Slashdot Mirror
Attention, Rockstar Developers: Get a Talent Agent
ErichTheRed writes OK, we all know that there are a lot of developers and IT people in the field who shouldn't be, and finding really good people and hanging onto them is very difficult. However, I almost fell out of my chair reading this breathless article suggesting that developers hire agents. I grant the authors that recruiters are sometimes the only way to cut through the HR jungle in some companies, but outside of the hot San Francisco startup market, can you imagine a "10x rockstar developer" swaggering into a job interview with his negotiating team? I'm sure our readers can cite plenty of examples of these types who were only 10x in their own minds...
If you're trying to hire an agent, at least in other areas of creative space like acting or writing novels, the agent themselves has to believe you're worth the effort. So if this really does become a thing where a hotshot developer wants to find an agent to represent him, you can be damn sure that agency is going to be a hundred times harsher about testing skills before agreeing to represent the talent than an interviewer would be.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Slashdot is trying to be as parasitic as CNN
as long as I get to break all the furniture in the hotel!
Many developers ARE famous. If you're a dev who created some very popular/well known open source framework, you probably have an army trying to get to you. You're basically a celebrity, and in the extreme case may have to end up dealing with things like one.
My employer has been trying to build a front end team recently, and willing to pay whatever it takes and remote work is fine. But even getting in touch with some of these people to be able to say "Hey, name a number, we'll give you that number" is near impossible, because they shut themselves out with all of the normal recruiters trying to reach them.
Then you have the "not famous, but very good" devs. The average shitty dev still get a seemingly infinite amount of recruiters reaching out to them. The ones that are actually good? Yeah, its crazy. And if they don't want to go to work for a well known company (ie: Google), and actually have to poke around the market to find a good match, it can be more work than a full time job and a half. If you're looking and have an actually useful recruiter under your belt, its helpful, but at the end of the day they don't work for you. Having someone who actually does? Why not.
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/14/11/18/0025237/do-good-programmers-need-agents
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/04/11/2216236/top-coders-tell-agents-show-me-the-money
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Rockstar... ...I thought that someone was JOKING by saying "rockstar developer" or "rockstar programmer." You people sicken me.
Writers, performers, singers, boxers all have agents. I'm not sure if the model works for all those groups of people, but that's what's there. On the other hand, that's mostly because they don't have a regular job - they need someone to find and negotiate the pay for them as they're either otherwise busy working or don't have the skills or contacts to get the work. Maybe if the job were per-project and rockstar developers could come in and guarantee some level of performance for some level of pay negotiated by the agent that could work.
A little less than three years ago, a friend of mine started YourTalentAgents, a Pittsburgh-based talent agency representing professional IT workers of all sorts (sysadmins, software engineers, hardware folks, etc.). In mid 2014, he merged with another company, Student Intuition, to form Imagine Careers. The talent agency part of the company still exists and has been profitable pretty much since the start. IIRC they've placed something like 85% of the candidates they've worked with, and many of those candidates are referring others to the talent agency. It's flipping the model in favor of excellent technologists looking for a good company, instead of a gaggle of quota-driven headhunters competing to fill a seat with a warm body.
Disclosure: I'm a friend of the CTO of Imagine Careers, who founded YTA, and a currently uncompensated advisor to the company.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Never trust anyone who calls Programmers "Rockstars, Code Ninjas, Gurus" or any other derogatory dumb ass hipster name. Being a "Programmer", "Developer", "Hacker", or a "Coder" is awesome enough. There is no need to attach prepubescence boy names to the job. You're not a "Teenage Multiplatform Ninja Coder!" Grow up and stop disrespecting the field. Seriously, you don't see Doctors, Lawyers, or Mechanical Engineers using such language to recruit.
(Plus people who call programers "rockstars" probably use Macs an live in San Fran. That alone makes them retarded.)
He'll demand the best agent and then take out a full page ad telling us how his agent is going to make all other agents his bitch.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Not every Rockstar developer can be good enough to need an agent. Grand Theft Auto has a lot of people working on it.
can you imagine a "10x rockstar developer" swaggering into a job interview with his negotiating team?
Stop. please. just stop. lets take the pretend train to imaginary town and derail it for a minute:
1. the people who sincerely think coders need agents are the people who contribute nothing to the coding process. these are parasites running out of options in a dwindling music and video talent market.
