave open the possibility of moving to an early stage company).

If you choose to interview with a company the process proceeds as it would
normally and you may have still have to go through a rigorous hiring process.
The purpose of the site is less to create an actual auction and more to shift
the power in the hiring process toward the employee. It really helps you do a
comprehensive job search with a lot of companies in a short amount of time. It
solves the job search problem of accepting an offer and wondering if something
else is out there that's a better fit. All in all it was a great way to look
for new opportunities and I ended up accepting an offer from one of the
companies I interviewed with.

~~~
vecinu
Sounds like you had a great experience.

Thank you for sharing your story.

You mentioned you declined 3 of the 6 offers but did you end up accepting one?

~~~
ritchiea
Yup maybe I buried the lede a bit. I put that detail in the last sentence.

I ended up accepting an offer that I think is a better culture fit than my old
position and a significant raise.

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cliftonmckinney
Co-founder of Work for Pie (the other company mentioned in the article) here.
I will say I'm glad that these guys expanded from their original, pretty
elitist degree and/or experience requirements.

There are companies that do it right--like Github and Etsy--and there are
companies that do it wrong. The big problem is that doing it right probably
takes more time. Supporting the local developer ecosystem, presenting at
conferences and meetups, mentoring others, open sourcing projects, writing
blogs that help others, etc. are all great recruiting strategies (and just
darn nice things to do overall), but they all take a lot of time (and none are
guaranteed to bring you new employees).

I think the fact that these guys are successful tells me that a fair number of
companies are saying "my time is more valuable than $xx." I'm not sure how I
feel about that. I completely understand it--especially when you're a part of
a super-small team--but I still kinda wish it didn't have to be that way. And
fwiw I'm not sure how well cultural fit is addressed by this platform, but
maybe the companies figure all that out in interviews.

I'm biased, but I think giving developers the chance to discover the one
company (among as many options as possible) that fits them best is the way to
really improve recruiting. That forces companies to actually be worth a damn--
not just have deep pockets--to recruit successfully.

..and now for the shameless plug. It's free to set up a company page on Work
for Pie, and you can post up to two jobs for free too. Tell our thousands of
developers how awesome you are: <https://workforpie.com/companies/join/>

~~~
ritchiea
Work for Pie sounds like a great company too, I had never heard of you before
this thread. Best of luck to you.

------
mkrecny
A friendly warning to fellow developers. While Dev Auction is a great idea,
there's no way to ensure that your current employer doesn't know you're on the
site. I wasn't given the option of returning to my job after my employers
found out i was on Dev Auction. Matt was pretty callous about it ultimately
ignoring my emails.

[reposted from disqus comments]

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jrabone
From the T&C:

"You are expressly prohibited from accessing DEVAUCT through a virtual private
network or by proxy;"

WTF?

a) unenforcable. b) breaks IronKey Secure Sessions. c) breaks compressing
mobile browsers eg. Opera Mobile etc. d) don't tell me what I can and can't do
with my network.

~~~
allangrant
sounds like some boilerplate we weren't aware of. thanks for bringing this up!
will check it out and probably remove it. seems totally irrelevant, and i
agree with your comments.

~~~
adam-a
I was aware that customers reading the ToS is a little white lie, but I
thought at least the company would take the time!

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sethist
A job seems like the last thing I would want to leave up to be "sold to the
highest bidder." From an employee's perspective there are so many other
factors outside of compensation that are relevant to whether I would want to
work somewhere. From an employer's perspective if you are hiring mercenaries
willing to work for the highest bidder, what do you do when company X is
willing to pay more than you can afford?

~~~
allangrant
it's not about "highest bidder" - it's about efficiency and transparency.. in
two weeks, developers have 5-20 detailed offers to pick from, and can then
choose where to interview based on what companies look interesting, with all
things considered. we're considering new names right now that make this
clearer :)

~~~
sethist
Forgive me, I hadn't heard of the company before this article. The name
suggests and the article flatly states that the developer is "sold to the
highest bidder." If there is really nothing binding about the bids and the
highest bidder doesn't necessarily end up with the candidate, is this a
relatively standard recruiting website that puts an early emphasis on a
position's salary?

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epoxyhockey
If I call any recruiting agency in the Bay Area, I will be offered interviews
with at least 3 companies, along with promises that I would be offered a
salary of 20% above market. The interviews would be conducted in the
recruiter's offices and the salary figures will quickly decline once actually
speaking to a company representative.

I feel like I'm still not seeing the additional value that Developer Auction
brings to the table. Am I missing something or are they just offering an air
of exclusivity?

