Show HN: Algora – Using bounties in the SWE hiring process
algora.io
algora.io
Earlier this year we decided to hire SWE summer interns. We wanted to know how well someone would perform on the job, so we gave our top candidates a real paid task from our backlog. Introducing a payment allowed us to ask for something challenging and lengthy, while also respecting the candidates’ time. We also found that the strongest candidates self-selected into this paid screening challenge, unlike the traditional and mundane take-home coding assignments. You can find our challenge and the rewarded pull requests here: https://algora.io/algora/challenge/bounties/1
From our experience, hiring by building product predicts on-the-job performance really well.
Similarly, one of our founding customers Lithobyte used Algora to complete $15k of contract work with a developer over four months before hiring him full-time, calling it “trial employment”. Is this something any of you have tried?
Furthermore, as a bootstrapped startup we didn’t feel ready to pay fixed salaries to our interns. Instead, we wanted a more outcome-based way to collaborate, making sure any money we spent was consequential. That’s why we used bounties for all of our work during the internship — you can see a sample here: https://algora.io/demo/bounties
If you’d like to try Algora, today we are launching our first public release! In addition, we are really curious about your thoughts and relevant experience; how do you all go about hiring developers? We’d love to hear from you, also feel free to reach out to us at zafer@algora.io and ioannis@algora.io