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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.
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.
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.)
and finding really good people and hanging onto them is very difficult.
I thought that last bit is missing. Anyone agree?
"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."