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Launch HN: Pathrise (YC W18) – Career accelerator for students, free until hired

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Re: Launch HN: Pathrise (YC W18) – Career accelerator for students, free until hired

#71

Post by erispoe »

Techonomicon wrote: post #68
lev99 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also 7% of first year salary seems steep The real long term benefit is if using the service results in a better entry level position. A person starting a career developing on Win32 will have a significantly different career than someone starting a career in React Native. If Pathrise leads to an increase in job offers (quantity of offers) and an increase in the type of job offers (diversity of projects types) than t…

Recuiters will take around this 7% amount, so it doesn't seem absurd through that lens.

Recruiters do it on top of your salary, not as part of your salary, and the pain is felt by the company, not the employee.

Re: Launch HN: Pathrise (YC W18) – Career accelerator for students, free until hired

#72

Post by erispoe »

You say you're able to achieve 12k over the industry average, and take 7% of the first year salary. It's hard to assess how much of that 12k is due to selection, and how much is due to your work. In other word, what value you actually deliver.

Let's say the industry average is 120k (in California). If you deliver 12k extra, and take 7% of the total, you're actually taking more than 9k out of this extra 12k.

Re: Launch HN: Pathrise (YC W18) – Career accelerator for students, free until hired

#73

Post by kevintxwu »

erispoe wrote: post #72

You say you're able to achieve 12k over the industry average, and take 7% of the first year salary. It's hard to assess how much of that 12k is due to selection, and how much is due to your work. In other word, what value you actually deliver. Let's say the industry average is 120k (in California). If you deliver 12k extra, and take 7% of the total, you're actually taking more than 9k out of this extra 12k.

You would need to consider more than just the first year. In reality, the difference it makes in terms of your career as a whole is significantly higher than that initial 12k because it compounds.

Starting off with an additional 12k in your salary means you'll get an additional 12k next year and every year thereafter, if not more.

Also, though we really need to do more work to figure out how to measure this effectively, the quality of the position goes beyond the salary itself.

Re: Launch HN: Pathrise (YC W18) – Career accelerator for students, free until hired

#74

Post by kevintxwu »

erispoe wrote: post #71
Techonomicon wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recuiters will take around this 7% amount, so it doesn't seem absurd through that lens.

Recruiters do it on top of your salary, not as part of your salary, and the pain is felt by the company, not the employee.

Right, but as a result, they don't care as much if an individual candidate gets placed - they're more so looking to fill a specific position.

Recruiters solve the problem of hiring whereas we solve the problem of job seeking.

Re: Launch HN: Pathrise (YC W18) – Career accelerator for students, free until hired

#75

Post by kevintxwu »

miranda_rights wrote: post #70

Can you clarify the percentages for internships? Equivalent annual salary as in, if a student is making $20/hr at a 3-month internship, then their equivalent annual salary would be $20/hr * 40 hr/ week * 52 weeks = $41600, and your payment would be $2912? Or is it just 7% of what they earned over the summer ($9600, and payment would be $672?)

It's the $2912 one. Unfortunately, we can't offer the same services without basing it off of equivalent annual salary.

For the students that look for internships with us, the service is a reduction in short-term capital gain for career trajectory.

Re: Launch HN: Pathrise (YC W18) – Career accelerator for students, free until hired

#76

Post by kevintxwu »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #67
rajacombinator wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point! Glad to see other skeptics already arrived. I'd love to see a concept like this work but it is very difficult to truly align the incentives between recruiters and candidates or companies. Like you said it's just like real estate, a turnover game where the broker doesn't really care about optimal outcomes for the transacting parties. That said this could still add a lot of value for students - I certainly…

It is only good for students that struggle with finding work. Maybe foreign students or students that are very smart intellectually but are weak in social/interviewing skills. For most people (that tech companies/professional companies want to hire), they already have the skills needed to market themselves.

I said this a little earlier in the thread, but I would definitely say plenty of students we work with already have some of the skills needed to market themselves and they'll do fine on their own, but job seeking is rarely a binary of you're either fine or you're not.

Outcomes from job seeking fall on a spectrum from underemployed to dream job and our goal is to help get you an outcome that's at least 7% better than what you would've got on your own.

Re: Launch HN: Pathrise (YC W18) – Career accelerator for students, free until hired

#77

Post by kevintxwu »

ggg9990 wrote: post #69
kevintxwu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is potentially a real effect, but in this case, the exact unit economics will determine exactly how much it matters. Thanks to a focus on software and automation where we can afford it without hurting the experience, it's been good enough so far where we haven't noticed this affecting our decision making yet.

"Potentially a real effect" meaning almost the definition of a principal-agent problem and a well-known problem in real estate. If you want to prevent it from happening (and I'm not saying that you do) you will have to try very hard, not just assume that it will happen.

You're right - my language was too dismissive. The general idea of what I said above is still valid though.

Another point: the cost per student does not increase linearly with time. Instead, advising becomes significantly more efficient after we've already taught the student our core insights. This means we're much more willing to spend additional time on students the more time we've already spent.

In contrast, houses can't "learn" how to sell themselves like a student can, so real estate agent costs are linear with time spent.

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