
Show HN: TryCatch – Get offers only with your desired salary - asadlionpk
https://www.trycatch.cc/
======
onion2k
This is a great idea, but there needs to be some substantial recruiter vetting
in the background somewhere. Here in the UK the bad tech recruiters are
renowned for advertising jobs that don't exist in order to get candidates to
hand over their details, at which point the job suddenly vanishes but the
recruiter spams you for the rest of your life with appallingly unsuitable
roles.

For a system like this to work there needs to a way to verify that the
recruiter is trying to fill a real job that actually pays what they say it
pays. That bit will be _exceptionally_ difficult. If trycatch can solve it
though, then I hope they take over the entire job market. 100% of it.

~~~
frandroid
User ratings can help too.

~~~
munirusman
^Yes that's exactly what we are planning to do to make sure that developers
only get genuine offers.

------
aasarava
Why is current salary relevant? In most cases, revealing your current salary
will be used against you by the new employer, as it allows them to lower their
offer if they had planned on offering much more.

~~~
asadlionpk
One of the reasons is that we are using the delta (demand minus current
salary) in ranking the profiles in our lists.

~~~
jonathankoren
I fail to see how this benefits me as an job seeker.

It doesn't matter how valuable my current employer thinks I am. All that
matters is how valuable my next employer thinks I am.

~~~
otakucode
It is also inherently false to assume that two identical positions at two
different companies are worth the same to each company. A software developer
working at a company which sells software and a developer working at a company
where they develop a product for an insurance company that enhances actuarial
analysis are very, very different in terms of how much value the developer
creates for the company - and how much value they create is the only
legitimate criteria to test compensation against.

------
goofygrin
As a hiring manager here's my concerns/issues with the current process of
hiring/using a recruiter

\- recruiters don't screen well enough technically or personality wise

\- recruiters tend to lie about everything (candidate availability, salary
requirements, etc)

\- recruiters are hellaciously expensive

\- you still have to do the full process for everyone that needs to be
interviewed (regardless of source. Skipping steps has always resulted in a bad
hire in my experience)

\- resumes/profiles suck for determining coding ability. Sparsely filled
github accounts and pet projects are far better indicators

As a person being hired here's my issues:

\- recruiters lie (about opportunities, salary, etc). Notice a trend here?

\- companies are cagey about salary. I'd rather know up front rather than
waste everyone's time.

\- lack of exposure to the team during the hiring process. Since I'll be
spending more time with them than my family I want them to be people I like
rather than neckbeards that aren't personable.

~~~
munirusman
\- recruiters don't screen well enough technically or personality wise \-
resumes/profiles suck for determining coding ability. Sparsely filled github
accounts and pet projects are far better indicators

We are the same team behind
[https://remoteinterview.io](https://remoteinterview.io). We encourage
employers to screen on the basis of technical skills instead of resumes.

\- recruiters tend to lie about everything (candidate availability, salary
requirements, etc)

We are planning to implement rating system for employers by candidates.

\- companies are cagey about salary. I'd rather know up front rather than
waste everyone's time.

That's what TryCatch.cc is trying to solve.

\- lack of exposure to the team during the hiring process. Since I'll be
spending more time with them than my family I want them to be people I like
rather than neckbeards that aren't personable.

Very valid point. It should be solved.

~~~
otakucode
That Remote Interview looks absolutely brilliant. I firmly believe that the
future lies entirely with remote workers and it's simply a matter of the right
tools being available. Please keep doing what you're doing!

------
acveilleux
Spin this around so a company can test the water with a salary range and
desired qualifications and get a percent of candidate pool coverage...
Basically what fraction of an anonymous but hopefully representative group of
programmer would consider this salary (a) acceptable and (b) below or above
current salary.

Bonus point, filter by geography.

~~~
pc86
This would be huge. Having both used recruiters to find work and to find
candidates, from the employer side it's one thing for a recruiter to say "You
need to raise your salary range by $20k to attract what you're looking for" \-
after all they get paid a percentage of base salary.