~~~
ritchiea
I found there to be two advantages:

1\. I get contacted by tons of recruiters over linkedin, but I have no idea
which of them actually have relationships with great companies. Lots of them
make big promises and introduce you to terrible uninspiring companies. Through
Developer Auction I got interviews at some really interesting companies.

2\. You the developer get a cut of the recruiter fee if you are hired through
developer auction.

------
hkmurakami
_B) AirBnB for oil tankers_

Is it just me or does this actually sound quite interesting?

~~~
Zikes
One of these days someone is going to make a parody "X for Y" site that
randomly generates similar such things.

    
    
      * AirBnB for oil tankers
      * Dropbox for cars
      * Uber for soft drinks
      * Exec for music
      * Github for food
      * Twitter for fashion

~~~
RyanZAG
Github for food (recipes) seems like it would work pretty well, really.

<https://www.google.com/search?q=github+for+recipes>

The rest seem less useful...

Dropbox for cars makes no sense. Do you mean a garage?

Twitter for fashion - already exists! Just follow people who talk about
fashion on twitter already.

~~~
hkmurakami
Wasn't there a HN'er who ran a site called "Fork the Cookbook"? I seem to
remember him posting in the Google Reader thread recently.

edit: here it is! <http://forkthecookbook.com/>

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ericmsimons
What's crazy is that this reminds me of how slaves used to be sold. Round up a
few folks who can do hard work, put them on a podium and then sell them to the
highest bidder.

Not a perfect analogy by any stretch, although it is interesting.

~~~
ritchiea
That's ridiculous. It's a resemblance in name only. The format is actually a
tremendous shift of power towards the employee and the developer gets a
portion of the total recruitment fee.

And obviously no one is literally auctioned off, employees and employers both
have a say in the matter.

Also what slaves got auctioned off to make six figures in loft offices of hip
cities?

~~~
waterlesscloud
The name remains awful, but they seem committed to stick with it. For better
or worse.

------
biot
I was half expecting that some developer was auctioned off for a $2.7M signing
bonus just like in the good old days.

~~~
thetrumanshow
Correct, and that is "exactly what [I would] think". So, title was wrong,
ironically.

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altcognito
Great! I've always wanted to be treated like a consumer good sold on ebay. Are
we going to have the accompanying site - CEOauction?

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n00b101
The FAQ says "Our primary focus is the SF Bay Area, LA and NYC. We accept
great engineers from Seattle, Boston, Boulder/Denver, Chicago and Washington
DC as well."

Does this mean that DeveloperAuction will only accept developers residing in
these specific cities? What about non-US residents (e.g. Canada)?

~~~
saranagati
I just signed up and am pretty dismayed by the "thanks" email I got. I
honestly wish I didn't take the time to sign up for this

\-------------------

Thanks so much for your application! We will thoroughly review it and if your
application is approved, you'll be sent a second confirmation email 72 hours
before an auction launches with an opt-in link to confirm your participation.

We've been very excited to receive thousands of applications to participate in
each of our auctions, but unfortunately we can only let in a select pool of
candidates. We will be judging applications based on:

1.) Location. We are primarily focused on the SF Bay Area, NYC, Boston, and LA
though select Engineers from Austin, Denver, Seattle, and developers that are
willing to relocate are also let onto the platform.

2.) Likelyhood to attract offers from employers. For example, Python and Rails
Developers are much more in-demand among start-ups than .NET Programmers

3.) Education History & Open-source contributions. We favour Engineers from
the likes of MIT, UC Berkeley and Stanford as well as Engineers who have
notable GitHub accounts.

4.) Notable accomplishments & achievements. Make sure your profile is
complete!

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jskonhovd
I like work for pie better. This just seems creepy.

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liamk
I wonder if the auction includes benefits like vacation time, signing bonuses,
parental leave, work hardware etc?

~~~
ryguytilidie
It is salary and stock options, that is all.

~~~
takrupp
Its more than just base and stock - employers can also offer a bonus (sign-on,
relocation, or end of year guarantee) and it does describe the benefits
(vacation, health, etc) for each employer. The offer is as complex as the
employer needs it to be in order to attract talent.

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norabean
This is great! Curious to see how many HackerNews folks are registered at
Developer Auction.

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saranagati
Would be nice if the site offered a valid SSL certificate. Maybe they should
bid on a better sysadmin?

