
Inbound Hiring - joshuacc
http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2011/09/inbound-hiring.html
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MatthewPhillips
Congratulations Caine and Gabriel!

I'm slightly worried about this style of hiring though. It seems to be really
great for the hirer and not so great for the potential hiree. Want to work for
a startup? Volunteer your time, not knowing if it will lead to something or
not. I'm guessing Caine has volunteered a significant amount of his time to
DuckDuckGo and has proven himself. Good thing DDG isn't random-startup that
flips 6 months into its life.

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cainetighe
Thanks! I had a good idea about the company from the get go, so wasn't really
concerned. I was still in college when I started donating my time to
DuckDuckGo and never dreamed of ever being fiscally reliant on it. I am very
used to contributing to FOSS projects since it's how I learned to code which
fit right into the DDG culture. I guess what I'm really trying to say is that
even if DDG flipped in 6 months I wouldn't be in any worse shape since I was
consulting while donating time to DDG. It's just great to work for something
you believe in that challenges you everyday. Gabriel's concept of Inbound
Hiring comes with an Hors d'œuvre of sink or swim culture. I think this is a
good thing; especially where we are at now. Thanks again!

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MatthewPhillips
It's definitely a cultural thing though. It works at DDG, where Gabriel will
personally answer email from users. I'm glad this has worked out so well for
you and look forward to seeing your future projects.

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Robin_Message
Something I've been wondering about this style of hiring and more generally
promotion of a business — does it only work for technology companies that
primarily serve geeks and early adopters?

Or to put it another way, can you get good employees and exposure by writing
about technology if you make factory management software? Or should you be
writing about the management of factories?

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cainetighe
I would say that it's mostly based on the culture you cultivate for your brand
and yourself. In Gabe's post he mentioned Initech, the company from the movie
Office Space, because it represents the quintessentially shitty corporately
inundated fortune 50 company. Consequently, when I think of FOSS programmers,
their job is either to work on this FOSS project (hired by yahoo to work on
freebsd), or they're unfulfilled by their current job and use FOSS as a way to
be creative and enjoy their craft. Prolific people are driven by obsession (my
opinion); so even if they use that to make ends meat, it's not the end of the
line for their work.

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petercooper
This is a great approach but there's a sorta hybrid outbound/inbound version
you can do too: headhunting. Find people working on similar projects or
working on technologies that support your work and actively hire those people.
I know that Mozilla does this, at least, as my friend got headhunted by them
primarily for being a prominent Selenium developer.

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alttag
It seems the underlying message is "I want/need to hire more people. If you're
interested, get moving!"