It'd be something else entirely we had a tool where increasing base salary by
$20k showed us that it doubled the number of interested candidates within a
given skill set.

~~~
robalfonso
I have some wiggle room on my dev jobs so I'm offering $X-$X+20 for someone
with $Y-$Y+5 yrs of experience. I'm perfectly open to an increase and I work
with a recruiter whom I trust, so I usually ask him if I'm low or high and
he's honest with me. So much of success in things coming from not working with
scumbags.

~~~
pc86
Are you hiring any .NET folks? :)

~~~
robalfonso
Sorry, php and golang developers and sysadmin types. But I hired two guys who
were .net guys who were tired of it, they say that the grass is greener, sky
bluer, and their wives and girlfriends are more beautiful. ymmv.

------
codingdave
I'm wary of this without knowing exactly how your profile would be anonymized.
I work in a very small niche and even if the company names are hidden, just
seeing a list of job titles, time frame, and my skill set would really narrow
me down. If my location is listed, that absolutely pinpoints me, as I'm the
only person in my niche, in my area.

I didn't sign up, so I don't know if is possible to see and edit your profile
before it goes public or not. But giving me that level of control would
resolve most of my concerns.

~~~
munirusman
It's a very valid concern and thanks for pointing it out. We will let you edit
your anonymous profile first. We should add this in FAQs.

UPDATE: FAQ updated.

------
rb2k_
For a lot of companies, "salary" is usually a mixture of base salary, bonus
and stock options/RSUs.

I guess there are also various perks (public transport ticket, food, ...), but
those mostly don't end up scoring that high on the 'money' scale.

Are there any plans to take these things into consideration?

~~~
kchoudhu
> public transport ticket, food

Don't care, don't care, don't care. Unless the IRS is taxing it, I don't care
about it.

~~~
s73v3r
You don't, but others do. There are more people in this world than just you.

~~~
nsgi
I think he means that they might as well be included in the salary, unless
there's a tax or bulk buying discount.

~~~
kchoudhu
I find that relying on my employer for everyday stuff isn't conducive to
building future proof systems: am I alone in finding it hard to budget for
expenses when my employer is providing a large chunk of my expenses?

Whenever possible, I prefer taking a cash equivalent and buying my own.
Insurance, food, living quarters, public transportation..whatever.

~~~
__xtrimsky
Well employers get discounts for getting a large amount of these expensive.
Food might not be true, but if an employer would give you the exact amount of
money he pays for insurance, you would get an insurance a lot crappier, simply
because the employer gets discounts.

I am currently paying insurance out of the pocket, it sucks. When I'll reach
30 (no more catastrophic plans), I'll definitely will find another employer
with health insurance.

------
xerophtye
I understand that this is your MVP and you are simply gauging the developer
interest at the moment, but I would love to see what you are pitching to the
employers. No, this is not about me not trusting you, I am just curious why
would the other side use this (or how you will convince them to use it). Since
you are building a marketplace, I would like to see how you are attracting
both ends of the transaction

~~~
munirusman
Great question. The biggest value employers get is significantly higher
response rate from developers. Compare it with linkedin inmails where most of
the interview offers are considered spam because developers don't see the
incremental monetary value in offers.

~~~
xerophtye
Well ofcourse there ARE benefits to them, but I would just like to see you
present it to them as awesomely as you presented to us devs

~~~
asadlionpk
Yes we are slowly inviting the 'other side'. We do want it to be awesome and
create real value!

------
jwcrux
Unfortunately, it's likely that in many cases the anonymity won't be preserved
simply due to the probability of multiple candidates having the exact same job
experience.

Take the example profile (which doesn't appear to belong to an actual person).
We can create a google search that is something like the following:

site:linkedin.com AND intitle:" | Linkedin" AND intext:"Data Engineer" AND
intext:"Distributed Systems Engineer" AND intext:"Software Engineer in Azure"

And, if it belonged to an actual person, would likely show up in the results.
If there are multiple candidates with these titles, you can add more
conditions, such as the employers to narrow it down.

~~~
munirusman
Yes you are right. For that reason we are planning to show anonymous profile
to candidates and let him/her edit it.

UPDATE: FAQs updated.

------
robalfonso
Salary is the wrong metric!

For example, I don't want to see a job below 125K but a job is posted at 115K
and they subsidize X where X is important to me personally....then that can
change everything.

It's obviously a much tougher situation to define all those little things,
perhaps they should be valuing the total compensation package and not salary?

There are jobs with certain benefits where either the same or less salary
could still be compelling to someone.

