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BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads

byot.app

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Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads

#41

Post by filmgirlcw »

I’ll preface this by saying I don’t want to be overly negative or discouraging, but this is the sort of feedback you’re going to get when you post here.

I see zero incentive for large tech companies to hand over their interview process to a company run by juniors in college. Zero. As someone else mentioned, Triplebyte failed and had to pivot for a reason.

And if you’re saying, “you don’t even all need to work on the same team,” the incentive is even lower. If I’m bringing in a known team (and for new grads, unless that team has a track record of shipping something substantive together, hiring managers do not care about some students in a club or discord), I’m doing so because I know the value they can provide together. If I’m just going to put them all in different roles and teams anyway, why would I do a mass negotiation? What is in it for the company hiring, especially from a negotiation standpoint, when different teams and roles have different salary scales?

Beyond that, while this sounds great for the grads, this doesn’t seem great for anyone but maybe mid-tier or lower tech companies who struggle to recruit from the top 10 schools. And based on your website and answers here, those aren’t places that your current cohort would be interested in working at (nor that could afford the salaries you would be trying to negotiate).

Where I could see this sort of idea working would be in research sciences or academia, where existing cohorts and teams are very important. Now, for that, you’re not looking at new undergrads, you’re looking at grad students or post-docs, but at least there I could see the value in trying to hire a group of people from the same place who have actual experience working together.

But if I’m a company hiring, or even an individual manager, I really don’t care that 3 or 4 undergrads are friends or have some other relationship to one another. Especially since this seems designed to just get kids to team up together to try to get bigger offers from the same company, regardless of whether they want to maintain social relationships or not.

One final note: your website mentions “absolutely no recruiters” but the role of BYOT is to be a recruiter. If you want to say no outside recruiters, fine. But you’re inserting yourself as the middle man between the hiring managers and the applicants, presumably to take a cut for finding the talent. That’s a recruiter.

Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads

#43

Post by itomato »

This could be a good thing. Really.

There are gangs of CS grads (and undergrads) with irreplaceable team chemistry.

They might see a only glimmer of that through the entirety of their Professional career.

They also know no different than soaring together, as a team.

They aren’t brow beat. They deliver, and they cater to each other’s strengths in a way that Middle Management cannot fathom.

Terribly clever.

Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads

#44

Post by jokethrowaway »

gregdoesit wrote: post #2

As a former hiring manager, I am a little puzzled what the deal is for employers . New grad positions are usually the easiest to fill, by far - much easier than any software engineering position where you’re hiring for some former experience. Also, new grads are almost always put on a team with more experienced engineers - one new grad at a time. This is so they get mentorship, onboarding and taking team dynamics int…

There are new grads who are already at senior level and have been working for several years.

They're definitely a minority but they exist and if this company can select groups of new grads that ship. I remember very well I was working with a team of great engineers when I was in uni and we all sadly split up to pursue different careers.

That said, focusing on new grads sounds limiting, if I was BYOT I'd allow any groups of developers to participate. There is plenty of freelancers groups who may find it attractive to work together for a single client.

The main reason I don't like working inside companies is that I'm subject to whatever BS management think will make us more productive. In hindsight, in my 15 years of professional experience, that never works. A group of motivated seniors contributors will always find a way to self organise which is more efficient than whatever rituals are imposed.

Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads

#45

Post by bitcharmer »

leapis wrote: post #18
mapsdkhsd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the advice. Addressing the first part, yes, we are aiming at large tech companies. This is mostly because we need companies that actually need to hire large numbers of people since groups of 4 > individuals. Of couse we thought about addressing senior engineers as well, much like Stripe's original hiring program, but we determined that there were too many problems regarding that for now.

There might be a potential market in HFT/trading firms (market makers). They're struggling to recruit right now (industry is doing very well, so high headcount growth) and they're usually pretty small so joining w/ friends means working in closer proximity than you might get in big tech. Their small class size and heavy new-grad hiring also means that they're usually more flexible with recruiting and some would proba…

My experience is that HFT/trading firms are almost exclusively looking for seasoned professionals like low latency engineering specialists. There's typically the expectation of providing value and filling expertise gaps almost right off the bat. Fresh grads are incapable of doing that.

Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads

#46

Post by geraldwhen »

dmitriid_y wrote: post #21
gregdoesit wrote: post #2

As a former hiring manager, I am a little puzzled what the deal is for employers . New grad positions are usually the easiest to fill, by far - much easier than any software engineering position where you’re hiring for some former experience. Also, new grads are almost always put on a team with more experienced engineers - one new grad at a time. This is so they get mentorship, onboarding and taking team dynamics int…

From experience, this is not dissimilar to the internship-to-hire programs large firms like Qualcomm have used. At anywhere even 10% of that company's size, any individual can easily feel lost in a tidal wave -- triply so if your firm is facing any significant mountain of work prohibiting a good onboarding. Some employers may think this is even advantageous for them, but it can burnout the new hires fast. The differe…

Quite the opposite. Cohesion likely means non-diverse. HR would prefer that each team member be as different as possible in terms of age, sex, race, etc.

The less cohesive the team, the better my team looks to the HR gods that send me threatening meeting invites.

Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads

#47

Post by [deleted] »

gregdoesit wrote: post #2

As a former hiring manager, I am a little puzzled what the deal is for employers . New grad positions are usually the easiest to fill, by far - much easier than any software engineering position where you’re hiring for some former experience. Also, new grads are almost always put on a team with more experienced engineers - one new grad at a time. This is so they get mentorship, onboarding and taking team dynamics int…

[deleted]

Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads

#48

Post by gms7777 »

gregdoesit wrote: post #2

As a former hiring manager, I am a little puzzled what the deal is for employers . New grad positions are usually the easiest to fill, by far - much easier than any software engineering position where you’re hiring for some former experience. Also, new grads are almost always put on a team with more experienced engineers - one new grad at a time. This is so they get mentorship, onboarding and taking team dynamics int…

Possibly retention? A group of friends coming into something together might stick around longer than a typical new grad.

On the other hand, they might all bounce as a group if they're unhappy.

Re: BYOT: Bring your own team for new-grads

#50

Post by lkxijlewlf »

gms7777 wrote: post #48
gregdoesit wrote: post #2

As a former hiring manager, I am a little puzzled what the deal is for employers . New grad positions are usually the easiest to fill, by far - much easier than any software engineering position where you’re hiring for some former experience. Also, new grads are almost always put on a team with more experienced engineers - one new grad at a time. This is so they get mentorship, onboarding and taking team dynamics int…

Possibly retention? A group of friends coming into something together might stick around longer than a typical new grad. On the other hand, they might all bounce as a group if they're unhappy.

Nah, turnover would be higher. 6 Months in they're screaming at each other because they can't decide on spaces or tabs.
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