2. the kinds of coders who think they need a talent agent are the kinds of sycophantic cocksuckers that harass employees, alienate managers, fracture teams, and haul companies into sexual harassment lawsuits. they might be bombshell coders, but the truth is even with james bond, 7 martinis and an aston martin makes you a stumbling insurance liability with a gun.
3. we already have a huge problem with recruiting. I cleared 37 voicemail messages from recuiting mills that dont even source their call centers in the US. most of this was for 3 month contract or 6 month contract work, shit that is beneath anyone but that corporations feel like theyre fucking entitled to. I routinely roll out of bed for calls from these shitlords at 2 AM because someone didnt set the callcenter ntp server in india properly.
4. Corporations are another side of the problem. Apply for imgur, facebook, or any other rewarding employment position and you'll be waterboarded with masturbatory inquisition like 'what makes you such a great fit?' and 'what do you looooove about our company?' Motherfuckers I want a job, your work is interesting, and the pay is commensurate. beyond that im still human capital remember?
so for anyone thinking rockstars pornstars or coked up overweight perl jockeys with poor attendance and a penchant for lashing out at coworkers in a 10 am alcohol fueled rage are in need of some kind of dedicated legion of cocksuckers to treat them like a special snowflake, get bent.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I get a lot of articles, emails, webinars invites from IEEE.
I am sick of
Rockstars of Big Data
Rockstars of IOT
Rockstars of Wireless
Rockstars of I-know-something-I think-you-don't-know-and-I'm-going-to-may-hay-while-the-Rockstar-shines.
Sheeesh!
I have a filter that puts any email with Rockstar in the subject in the trash bin.
What I need is an agent to filter out InfoWorld's junk filler worthless content so I don't waste my time reading it or reading about it. InfoWorld is to quality articles what Wal-Mart is to furniture. All links to InfoWorld should disclose that in the summary - what happened to [InfoWorld.com] in brackets after the link?
Being worth the effort is about being marketable, that's all. Talent has very little if anything to do with it.
As for developers, I would think if you're in Silicon Valley and working for Google or facebook, a lot of other companies are gonna want to poach you - not because you are great, but because they want to steal the technology.
I heard this VP of "engineering" at a social media firm *coughmeebocough* bitch about she couldn't get "qualified" people because the only people who were capable of doing what they need worked at Google and Facebook. Ah no. What she really wanted was to steal Google and facebook's tech without having to do her own R&D.
THAT is what is meant by qualifications. They ended up selling to Google anyway.
and finding really good people and hanging onto them is very difficult.
I thought that last bit is missing. Anyone agree?
Most developers wouldn't pay a couple of hours worth of work for union representation, what makes anyone think a developer would give 10-20% to an agent to find work? Add to the fact that very few companies recognize programmer talent and are willing to pay for it (see any article on H1-b).
If you're a famous developer, chances are you're giving presentations anyway and probably have some kind of representation.
This'll give the MBA's something to do now.
I'm waiting for the article about people complaining about an uptick in smarmy agents who don't know the difference between their ass and a hole in the wall.
EVERYTHING IS AWESOOOOOOOMME
Guys when you send your resume in and they demand it be in an editable form such as MS Word be prepared to deal with the consequences of a bit of resume padding or stripping by people that do not quite understand what the words in the resume mean or who have a more sinister agenda.
I went to one interview and found that a few years of relevant experience was cut and pasted from my resume onto someone else's applying for the same job via the same agency. I'd brought copies of my resume to hand out at the interview and the interviewers got a bit of a shock comparing it to the ones they had been supplied with. They didn't use that recruiter again.
I can't thing of a quicker way to terminate an interview with me were I looking to hire developers.
I actually had something a bit like this happen back in 1990 or 1991 when I was building the engineering team for a software startup. I had two developers who were local to the area (San Diego) come in together for interviews. They actually had great resumes and relevant experience -- but when it came to talking compensation, then wanted (a) six-figure salaries (more than I was making as CTO/chief architect), (b) signing bonuses (did I mention that we were a startup and we're still about a year away from closing on venture funding?), and (c) broached the idea of company cars.
I thanked them for coming in and sent them on their way.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
What if you're not working on the next Grand Theft Auto?
Umm, those Intel Rockstar videos were supposed to be humorous, not a documentary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So is Kim Kardashian going to get into the business next?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If Slashdot would please contact my agent and make arrangements I'll post it
Another way of looking at this is Millennials vs. the old order. Welcome to the true ME generation.