~~~
MCRed
Would you give up $10k a year in salary for a free parking space? What if that
space's market value was $289 a month?

EG: I'm not sure what's getting subsidized here. If it's worth less than 7k is
probably better to take the higher salary and pay for it yourself.

~~~
robalfonso
Fair point, my argument is that rather than saying salary is 100k, they should
be saying total compensation is valued at 110k with 100k being salary, parking
being valued at 7k and donations to the upper peninsula bird watching society
covered by the company to the tune of 3k per year.

------
nsxwolf
I don't trust anything that is Linkedin-based. I find their privacy policy
impossible to understand, and I would just assume at some point my employer
will know that I've signed up for this.

~~~
asadlionpk
I understand, not everyone is a fan of LinkedIn. We will soon be adding email
signup.

~~~
bhayden
Thanks, I also refuse to use linkedin but would like to use this service. Also
+1ing a geography filter request.

------
dccoolgai
Like the concept, but have some reservations. What happens when recruiters
start using it and spamming me regardless of whether they have something that
pays the figure in question or not (one of those situations where the amount
"magically" becomes 30% less than the recruiter said it was when you go to
interview.) Like I said, I love the idea but I have doubts about how it will
pan out when exposed to the seedy world of tech recruiters.

~~~
Osiris
This happened to me. I said I'd only interview if the offer would be at least
a certain amount. After going through the process, the offer was $15k lower
than the recruiter had promised.

~~~
l-jenkins
I've had this happen. When I got the offer from the CEO (small company) it was
what I was currently making but with less job security. I stopped dealing with
that recruiter immediately and ignore all correspondence from them (or anyone
at their company).

I think what they hear is "I need my compensation to be X" instead of "I need
my salary to be X". Big difference.

~~~
s73v3r
Well, many times as candidates, we're told to state our total compensation
when asked about our salary.

~~~
binxbolling
That's surprising/confusing to me--I've actually never been asked that. This
is in the US (east coast), so can't speak to other locales.

------
oglo
Liked the concept. It's like applying free market models for developers! But
I'm curious about anonymity? How does it work?

~~~
munirusman
Co-founder here. Thanks for the liking it. Our anonymizer is semi-automatic
for now but listing for recruiters is automatic.

~~~
nchelluri
What does this mean?

~~~
asadlionpk
This means that the process of removing identifying information is mostly
automatic. But a person then reviews and removes anything identifiable and
then the candidate himself approves the profile before we add it to our public
list.

------
ocdtrekkie
Heh, clever name (and reason for it).

~~~
thekgann
> Why "TryCatch"?

> Because you are an _exception_

~~~
corobo
Ahhh I just got it. Cheers

------
frak_your_couch
Great idea! I signed up, but I worry that there's no geographical adjustment
for salaries. For instance, I make $200k and live in Cleveland. Even 20% more
in NYC or SF is a very different lifestyle.

~~~
asadlionpk
I agree that we will need to consider location and all the aspects related to
it. We are already brainstorming on this.

~~~
otakucode
Please don't forget the only location that is going to matter in 10 years:
REMOTE!

~~~
munirusman
Can't agree more. Remote is the future!

------
encoderer
You should increase the salary on the sample to something more realistic. How
about... makes $125 wants $150k?

~~~
asadlionpk
Ok makes sense. Done :)

------
otoburb
Developers only? Or are you just starting out with this role and plan to
expand to others later?

Do employers sign up as "recruiters"? I would think not since the word
"recruiter" has a very specific meaning.

