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Comment by ohashi | Hacker News Reader

It struck me as odd that I would want to hire people this way. As far as I can tell everyone is just asking for more money (big surprise, I know) but it says nothing about what they want to do, are interested in, etc. Do I just blindly reach out to a bunch of people and hope they match my needs?

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This is just an introduction service. You're not sending out offers to anonymous individuals. You ask for their resume, talk with them on the phone, bring them in for an interview, and see if they are a fit.

This is just a way to find people who are already working and may be interested in changing jobs, but who do not want to post their resume to monster.com.

Right, this only takes hiring into account based solely on the external motivation of money. Money only works as a motivator so long as basic (and intermediate) needs are met. This kind of behavior is how I perceive a lot of hiring takes place in SV now, with talent moving to the highest bidder without much thought of culture and other needs.

When employers all start offering the same wages because you've hit The Limit(tm), you start becoming very interested in culture, work/life balance, location, side perks, what your working on and probability of success.

it simply starts the conversation, I'm a X who lives in Y and wants a salary of Z. i'd prefer this to receiving random emails from recruiters.

>Do I just blindly reach out to a bunch of people and hope they match my needs?

welcome to recruiting! :)

(except that a recruiter is totally unqualified to assess who can actually match their client's needs - even with their CV in front of them and the chance to talk with them by phone or in person)

That's why recruiters don't care about clients' "needs". They care about clients' "requirements"

>"except that a recruiter is totally unqualified to assess who can actually match their client's needs"

"How would you rate your ability to harvest Karma from a site such as Hackernews, on a scale of 1 to 5?"

"eh, 3?"

"and reddit?"

"um, 5"

For interesting problems I'd take a 10-20% cut.

I promised to teach some stuff to some guys at work in a little study circle, then I guess it is finally time to brush up on my Javascript etc and send out the cv.

True, it also states the person has no loyalty to their current employer if it means an extra $10k a year. This could be a red flag for some, or an opportunity. I am not in the programming business, so wonder what the turnover rate is at tech firms.

Employers don't have loyalty to their employees, so this is unsurprising. These are business relationships.

What value does loyalty have to an employee other than the eternal dangling carrot?

If they're unhappy, or need that extra $10k, let them go for it.

If the employer wants loyalty, then they can pay for it. Maybe not literally, but when I really like my job it takes a hell of a lot more than an extra $10k/year to get me to switch.

Or they can heavily encourage it, with vesting stock options, seniority based raises/promotions, etc.

Relying on "loyalty" to keep people when the employer has shown none (an employment contract that has penalties if you're laid off? Only for senior execs) is just a bad idea.

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