

Where the fuck is my Ari Gold? - softbuilder
http://www.youell.com/matt/writing/?p=8

======
arjunnarayan
Robin Hanson covered this a few weeks ago. I fact, it's probably worth having
an agent _just_ to negotiate your salary given that a 10% increase is not out
of the realm of normal negotiations. Not to mention all the other effects of
having an agent like signaling, networking, having someone to guide you
through career development, etc. this is an industry ripe for creation, but I
don't know how to go about doing it: you'd have to start with a bunch of smart
developers, and the ideal way to do that seems to be for me to become a top
recognized developer, and then transition into starting an agency once I've
developed the reputation... Anyone have a good history of how agencies began
in Hollywood?

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/08/why-not-agents-for-
all...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/08/why-not-agents-for-all.html)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
Ok, on your next contract I will negotiate your salary and conditions and aim
to get you 10% on your last contract.

Of course I will need a plausible "walk away" option - are you willing to give
that?

Edit: it's a bit early in the morning so that was supposed to be an expanation
why you might not choose to give ana age t the negotiation power they need.

Not a sales pitch

~~~
arjunnarayan
Sure. I'm currently a PhD student and I love it. So any offer is by definition
over and above what I _really_ want to do with my life, which is research.
However, I can still be bought for ridiculous amounts of money. If you can
negotiate that, then you deserve your 10%. If you drive away employers with
your negotiations, I'm still happy.

I'm not claiming to be a superstar, but superstars are usually in the same
position: They are already in a job they love and are successful at. So
negotiating a better gig for them always includes the option of credibly
walking away.

Of course, the question then comes back: why are you a decent agent, and why
should I let you represent me?

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I think the first agents did not do it that way round :-)

Can you tell me more about differential privacy - if the London Underground
releases data about journeys from my start point to my end point, surely at
some point enough data is released to determine which anonymous ID is me.

I just would like to know are there determined upper and lower bounds on how
much can be released before it is explotable?

------
silverbax88
I found a recruiter that I stayed with for over a decade - he was my agent. He
knew my work history, what I had done and he would get me more money before I
even walked in the door. Our deal was simple - he sold the prospective client
on how good I was (both as a developer and and employee) and I closed the
deal. Every time. We made a lot of money together. The difference is that he's
not a technical recruiter. He's an executive recruiter. He places VPs, CEOs,
etc. But he also was with those guys on their rise up as well. So often when I
took a position, my boss was someone who had the same guy. Now, when I am
looking to hire someone, who do you think I call? Tech recruiters - the big
companies who just try and grab warm bodies, put them in seats and collect
commissions, are a blight on the corporate world. Corporations have gotten it
in their head that it's better and easier to use them, and developers who need
work have to turn to them to pay the bills. But it doesn't work for
exceptional programmers.

~~~
eru
How did you find that recruiter in the first place?

~~~
silverbax88
Honestly, partially by chance. During the dot-com bust I called every
recruiter I could talk to in order to line up my next gig. He was actually an
executive recruiter, but because of the boom in tech, he started taking on
tech clients. So my advice is to find an executive search recruiter who is
looking for bad-ass tech clients. The second part of this equation, which is
not chance, is that I was looking for someone I could trust and build a long
term relationship with, not just someone to get me a job. I did not expect to
find it, but that's how it went down.

~~~
eru
Thanks!

------
edanm
Aren't companies the "agents" of programmers?

If you're a talented developer, but with no marketing or other such skills,
you join a company. For the sake of argument, let's call it a Software
Consultancy. Then the consultancy finds you Gigs (i.e. takes on projects and
puts you on them), and you get money.

Companies, in fact, solve another problem that acting doesn't have - namely,
actors are hired alone. Software, on the other hand, is much, _much_ more
likely to be built by a team. And having a team brings you all sorts of other
difficulties that customers can't deal with:

* You need a team that works well together

* You need proper management of the team

* You need proper processes in place for building the software

* In some cases, even access to equipment is an issue

In short, an agent that can represent a single developer is not the right
"level of abstraction" for most clients.

~~~
Jerpo
actors must act with other actors- sort of like... a team? the must be...
directed, sort of like a manager?