If you've ever met this ass, you've met this rockstar mentality.
please stop referring to talented devs as 'rock stars'. Being at work if you are a rock star involves performing in front of 10s of thousands of fans then doing lines of blow off the bodies' of hot members of the preferred sex while partying in a luxury hotel that someone else is paying for (even if it is, technically, your money).
Sitting in front of a computer screen for 12 hours a day for some corp. - no matter how 'hot startup' they may be - is not and will not ever be 'rock star'. Sorry!
Ever wonder why Hollywood A-listers (and Oscar winners) are appearing in TV commercials? Because residuals. Nice work if you can get it. Personally, I'd love to see the geeks of the world exulted like musicians, actors, and athletes. The only question is whether this will result in a new Catch-22 barrier to entry i.e. can't get published without an agent and can't get an agent unless you've been published.
I'm the submitter -- this one just had to get out there for comment.
I have worked with a few real 10x-ers -- in the systems field, not development. None of them had agents, nor were they particularly flashy people. These are the kind of people who go from contract to contract getting reliable, interesting work. The reason they can do this is because they actually know enough to be a 10x-er. Most of the really talented people are in some sort of IT services role, either an independent consultant or a highly valued veteran employee of a big services shop if they choose not to jump around. People in this category are the kind who can jump in and rip apart a problem until the _real_ root cause is found, no matter how insanely difficult it is to locate. In the systems side of the house, that requires a mix of expert-level talent, troubleshooting skills and enough experience in different environments. Yet, nearly every one of these people has been a pleasure to work with -- they don't treat you like idiots, and if you show an interest, you learn something from them. I imagine any web framework du jour rockstar that felt they needed an agent would not be as nice to work with.
Honestly, I'm not sure what planet the author is living on. Granted, I don't live in Silicon Valley -- my experience is in "boring" industries like airlines, banking and insurance. I know now that hiring is a huge pain in the butt simply because the market is flooded with under-qualified people. It's a mix of dumb luck and leveraging your connections to get a good job. And yes, going into an interview cold with no one on staff who knows you is like playing the lottery...50 people are applying for the same spot sometimes. Beyond the typical recruiter slimeweasels, I can't imagine dealing with someone's agent when hiring for a position.
Maybe the market for phone app developers really is so hot now that people are jumping jobs for 20% raises the way they did in Dotcom Boom #1. I don't know. But on my boring side of the fence, where stuff needs to work reliably all the time, and there's always pressure on costs, the market is a little different. There's constant wage pressure from outsourcers and H1-B shops, and management really needs to be cajoled into spending anything to keep IT running. Enlightened companies keep a few senior, truly good people on staff, but the overall trend is down, both age-wise and salary-wise. The thing that they don't get is that to get to that 10x level, you need to have the experience to see what went wrong the last 20 times you've seen something implemented. Whatever - I don't see myself telling potential employers that they'll need to speak to my agent...
"I'm not a rockstar. I'm a professional. My job isn't to write the greatest code ever. My job is to turn out software that works, that does what you need done, on time and without bugs or maintenance nightmares down the road."
Why do actors have them, why do athletes have them, why do writers have literary agents. I have been saying this for years. Since the last dot com boom, actually, when tech talent was just as scarce. Why not tech talent, too, I make way more than average actor, athlete, and writer.
There are three reasons I can think of, right off the top of my head to have an agent.
1. Screen all the recruiter calls.
Everyday I get calls from at least 10 recruiters. Most are offering positions and salaries that I would not consider and they would know this if they read my resume instead of just doing a keyword search. Yes, I am talking to you, Mr recruiter, that wants to offer me a web development position in San Francisco for 3 months at $40/hr and no expenses paid. Try hiring someone local. No they done want your crappy position either.
2. Be on the constant lookout for my perfect job.
Hey I am working full time so I don't have a lot of time to devote to finding my perfect job.
3. Negotiate a better salary.
Now I have gotten pretty good at this over the years but it would be nice to have the latest industry figures when we did enter that phase.
I will get off my soapbox now.
> wouldn't pay a couple of hours worth of work for union representation, what makes anyone think a developer would give 10-20% to an agent
The people who would want a union are precisely the opposite of those who would want an agent, in general. The union is about COLLECTIVE bargaining, "we all get _____". There's no "I", it's about "we, the workers", who are essentially interchangeable. An agent is about "here's why I'm special and you want to hire me, and I want ___, which you should give me because only I can give you ____".
I've met John C a number of times, he is indeed a guru.
My longtime friend Mike Abrash is also a guru, but according to him, not in the same league as Mr Carmack.