This service helps employers save significant time on promising candidates
that have wage expectations beyond an employer's budget. Worst case, employers
can adjust both initial salary bands and corresponding expectations
accordingly through the use of this service.

~~~
munirusman
Noted. Thanks for the suggestion.

------
Avalaxy
When I'm trying to sign up:

Error: failed to find request token in session at
Strategy.OAuthStrategy.authenticate (/app/node_modules/passport-
linkedin/node_modules/passport-oauth/lib/passport-
oauth/strategies/oauth.js:124:54) at Strategy.authenticate
(/app/node_modules/passport-linkedin/lib/passport-linkedin/strategy.js:118:40)
at attempt (/app/node_modules/passport/lib/middleware/authenticate.js:337:16)
at authenticate
(/app/node_modules/passport/lib/middleware/authenticate.js:338:7) at
/app/linkedin.js:84:15 at callbacks
(/app/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:164:37) at param
(/app/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:138:11) at pass
(/app/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:145:5) at nextRoute
(/app/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:100:7) at callbacks
(/app/node_modules/express/lib/router/index.js:167:11)

~~~
asadlionpk
hmmmm weird. Can you give it another try. I just tried and it works. Will
check logs after traffic reduces :)

~~~
Avalaxy
Tried again, works now :)

------
xerophtye
Btw, Wouldn't a good anti-recruiter mechanism be that you only allow employer
accounts when you verify that the user represents an actual company etc?

~~~
asadlionpk
We plan on only giving access to accounts with @company.com emails (where
company will be researched ideally by our staff to be a legit tech company).
Can you think of any other mechanisms we should have in place?

------
itsdrewmiller
How is this different from hired.com except that you reveal your current
salary?

~~~
munirusman
Hired.com is an auction site for limited time. It works when you are
desperately in need of job switch. TryCatch.cc is not bound by time and our
target developers are not actively looking for job switch but may change their
mind for higher pay.

~~~
fishtoaster
I once had an internship in college where I worked with Sitecore (a .net cms).
When I was applying for jobs out of college, I mentioned it in my resume when
I posted it to Monster.com.

It has been many years since I took that resume down, and that technology has
been off my resume just as long. However, I _still_ get recruiter spam asking
if I’m interested in a 6-month contract-to-hire position on the wrong coast
working with Sitecore.

This tool sounds like it fits a pretty good passive use case, but I just
thought I should point out why I, particularly, love the limited-time model of
Hired.com. It lets me avoid being considered “on the market” for all eternity.

------
fiatjaf
People are creating job sites and announcing them here almost every day. Is
this working? Isn't there a chicken-and-egg problem in there?

If it works, someone please tell me what is the magic strategy to get public
for a general (no devs, programmers or IT in any form) job postings site that
is simple, easy and works. Brazil is in need of it.

------
johnward
I'm open for new ways to find jobs but sadly my expectations aren't that high.
I still signed up.

~~~
asadlionpk
Good Luck! :)

------
david_shaw
Looks like an automated version of White Truffle. That said, looks
straightforward and has an interesting metric.

Nice work.

------
myth_buster
Nice tagline. OAuth is blocked here. Will try from home.

> Why "TryCatch"?

> Because you are an _exception_

~~~
asadlionpk
Thanks. I wonder why would they block OAuth ?

------
badloginagain
How does it choose what jobs I am "eligble" for? In the past 5 years I've done
design, user experience, customer support, qa, devops, and programming.

Most recruiters want someone who has done one and only one thing for the
entirety of their career, regardless of whether that's a sound strategy or
not- do you rank higher for employees who have done the same thing for years
or is it strictly a position-avialable:pay-requested rank?

~~~
asadlionpk
This is purely upto the employer watching your profile. We don't use your
consistency in our ranking.

If the employer feels like contacting you. You will get contacted along with
complete details about the job position.

------
flipp3r
"firebase.js:18 FIREBASE WARNING: Specified Firebase has reached its Peak
Connections limit. If you are the Firebase owner, consider upgrading.
([https://remoteinterview2.firebaseio.com)"](https://remoteinterview2.firebaseio.com\)")

Also, will there be a European version of this? My salary in Dollars has
gotten quite low ( eur vs dollar ).

~~~
asadlionpk
Co-Founder here. We got HN hug! And firebase is having trouble changing our
plan. We will be contacting back everyone who is trying to login :)

Edit: We are back up!

------
arikrak
These job sites pop up frequently (each with a small twist) and they get
developers to hand over their emails. But I'm not sure how well they succeed
in getting good companies to pay for their service afterwards. It's an area
I'm interested in learning more about.