~~~
lmm
Do actors have to know and understand the other actors they're working with in
the same way? I'm guessing not seeing how rarely you see a gang of actors that
sticks together through several movies.

~~~
bgilroy26
Jud Apatow is known for working with Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, Quentin
Tarantino is known for working with Uma Thurman and Michael Madsen, Martin
Scorcese is known for working with Robert DeNiro and Leonardo DiCaprio, Tim
Burton is known for working with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter...

The list goes on and on. Software is special, but it isn't _that_ special.

------
btilly
This post shows a deep misunderstanding of the key differences between
Hollywood and programming.

In Hollywood, people often need to create a reasonable sized business, have it
work for a year or two, and then it falls apart. That's what a film is. Most
people's engagement in this business is only a few months, maybe less, no
matter how well they do. Therefore you need to get hired again, and again, and
again.

In programming, there is a hope and expectation that people will last
substantially longer in a job. Therefore you do not need to go back to the
hiring well nearly as often, so it does not make sense for you to have a
dedicated person who is going to regularly try to hire you out.

~~~
jaggederest
> In programming, there is a hope and expectation that people will last
> substantially longer in a job. Therefore you do not need to go back to the
> hiring well nearly as often, so it does not make sense for you to have a
> dedicated person who is going to regularly try to hire you out.

In practice, that's seldom possible. Hell, we're on hacker news - it's a
tossup as to whether most of the companies you hear about on here will still
be operating in two years. If those are the companies you work for, you'd be
best off with an agent.

~~~
adrianhoward
_In practice, that's seldom possible. Hell, we're on hacker news - it's a
tossup as to whether most of the companies you hear about on here will still
be operating in two years. If those are the companies you work for, you'd be
best off with an agent._

The companies on hackernews are not the majority of companies that employ
developers though...

~~~
lmm
More to the point, they're not even the majority of companies that employ
hackernews readers

------
eykanal
It's worth noting that you could replace every instance of the word
"programmer" in this article with "banker" or "accountant" or "teacher" or any
of a number of non-public-facing professions and the take-home would be the
same. The programmer connection here is somewhat of a red herring; this
article is much more about what makes Hollywood _different_ than about
anything related to programming.

~~~
hammock
Most of the agent-bearing talent are performers (recorded or not)-actors,
directors, speakers, musicians, models, athletes- who negotiate and set
compensation ahead of time. These circumstances are what lend themselves to an
agent middle-man.

If you are a lawyer, architect, accountant, engineer-a professional billing to
the client on an hourly basis-an agent doesn't want to work for you. Cf below-
the-line Hollywood professionals, like colorists, sound engineers,
cinematographers, these guys don't get agents.

------
itsadok
This post reminded me of this old (and long) rant:
[http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.co.il/2009/12/blogs-are-
godless...](http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.co.il/2009/12/blogs-are-godless-
communist-bullshit.html)

Relevant quote:

"The Hollywood job market doesn't work the way Joel thinks it does. It barely
works at all. If you thought Google and Microsoft interview questions were
ridiculous, wait until Joel Spolsky has us all dressing up in Catwoman suits
just to get a job, after we've established ourselves as stars."

------
nhebb
In Hollywood there are only a handful of studios. In sports, there are only a
handful of pro teams. In software, there are too many companies for an agent
to develop a relationship with or tout your services to in the same manner.
And the best programmers don't need an agent.

~~~
djs070
A programmer's skill in programming is unrelated to their ability to
communicate said skill. So the programmer may or may end up better off paying
an agent >=14% of their salary to try and increase their net income.

------
greghinch
I've been contracting for a couple years now and I haven't had to pay anyone
commission to find me work. We're much more akin to contractor who work on
people's houses than actors: referrals are everything. If you've done more
than a few contract jobs of any significance and you aren't getting referrals,
you might want to take a look at the work you are producing or the attitude
you are presenting and figure out what is wrong.

~~~
timjahn
Does that mean you now spend little to no time actually finding work? The
referrals are all inbound at this point?

Genuinely curious.

~~~
greghinch
I've been having to turn down work. For a while I was able to schedule it for
later times as it comes in, but once I have at least 3 months booked into the
future, I won't take on any more. A fair amount is ongoing work acting as a
part-time dev on a project. I don't do much in the way of short "build me a
website" projects

Also want to say that as valuable or even more than building referrals through
clients you've worked for is building up a network of other dev contractors
you've worked with. Much of my work is a job someone else lands and then needs
to bring in additional help, or a job they turn down for lack of availability.
And likewise, I do the same for others I know.