Personally I'm a very competent programmer who've just had some small episodes of greatness: I know I'm not as bright as John or able to work for years at a single task like Mike can do, but I've still had a lot of fun over the last 35-40 years! :-)
Today I declined an offer to become CTO of a 20 year old international sw company, I'm having a pretty good time where I am now.
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
That's the thing - in the IT side of the house, "famous" people share a lot of their knowledge and are well known. I can think of a few off the top of my head - Mark Minasi, Brian Madden, Rod Trent, etc. Lots of these guys are hired by companies to dispense advice and have a reputation that follows them. I'm too busy to do it, but I've often thought it would be fun to go down that road, just blogging about random tech stuff and speaking at the occasional conference.
I think that instead of agents, the industry would be better served by a strict professional organization -- doctors are guaranteed high pay because their professional organization fights for stuff they want, and limits the supply of new entrants. Imagine not having to give the FizzBuzz test to a "senior architect" to see if he's lying, or grilling someone on minutiae regarding hardware or operating systems because you can't independently verify their experience. The interesting thing about an AMA-style professional body would be how to integrate the "trades" side of IT (help desk, tech support, routine system operations tasks) with the design and engineering side. I think this is what needs to happen if we want the profession to "grow up." Doctors don't call themselves rockstars, or ninjas, or gurus.
A productivity difference of 10X-20X is well documented. I've seen it several times. Note that's average productivity over a year, not consistently every day. Here's an example:
I've seen more than one instance in which a average, "competent" developer will spend 10 days writing a module to add feature X to some software, to solve business need Y. The expert/guru/rockstar will spend ten minutes changing a setting to solve the same problem.
So the average person spent ten working days, the expert spent ten minutes in this one case. The expert could then be only equally as productive for the rest of day and they will have accomplished in one day more than the first person accomplished in ten days. I very often solve business needs by _removing_ code, removing a restriction or problem. You can imagine that removing a blocking problem can easily be ten times as productive as the typical approach of solving new problems or handling new tasks by building new systems. Simply asking "why can't we use the existing system for this new task?", then tweaking the existing system to handle the new requirement, can be hugely more productive than starting out with the idea that new tasks require new systems to be built.
I don't know how other people code, but I put in the most hours and do my best work on MY pet projects, not someone else's. For the mundane stuff you do at a typical job I'm just "good". The code works and is on time but that is what any competent programmer should be able to do.
So if someone is truly a "rockstar", I have to ask why are they working for work? Shouldn't they be writing their own software, running their own company, living off of the royalties? If I hire a "rockstar" to work on MY project, which might not be exciting, will the "rockstar" do his best ever work? Or will he do no more than someone who's good, a team player, but hasn't aspired to write books or go on a talk circuit to get that "rockstar" reputation? Or worse, will the "rockstar" break things, throw out existing code, piss off coworkers, because he knows he's right and everyone else is an idiot?
I've been contacted by recruiters out of the blue on LinkedIn, gone through the interview process for the fabulous job they were peddling, and then not do well enough in the interview to get the job. The recruiter was warm and encouraging and friendly throughout the process... until I didn't get the job. Some dick behavior along with a "They found a substantially more qualified candidate" message. Wtf? Would it not be sufficient to just say "Unfortunately they have decided to move forward with another candidate." Was it really necessary to kick me while I was already down, disappointed I didn't get the job? Word to the wise: a recruiter finds you on Linkedin and is all friendly, it's not going to last. Like used car salesmen these people. Once you're no longer useful to you they'll discard you like you're trash.
Actors and screenwriters do indeed have a union. That's how the vast majority of actors who aren't Leonardo di Caprio or Tom Cruise make money -- the union negotiates scale wages with the studios and stage performance producers. Same goes for musicians.
I would actually be in favor of a union for that reason - there would be less downward wage pressure and new entrants would continue to come into the profession in search of a career progression.
I think I might only be a 9xer - Should I still get an agent? My office mates are definitely only an 8xer and a 6xer at best. Should they get agents? Or share an agent? Or become agents?
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
I feel that any developer who calls themselves a "rockstar developer" is probably suffering a severe case of the Dunning-Kruger effect.
All the really competent developers I've ever known have had anything but "rockstar" like qualities. They generally don't boast, they are generally frugal, they are generally the exact opposite of a rockstar.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Yes I am.
