Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfmandroid | Hacker News Reader

Once you pass their screening process, you will get jobs in one or two weeks

Something I find rather intimidating about toptal is their top 3% advertising, when I think of top 3% work I think of, say, writing an RFC of a widely used internet protocol, inventing a language and writing its optimizing compiler, automated air traffic control, debugging live code on nuclear reactor SCADA systems, that kind of stuff. I'd be interested in work at a calmer more laid back environment like only top 5% or top 10% job responsibilities. Its possible everyone there is massively underemployed, but probably not.

What I'm getting at is there's nothing wrong with a site that matches brain surgeons to brain surgeon jobs, unless you'd be chill getting an ophthalmic surgeon gig, where do I go? upwork is famous for posting gigs that would pay $125K in SV but the dreaded "average pay rate" is reported as $9.81 or whatever.

Possibly "top 3%" is meaningless in the sense of "ninja rock star" is meaningless and anyone who can fizzbuzz is by definition in the top 3% of human species programming talent.

This article[0] says the US has 3.6 million software devs. 3% of that is 108,000. The stuff you listed is like .1% of developers.

[0] http://www.computerworld.com/article/2483690/it-careers/indi...

A fellow HN user, gil_vegliach[2], wrote up a very good summary[1] of the Toptal 3% filtering process - it seems fairly rigorous, consisting of multiple rounds with a week long project (doesn't mention if this is paid or not). Basically, it sounds like a "full" tech interview.

[1] http://gilvegliach.it/?id=14

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=gil_vegliach

I'm on Toptal. I can confirm the blog post is quite accurate on the screening process. They likely receive applicants across the world and they must have a quick filter in process. Remember a lot of so-called "software engineers" can't even solve FizzBuzz. Allegedly, only 5% pass the initial algorithmic step, and the other half fails the other steps leaving only about 3% of the applicants.

You set the rates, though they'll direct your on what might be competitive. In practice, rates might not be that interesting for SV/NYC developers, but I find plenty of people from other parts of the developed world in the network - and is definitely good for South America.

And at least in my experience, staff is polite and professional. They'll help you build an attractive profile and deal with most of the usual client/freelancer nuisance, including rates and payments. As they handle most negotiation on your behalf, the relationship "smoothness" with clients is above average.

Not sure if that changed but I wanted to hire people there as I knew the screening process was rigorous; then I saw what they would charge me and the difference with what the coder gets. They made extortionist markup; I thought Upwork was bad in that respect but his was far worse. Then I read threads like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10107448 . Maybe they changed since but I do not think so...

What rates do you get? Seems we are still talking $30/hr with them getting $100/hr. In a 'normal' company this makes sense: all kinds of benefits, office, computer, car, whatever, but for them, for freelancers, it is not all too great for the coders. But again, might have changed. Just think if you are in that top 3%, why do you need Toptal... Every company is looking for you.

>>> Every company is looking for you.

... only if you live in NYC or SF.

The screening is only useful to test for build algorithms and very unrelated to your skills.

So prepare for irrelevant questions before get in...

Applying now, thanks!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com