------
mikescar
Old article is old. In the 4 years since this article was written, nothing
much has changed.

You don't have an Ari Gold because the economics of software recruitment are
different from that of the fictionalized A-list acting crowd. See other
comments on the quickly apparent disparities between the two economies.

There's more than enough work available in 2012 if you know your stuff. And
you can get it easily as a direct relationship with a company. Just ask. They
won't want to give you a full recruiters fee but might be cool with meeting
you part of the way on what they save.

------
ChuckMcM
It is a good question, I've always wondered why engineering types didn't
develop a similar system to the one in LA for actors. Perhaps its the long
term nature of software (3 - 5 years to get the product out) or support after
the release.

Consider other agencies, like professional sports teams, can you put together
12 engineers who can win you the superbowl of engineering (what ever that
would be)? Perhaps there is a disruption opportunity here.

~~~
johnpmayer
Well, for the sake of discussion, how does NASA assemble the team(s) that
build their stuff? That's the highest profile, most ad-hoc programming gig I
can think of.

Fact is projects like that are pretty rare.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I do know some NASA engineers, my impression was that teams get formed much
like they do in a large corporation where a project manager seeks out various
people in the organization with the skills needed and recruits them to be on
the team.

In that case the team is pulled from existing employees, so there isn't an
externalized negotiation that goes on, at least not directly.

From the disruption point of view you would need some sort of loose
conglomerate which sort of re-defined 'agile' development, a company with a
small cadre of full time 'producers' and 'project managers' but not engineers.
They might come up with some sort of concept and then hire an 'architect' (the
moral equivalent of the director) and then working with that person perhaps
the 5 to 15 core engineers. Then a bunch of 'extras' in the form of new
engineers who aren't yet 'stars.' Between the architect, the producer, and the
product manager roles would be doled out and extras added as needed.

If you really did this like a Hollywood movie there would be a period of 'pre-
production' where most of the overall design decisions would be made, the
architect person would work with a designer ( the equivalent of a script
writer in our analogy) who would layout the pieces and how they would fit
together. Then you'd go into 'location' and spend 3 - 6 months of really long
days getting the whole thing put together, and dump that over to QA / post
production team who would go through and clean up the loose ends. Then blam
you ship it, collect revenues and go to work on the next one.

Not surprisingly that is somewhat similar to the 'game studio' model. Games
being programs that have a limited lifetime. Game programmers don't float from
studio to studio though.

------
squidpie
This article was fun, I like imagining myself with an agent and some awesome
Diva dressing room. However, sorry, but I have to rant a tiny little bit. We
need to stop using the "ever try to explain it to your mom" trope. My mother
understands what I do at work a whole lot better then my dad. If I was mother,
I would clearly understand what you do at work. The very fact of being a mom
does not preclude you from high level technical knowledge. In addition, the
statement encourages the idea that since only women can be moms, and moms
don't understand tech, women don't understand tech. That is what you are
implying to all of your readers when you utilize this cliche. It's lazy
writing, and I would request that you try harder to overcome that initial pull
of the go-to stereotypes and cliches that paint women in a non-technical
light. Thank you.

------
djs070
"if you’ve got 5 years of experience with C++, you are the same as anyone else
who has five years of experience with C++"

I would agree that your "5 years" is equally as meaningless as anyone else's
generic 5 years. On the other hand, I would like to think that a quick look at
your GitHub profile could make a huge distinction between you and another
programmer.

------
learc83
Authors have agents as well, and writing may be more analogous to software
than acting.

Also the vast majority of authors are paid less (usually much less) than the
average software developer.

------
edoloughlin
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to learn from this article. The author spends
three paragraphs setting up an analogy and the the next 17 paragraphs
explaining why that analogy is broken.

------
eric_bullington
All it would take for this to start is a few highly-motivated
salesperson/agent types to team up with a handful of highly-desirable engineer
types. And let's face it, it will probably need to be the agent types to make
the first move. Surely there's a few guys (or gals) like that reading HN right
now.

~~~
waterlesscloud
The largest Hollywood mega-agencies have their fingers in just about every pie
that has money in it. Tech has recently joined that collection.

What agencies really do these days is "packaging". They put the actors
together with a director and with money and producers. They're starting to
package software development in related cases as well.

They aren't representing developers yet, but it's not a stretch to believe it
may eventually occur to them.

