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Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?

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121–130 of 164 posts

Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?

#121

A company called Elevator is trying to do that. From https://goelevator.com/ : > The world’s first team hiring platform. > Assemble your best colleagues today and start receiving full-time or freelance team jobs.

Thanks for pointing out that we’re already doing this at Elevator. I’m the CEO - AMA.

Where are most of your roles located?

Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?

#122
To add to what others have said so far, I think the real case where this comes in useful is when a startup is failing and going down. A lot of times startups have good engineering teams but are shutting down for various reasons (most likely failure to get product market fit, etc.). If you already have a good network, it's not hard to land somewhere in an acqu-hire thing, but that's not the case for everyone. Such a platform could help in these cases.

Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?

#123
So similar but I think there could be a platform that is approximately, "Kickstarter for teams". As a real example, a few months ago I was trying to build an app. My background is more infrastructure engineering and while I can code up a 'functional' if fugly POC I really needed someone awesome at frontend engineering to get the POC to a state where someone might want to use it.

There is some opportunity to 'disrupt' the founder model a bit where instead of a 'technical' and 'business' founder you could start with 4-5 more specialized individuals with more diverse backgrounds and probably get a lot more done.

Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?

#124

A "team" means more than one human, and coordination of >1 humans requires a contract. A group of humans negotiating a contract for employment is "collective bargaining", which is a no-go for business, because divide and conquer is cheaper.

In civilised countries collective bargaining is protected by law.

Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?

#125

Wait, isn’t HN a platform where one could find teams? Let’s try it... If you are a team good at the things in my profile or on my LinkedIn, and would be interested to become full time employees in exchange for a guaranteed global scale “customer” problem to solve for one of 5 largest global banks – I will hire you. If this works, we’ll report back here that HN can be a match maker between companies and entire dev tea…

Doesn't work like that. OP is talking about a company that would assemble a team that matches those requirements, not one that finds teams that already exist somewhere.

I’ve seen HN work like both.

Also, not really interested in “assembling a team”, that’s not rocket science. I’m interested in a team that already hums, that’s rocket fuel.

PS. It may have already worked, I’ve been contacted about a team. And thank you to anyone reaching out, we’ve got appetite.

Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?

#126
I did have two acquaintances from long ago when I was a humanities major at school who did this. They were roommates in college, both worked for the same lab, then worked at the same tech company after college.

They later moved to California, continued living together and working on the same teams at work. Eventually, they got separate houses but still work together as a high functioning mini-team in their own shared office at a huge SV company last I heard. It probably raised eyebrows at interviews saying they wanted to work together, but they excelled technically and in the long run it seems to have been a significant career advantage that raised their productivity and possibly even rate of learning.

The impression I get is that the situation is something almost no manager would ask for or have any desire to disrupt.

Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?

#127
post #126

I did have two acquaintances from long ago when I was a humanities major at school who did this. They were roommates in college, both worked for the same lab, then worked at the same tech company after college. They later moved to California, continued living together and working on the same teams at work. Eventually, they got separate houses but still work together as a high functioning mini-team in their own shared…

Startup coming soon...ahem ahem

Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?

#128
post #14

I'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…

>> a company might pay each member a bit more for a team experienced in working together, as in theory they should be more productive more quickly. On the other hand, if you already have an established team, merging them when they see themselves as distinct groups might be tough. The other issue I see is that I doubt companies will want this to become common in the industry. Even if it's great for hiring (and I think…

I guess there is a fine line between collective bargaining and holding a company hostage.

Remember when the cast of Friends all negotiated for $1M/episode, and they pitched it as "you pay us all, or you don't have a product"? I don't recall any public outcry that they were holding NBC hostage.

As we move toward a completely digital society, it only makes sense that the digital gatekeepers will have more leverage. Employers hate that.

Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?

#129

A "team" means more than one human, and coordination of >1 humans requires a contract. A group of humans negotiating a contract for employment is "collective bargaining", which is a no-go for business, because divide and conquer is cheaper.

In civilised countries collective bargaining is protected by law.

I thought we were talking about the United States? :)

Re: Ask HN: What about a platform for hiring teams instead of individuals?

#130
I have tried to do this on a couple of occasions. On both the occasions there were startups on the verge of shutdown and we were trying to onboard complete teams. The challenge is fitment of each and every member of the team. It is easier to decide on individuals, but very hard for whole teams unless teams are very homogenous, which they are generally not. In both the occasions we ended up making offers to only few of the members.
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