Sounds like a union hiring hall. Members can choose which fellow members they prefer to be placed with, as has often been the norm in other industries. The union certifies competence to do certain kinds of work, facilitates the training ("professional development") employers largely shirk responsibility for. Developers could bargain more effectively with investors and managers ("founders").
Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?
61–70 of 164 posts
Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, but I'm not sure I understand your comment. Where does it say anything about the rules of this proposed idea? Isn't this a hypothetical?
It is inferred that the group would always work together on projects, so their availability would be the same... If you sell yourself as a group but everyone still looks for offers of their own, it kind of defeats the purpose
This is starting to sound more like a good old-fashioned agency.
Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
For one, what if the hiring company interviews the team and wants 7 of the 10? In the model OP is talking about, that's not allowed. You either hire the whole team or none of them. The team knows this, so they're mostly not going to be running off to look at unrelated offers.
Thanks, but I'm not sure I understand your comment. Where does it say anything about the rules of this proposed idea? Isn't this a hypothetical?
To take the proposed model to it's logical extreme, what if you only want 3/10, 2/10, 1/10? Now you're suddenly back to hiring individuals again.
The whole point of hiring a team is that you aren't evaluating individual performance or skills; you're evaluating the groups' performance and skills. If the team is good, the people who can't immediately be helpful will re-train so that they can provide skills that are useful in the new context. The team will evolve to become the exact team that you need.
Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?
#64I'm on the demand side of this question. When I hear "hire a team" I think "that will cost more".
With early stage business/startup capital is scarce.
We're hiring one off, using contractors for focused products that ship. Modules of the whole.
100% of the solicitors of team things all have the same juggling and sorting I have to do with individuals. But the cost is more. And the work expectation is more. We'll build your whole app!!
Great! Now I've spent a bunch of time and money to build expertise in my problem domain yet nobody is on MY team.
Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, but I'm not sure I understand your comment. Where does it say anything about the rules of this proposed idea? Isn't this a hypothetical?
It is inferred that the group would always work together on projects, so their availability would be the same... If you sell yourself as a group but everyone still looks for offers of their own, it kind of defeats the purpose
And this is where the rubber hits the road.
In theory, yes, some actions are 'not allowed'. But this isn't an mathematical excercise it involves real people.
e.g. Who get's told the 'offers'? Do they get separate salary offers, or is it a single pot? If the latter, how do they decide what's fair? What happens if evereyone's extremely happy but one person? Or two people? What happens if there are competing offers that different members perfer unequally? How do the ongoing salary reviews go? Can individual members be fired after being hired?
It's going to be very messy, and I would imagine may not work a good proportion of the time. I would imagine a lot of the answers of the above questions would start looking like the answers given by a union, something that the tech community as a whole has avoided so far.
Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?
#66There is Digital Knights who offer exactly that http://digitalknights.co/
Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?
#67I've almost hired full teams for my clients a few times as a recruiter. There tend to be a couple issues with this model. For one, what if the hiring company interviews the team and wants 7 of the 10? The team has to make a decision to either look for work where they can all be on the team, or abandon members. The other issue is timing. The team members need to all be available at (or around) the same time, and they…
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Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?
#68I'm on the demand side of this question. When I hear "hire a team" I think "that will cost more". With early stage business/startup capital is scarce. We're hiring one off, using contractors for focused products that ship. Modules of the whole. 100% of the solicitors of team things all have the same juggling and sorting I have to do with individuals. But the cost is more. And the work expectation is more. We'll build…
> Great! Now I've spent a bunch of time and money to build expertise in my problem domain yet nobody is on MY team.
How's it different hiring individual contractors?
Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?
#69Hiring freelancers is itself almost a scam; hiring teams means scam, squared. Easiest way to fail your startup. Hire only locally, people you know. Don't use any online platform for that, you are going to get ripped.
There is definitely an advantage to hiring people you know but...if companies hire a freelancer to save money maybe that's the problem. Don't conflate, "I hired cheap developers and got poor results." with hiring talented developers who freelance.
Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?
#70I think cost is going to be a problem. If you want a team of good people, it will cost $100,000+ per individual. That's before benefits. With benefits, it will be well over $200,000 per person. For a team of five people, this will run you over one million dollars per year.
Now, if you have a lucrative opportunity, and you hire this team, then either the team will figure out they can take the opportunity without you, or the opportunity is only worth slightly more than $1 million per year, so it isn't worth their time to cut you loose (since you, in effect, will be getting a "finder's fee" for finding the opportunity for the team).