------
peteforde
I'm shocked to realize that I am apparently the only (or one of a select few)
developers here that has an agent very similar to the ideal discussed.

He's a matchmaker that works at the C-level, placing interesting developers in
qualified situations. In fact, the client isn't encouraged to pay their
invoice for his one-off fee unless they are happy with me.

It's all relationship driven networking, no acronyms or resumes involved. And
we both are very happy with how this works.

In closing, I assure you that having an agent is possible, you just have to
have a personality to match your coding chops.

~~~
akldfgj
> you just have to have a personality to match your coding chops.

Which entirely defeats the point of having an agent

~~~
peteforde
Not at all. I am the product, and I have to close the deal. I do that by being
both a great coder and a great communicator.

It doesn't change the fact that it makes excellent sense for me to delegate
the job of finding suitable clients that are looking for someone with my
background.

------
qthrul
If you are interested in that notion of representation you should take a look
at main() over at <http://main.is> or look for a skillshare class featuring
main().

Looking back at when I was indy, main() is a service I wish had access to
then. See also: Had I known then what I know now (through a series of
sometimes painful lessons).

------
bjornsing
_The answer, as best as I can tell, is commoditization. In our industry the
middlemen – hiring managers, HR people, recruiters, etc. – work extremely hard
to commoditize labor._

Why is this? I've seen it pushed to the level where it's clearly detrimental
to the company... It seems irrational.

~~~
hn_is_vile
It's perfectly rational. The primary concern of the corporation is to remain a
'going concern'.

This entails certain operational risks, key of which is 'key person risk',
where the ongoing operation of the business is exposed to the availability of
a single person (or small number of people).

This is why CEOs of large companies are such mediocre 'everymen/women/persons'
because if the ongoing operation of the organization depends on the
availability of the CEO, that is a very large risk to be exposed to.

If you cannot reduce a function in your organization's business process to
something that is repeatable and replaceable, then you have an ongoing
operational risk.

Small companies value growth, large companies value security, consequently
large companies will expend more resources on mitigating risks than expanding
the market/revenue/products of their business.

------
chaddyar
One could make a compelling argument that Marc and Ben over at a16z have
already been pioneering this industry on a large scale with their talent
services division.

<http://a16z.com/talent-services/>

------
robbiemitchell
Blockbuster actor salary > developer salary

10-15% means a lot more in one place than the other.

That's why the Ari Golds aren't scrambling to get you (or any other dev) on
their rosters.

~~~
eric_bullington
He specifically mentions the fact that even average, B actors have agents.
These are guys who make less than many developers do. Yes, the Ari Golds are
not representing them, but some agents are, and they presumably find them
jobs.

~~~
regularfry
In my brief tangles with the industry, I noticed that it was common for an
agency to have a few A listers, then _lots_ of B listers. The model was that
the A listers would pay the bills, and it was worth lavishing time and
attention on them. The B listers would be effectively put in a holding pattern
with _just_ enough effort spent on them that they didn't go anywhere else, on
the off chance they eventually became A listers. The B listers could say that
they were represented by a firm with real legal clout, and the agency could
inflate the number of actors they were representing, but other than that the
benefits seemed to be pretty intangible for the B listers.

------
rmah
The reason programmers don't get agents while actors do is that an actor's
work is mostly visible to those hiring him while a programmers is not.

Thus, agents don't have to convince those hiring how well the actor can do his
job (well or poorly). They only have to negotiate compensation and scheduling.

With individual software developers, their skill is not easily visible to
those hiring. Thus it is much more difficult for an agent. The agent would
need to becomes _salesman_ as well as agent.

------
ethank
The real Ari is on our board of directors. It doesn't help recruiting. Telling
and believing a great story and treating your culture and team as its own
product does.

------
lsh
"(Of course RMS is more like a Tim Robbins: Respected and talented with a
passion for activism. But I wince when he opens his mouth.)"

Even if the author of this article wrote RMS's bio and knew the man and his
work intimately, this embarrassed coughing everyone seems to do whenever
Stallman comes up really grates on me. I didn't finish reading past that
sentence.

------
walrus
> Of course there some exceptions – programmers who are known mostly for their
> work. These are almost exclusively in the free software field though, like
> Linux Torvalds or RMS.

Linus really is known for his work, huh?

------
tylerc230
I asked this same question a few weeks ago on HN. Some interesting points were
brought up. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4310710>