'“Our background is the music industry, where we represented American musicians for 20 years,” says Michael Solomon'
If you know anything about the music industry and sleaze therein, then you have probably heard about (or even experienced) how artists and musicians are constantly being taken advantage of and ripped off by the music industry. From Led Zeppelin, to Michael Jackson.
More info:
Courtney Love
Michael Jackson
Ok, perhaps they are not the most morally sound individuals - but their points are true nonetheless.
While I can understand what the article is getting at, I'll stick to handing out my own resumes, thank you.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
There is something to be said about getting an agent for the negotiations, someone who can negotiate on your behalf. What are the going rates for the position? What is the best rate I can get? What if I want to work as a 1099 employee vs a W2 employee? And other contract details like the removal of Non-Compete agreements, and other silliness. I recently negotiated the start of a new job, and had to really push back on the non-compete agreement (US resident not in CA), they really are quite horrible. I wouldn't mind paying a percentage for the best deal, and some more transparency in the process.
Node.js Is Bad Ass Rock Star Tech
For Node.js substitute any "Rock Start" buzzword.
Why is Snark Required?
Let me tell you my experience. Got through with their interviews.
They had no leads in my area, but wanted me aboard. Sounds good, right? Not when you read what that entails. They who have "no leads" in the area, keep 20% of any jobs I land, even on my own... They charge me unreasonable monthly fees going forward, plus any hotel expenses they deem reasonable for their travels (wtf?). They are to be my exclusive agents going forward, and will handle all salary negotiations, etc. for any leads, even if I find them. In other words, I am completely at their mercy by "signing on", plus I pay them their monthly fees (plus any hotel expenses *they* decide they need for their business, again, wtf?)
When I politely tried to discuss altering some of these terms, they flat-out said: Not negotiable.
Fuck that shit. How about they agree that I am their only client going forward?
I wouldn't touch 10x with a 10x- pole.
The SAG rate sheet specifies about $3,400 per week for most performers. Recognizing that they only get paid for the time they are on set, not the "work" time put into going to auditions, etc, so figure that's about $1,700 per week of work that they put in.
$1,700 week - yeah sounds like interchangeable people to me. Not the people hiring agents to negotiate for them.
When Sarsippius shows up to get down to work, he don't take "no" for an answer.
What kind of salaries are talking about here? Its not really clear to me what the benefit of the agent is, besides negotiating a slightly higher salary and some vacation days. I have a feeling that rockstar status still doesn't mean getting paid like a rockstar.
I remember in the mid 90's when if you wanted to work at ILM and where a talented compositor you had to walk into a negotiating room with an attorney present because if you didn't you would get abused with legal jargon and strange contractual idiosyncrasies that would inevitably take advantage of your talent and leave you working for peanuts... There is a reason that class action conspiracy to reduce wages of developers settled out of court. So less of an agent and more of an attorney. Or perhaps it's time to start a union.
where i work they like to use ees, physics and math grads for computer science work.
those folks dont even know what a proper hashtable is and neither do they WANT to ever learn it.
the managers have no clues either. it is easy for me to be a rockstar relative to these imbeciles. my code is 100 times more efficient.
I'd love to mod up your post. The other reason to have a trade organization is to make sure members are up-to-date.
Tech is chock full of fads, but every so often certain fads become long-term trends worth learning.
Most of the developers that I have met really sucked. While I have met some stunning rockstars who could code up solutions that were magical on so many levels the bulk of the "rockstars" were simply blowhards that were probably more destructive than the worst boring developers. These were people who would literally dig into the kernal of Linux instead of writing a simple python script. But the sure sign that a "rockstar" is in fact just a blowhard is when they become religious zelots for one technology or another. They will make statements like "Procedural coding is so 20th century" or "You must recode your entire well oiled system using language X in order to add that one feature."
These "rockstars" usually come in and create massive amounts of work. Destroy pretty much everything and then leave before the cleanup is barely started.
Whereas the true rockstars will simply come in, quietly code for a short while, and solutions are born. Often these are things that other people can then work with making them better as well. If there is horrible work that does have to be done then again the rockstar will quietly nod, find the few in-house good programmers, spend a weekend or two, and then present a working robust replacement for the terrible system. Not something that is "almost done" (as in half baked) but a complete solution with in-house talent that can work with it.
If anything the surest sign of a rockstar is that there will be little or no squabbling. If there is any squabbling with the in-house developers it will be with the resident blowhard who will be heard saying, "That system won't work, we need to stay the course and use the technology that I have 8 certifications in."