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Show HN: Announcing 10x Management

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Re: Show HN: Announcing 10x Management

#41

Post by fecak »

jtbigwoo wrote: post #24

Odd that there's not a lawyer among the listed leaders. They say they'll bring in lawyers "if necessary." Aren't most agencies for artists or athletes packed with lawyers? If I'm hiring you as my agent, I'd think that at least half your job would be the contract part of it.

Most contracts for technologists are much less complex than contracts for artists/athletes. Actors/athletes might have incentives for performance, receipts, merch, etc that are very complex. Tech contracts are usually rates, duration, perhaps some liability, NDA and IP stuff, non-compete. Perm hire could include some stock option info as well, but you don't need a lawyer for most of this stuff unless someone is really trying to protect something.

Re: Show HN: Announcing 10x Management

#42

Post by andyakb »

Most people suck at negotiating, and in a field where so much value is provided, there is a lot of value that simply isn't captured by the employee. I think having a management company like this makes a lot of sense assuming that after your fee, you are able to make more than you otherwise would.

As far as the website goes though, it needs a ton of work. They should basically take out their life story in the middle and use that for a press release and create a simplified about us page. Overall it really just seems like they threw everything on the page, and while nobody wants to leave anything out, having so much text is very distracting and takes away from your message

Re: Show HN: Announcing 10x Management

#43

Post by roc »

fecak wrote: post #39

I laid out something similar here on HN last summer and Atlay (of 10x) was one of the first to comment. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4555165 ) As a longtime tech recruiter, what I find most valuable about the model is that it is much more geared towards helping tech pros focus on what they do best (code) and not have to worry about what they tend to do worst (handle the business side of their work, negotiat…

> "This way the recruiter is rewarded for getting a higher rate, and the coder doesn't feel like a victim."

Fair recruiter reward for results is also the case when the recruiter just takes a flat percentage.

And in trying to define a 'minimum acceptable rate', you'd be incentivizing all sorts of odd behaviors, as recruiters would preference the gap between 'acceptable' and 'final' rate, rather than a higher final rate.

You'd have created additional pressure to mask final rates, depress clients' understanding of their own value, etc. Those are not remotely healthy incentives for a client/manager relationship.

e.g. placing a 150 for 180 nets you 30. placing a 180 for 200 nets you 28. how many 180s do you expect to keep? what conversation do you imagine taking place when a client says "we should bump up my minimum from 150 to 180"?

Rather counter to your goal of keeping coders from feeling like victims, that incentive structure is maximized when agents explicitly take advantage of coders who least understand their value and then keep them there.

Re: Show HN: Announcing 10x Management

#44

Post by wslh »

nlh wrote: post #40

Something isn't sitting right with me about this. Let me explore (my gut may be wrong here)... I agree that it's important for freelance engineers and designers to have some business help. Being a good "creator" doesn't necessarily mean you're good at negotiations, and while its an important skill, there is something nice about being able to focus on doing the work (and doing a good job) vs having to find the clients…

I like the idea but not sure how much will the freelancer earn comparing with their current work. Saying it in a different way: if you already are a star developer you don't need them. As a consequence I see "star discovery" as a business instead of "star representation". They can discover stars outside the US or main US cities.

I know people who already did that, but the stars then moved to the Google(s), Facebook(s).

Re: Show HN: Announcing 10x Management

#45

Post by fecak »

nlh wrote: post #40

Something isn't sitting right with me about this. Let me explore (my gut may be wrong here)... I agree that it's important for freelance engineers and designers to have some business help. Being a good "creator" doesn't necessarily mean you're good at negotiations, and while its an important skill, there is something nice about being able to focus on doing the work (and doing a good job) vs having to find the clients…

I think the disconnect on this is how one will define celebrity/rock star type developers. I'm sure that ideally they feel they will be the agent to some of the bigger names in the business, who certainly don't need an agent for finding work but might like someone to handle their stuff.

Through my work running a Java users group for 13 years, when I reach out to big name speakers my reply comes from an assistant that handles that person's calendar and scheduling. This could be a service that someone who is speaking worldwide would pay for (as their employer pays for it if they are at Google).

In reality, talent agent's in tech will probably be managing very good coders who are probably not big industry names - and that's ok. They could be very good at coding but not very good at making career choices, negotiating, and the like.

The Vinny Chase reference seems to indicate that you feel that the quality of your engineers doesn't have an impact on the success of your software company. Is that accurate? I think that if you feel the quality of an engineer is not associated with the success of a product, at least to some degree, most of the people here would disagree.

