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Bid for Geeks?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the this-is-crazy dept.

Ant wrote in to sent us a Wired story about engineers forsale on ebay. The summary is that 16 guys are willing to quit their jobs at a major valley ISP and work for you. And the bidding starts at over $3 million. It looks interesting, and with techies in demand these days, it might work, although I don't think thats how I would try to get a job (well, maybe if you guys started bidding like crazy *grin*)

8 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Closed already? by Timmy · · Score: 2

    I think they are trying to shut down phony auctions quicker. It's perfectly within their rights to do so, in my opinion. Can you imagine what kind of trouble they'd get in if somebody actually WAS able to buy a classroom full of japanese schoolchildren?

    However, I think this auction was legit, and creative. It should have stayed. I know I'd like to see how much they actually went for.

  2. I talked to those guys by Lev+Grossman · · Score: 3

    There's a couple of quotes from the guys who are auctioning themselves at timedigital.com.


    Specifically,
    http://cgi.pathfi nder.com/time/digital/daily/0,2822,23744,00.html

    --
    less talk, more synthohol
  3. Re:I'll bid... by Samhailt · · Score: 2

    $7.46, a laptop ethernet dongle, a whole bag of stand offs and screws, and a 486 with a 500 meg hard drive. (don't make me up it to the 3 pentium 120's I have also)

    there beat that.

    --
    "We want to take over the world, but we don't want to do it tomorrow, it's OK if it's next week"-- Linus Torvalds
  4. Re:heh by Numeric · · Score: 2

    Actually eBay removed their auction. I did a search for "engineers ISP" and had one hit that went to a generic Ebay web page.

    --
    -- ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space!
  5. And Who Is It? by Bryant · · Score: 2

    This is a rumor, obviously; take it as seriously as you'd take any rumor on the Internet.

    But my fairly reliable source sez: these guys were the IS department of DIGEX West.

  6. 5 Administrators? by sidewinder · · Score: 2

    I think they are either trying to jump a sinking ship or have already been laid off. The fact that
    there are 5 administrators in a team of 16 points
    to me that they are trying to leavage the skills of the technical side to pull jobs for the administrators (who while very good at their jobs, do not have the same job opportunities as the technical guys)

    I know I've been in a similar situation. When a previous company was shaky everyone, started sending their cvs out. Pretty soon the employment agencies catched on and twigged that someone could get a full team (v. important word) for the same price as 16 indivuduals (spooky coincidence that the numbers are the same). This is what actual happened. A small company looking to increase there presence in the internet world stepped in and saved the day buying the office, desks, machines etc etc, plus giving the employees
    employment (with better salary). The office that
    they took over is now the main office for the new company. So this can happen.

    good luck with the auction

  7. 16 guys for $3 million? They work cheap by L1zard_K1n6 · · Score: 2

    At some Valley web companies, thats the aggregate value of just a few (three or less) engineers.

    I know $3 million sounds like a big number, but its fairly low for 16 employees. I doubt they're very good or they'd realize that 16 top engineers are worth at least $16 million to any tech company.

  8. update by ispteam · · Score: 5
    Yeah. Don't know why everybody refers to us, er,
    them, as 16 engineers. So, allow me to answer a
    few questions for the masses:

    • Yes, we(aw, fukit) are serious.
    • We've received serious bids in email, and are talking to several serious people.
    • We do not yet know why ebay took down the auction...we did not close it, just suddenly got email saying it was canceled. Working on seeing what's up with that. At the worst we'll just post the auction somewhere else. Legal departments can't keep us down! ;)
    • Regarding the price: Yes, a few of us could probably get 3 million by ourselves(there are some really top notch people in this group), but the fact is we're not shooting for the nearly impossible. The salaries are more than double what we're currently getting, and yes, they are quite cheap for any, say, VC firm with an idea and no team to implement it yet. Can you say one-stop shopping for a startup? For $3.14mil?
    • Sure, there are more focused ways of looking for a job, but for 16 people at once? Not nearly as easy. We get along quite well together and thought it'd be cool to move as a group. We can't get rid of senior management, so we'll just remove ourselves from the situation.
    • Regarding who we are...no comment! Don't want to get ourselves in premature trouble, and don't really want to trash the company's reputation...doesn't help much anybody left behind.