Re: Show HN: Announcing 10x Management

#46

Post by fecak »

roc wrote: post #43
fecak wrote: post #39

I laid out something similar here on HN last summer and Atlay (of 10x) was one of the first to comment. ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4555165 ) As a longtime tech recruiter, what I find most valuable about the model is that it is much more geared towards helping tech pros focus on what they do best (code) and not have to worry about what they tend to do worst (handle the business side of their work, negotiat…

> "This way the recruiter is rewarded for getting a higher rate, and the coder doesn't feel like a victim." Fair recruiter reward for results is also the case when the recruiter just takes a flat percentage. And in trying to define a 'minimum acceptable rate', you'd be incentivizing all sorts of odd behaviors, as recruiters would preference the gap between 'acceptable' and 'final' rate, rather than a higher final rat…

Fair recruiter reward for a flat percentage? Fair to the talent, certainly, but assuming I'm getting a low flat percentage that is much better for the talent. If I'm at 10%, you ask me for $100, and I get you $300 because I'm a master negotiator, I just made an extra $20/hr and you made an extra $180/hr. I did all the work there, didn't I? Is your coding going to be 3 times better because I negotiated you a 3 times better rate? Something to at least consider, from the recruiter's standpoint.

Odd incentives are so deeply ingrained in recruiting that it's almost impossible to get them out of the system. Recruiters have the incentive for motion - people leaving jobs all the time, regardless of whether it is a good career move. If an agent had tech talent paying $X,000 per year to tell them which moves were best for their career, that would be much more of a positive incentive for all sides. Instead, the incentive is for recruiters to get people to change jobs, regardless of how happy they are now or how happy they will be in the new job.

The pressure to mask final rates is much higher under current conditions. Take that incentive out entirely by showing your employees/contractors the invoices that you are billing the company.

Depressing a candidates understanding of their own value is a valid point, and very unhealthy. I don't think agents can take advantage of coders who understand their value, as they are able to leave. At a former company, I saw consultants leave over as little as $5/hr. The only thing that prevents coders from being taken advantage of by recruiters placing them for contract work is the coder's knowledge of their market value. If they know that, they should never get taken advantage of. Again, if they are being paid 'true market value', and a recruiter is able to negotiate a rate well above market value, that isn't taking advantage of the coder - that is taking advantage of the company paying the higher rate.

Re: Show HN: Announcing 10x Management

#47

Post by amirhirsch »

nlh wrote: post #40

Something isn't sitting right with me about this. Let me explore (my gut may be wrong here)... I agree that it's important for freelance engineers and designers to have some business help. Being a good "creator" doesn't necessarily mean you're good at negotiations, and while its an important skill, there is something nice about being able to focus on doing the work (and doing a good job) vs having to find the clients…

They help the small shops outsource the person who negotiates the deals. When you get huge volumes of request for contracted development for a specific set of talents, perhaps because you built some library that lots of people want contractors for, then it helps to have someone filter inbound requests and negotiate pricing at a premium so you don't spend 10% of your time doing it.

ps. hi nlh!

Re: Show HN: Announcing 10x Management

#48

Post by danielpal »

meritt wrote: post #38

I sense a lot of negativity here. Engineers are not good at dealing with customers. They deal with the customers so engineers don't have to. They have people skills. They are good at dealing with people! Can't you guys understand that?

This is absolutely not true at all. This is the same non-sense girls are taught growing up that they are not "good" at engineering. My experience has been, once engineers start interacting with customers they like it and they are good at it. Some aren't but is not the norm.

Re: Show HN: Announcing 10x Management

#49

Post by hugorodgerbrown »

mietek wrote: post #37
hugorodgerbrown wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It exists! We are building a community at YunoJuno that provides all the support of a large company, but for people who choose to be freelance. We're not quite as gung-ho as these guys - and we're not offering to manage your career - that's your business - but we do want to support talented freelancers in the creative (design, ux, dev) community. www.yunojuno.com (Oh, and we're not charging you anything - we charge t…

You're missing less web-centric dev skills. Some suggestions: Haskell, C, Erlang, OCaml, C++.

Yup - this is true. The "skills matrix" for developers is a real bone of contention - too many and it's confusing, too few and it's limiting. In reality, for now we are focussing on creative agencies, and they are web-focussed - we are not meeting with companies who have low-level perforamnce or control issues. It's about building web and mobile apps. For now ;-)

Re: Show HN: Announcing 10x Management

#50

Post by danenania »

fecak wrote: post #45
nlh wrote: post #40

Something isn't sitting right with me about this. Let me explore (my gut may be wrong here)... I agree that it's important for freelance engineers and designers to have some business help. Being a good "creator" doesn't necessarily mean you're good at negotiations, and while its an important skill, there is something nice about being able to focus on doing the work (and doing a good job) vs having to find the clients…

I think the disconnect on this is how one will define celebrity/rock star type developers. I'm sure that ideally they feel they will be the agent to some of the bigger names in the business, who certainly don't need an agent for finding work but might like someone to handle their stuff. Through my work running a Java users group for 13 years, when I reach out to big name speakers my reply comes from an assistant that…

The thing is that "celebrity status" is only loosely correlated with engineering ability. Someone who blogs a lot, is involved with a popular product, or is just very social and charismatic can build up a big following and become a celebrity without necessarily being a great coder. Likewise, a lot of amazing engineers are so amazing precisely because they keep their heads in the code and technical concepts all day, and don't spend time on self promotion. Of course, it's possible for someone to become famous purely through the weight of their achievements, but the I think the typical coder-celebrity has had to work pretty hard to become one.
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