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Comment by rbellio | Hacker News Reader

It's an interesting idea and I wish whoever runs it the absolute best. I can tell the motivation here is to maximize the earning potential for a developer and find a good fit through a novel approach and I commend the thought.

I can't help but laugh at the idea of someone being auctioned off, though. Pretty sure they used to do this and you got the manacles with your purchase.

How invested is an employer going to be in a employee that he had to go into a bidding war for? I'm going to imagine a great deal. What happens if the individual just isn't a good fit for the role or the culture of the company?

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It's not a traditional auction in the sense that "highest bidder wins". The goal is to present each software engineer with 5-10 opportunities at cool companies, with numbers attached to them.

They can then choose which offers are worth following-up with via phone or in-person interviews based on any number of factors (location, product/service, company stage, who the investors are, equity, salary, etc.).

Like you say, there's much more to a job than a salary but in an environment where the average SF Developer gets recruitment spam every 40-hours, we hope to provide a more efficient way of vetting & comparing opportunities.

Thanks for clearing this up for me. I do appreciate the response. Hopefully you can clear one other troubling thought up for me: How is this recruitment tool going to avoid falling into the same recruitment spam of sites like Dice et. al.?

One of the greatest finds I've made in recent years was a decent recruiter. This individual not only finds opportunities that I find interesting, but supported and handled the minutiae that is involved in the recruitment process. I don't have to worry about submitting resumes or negotiating meeting times for interviews, he does all those things for me. He knows my salary requirements and I only have to invest a small amount of time into negotiations.

There's obviously some benefit in using a website like this, as it opens up opportunities in other locations that I wouldn't be aware of, but as someone who is content staying in his current area, what other benefits would using the site give me?

Thanks.

Good question -- we're basically trying to fulfill the role of your recruiter, but at-scale. Auctions only last 14 days, so the turn around is really quick. After that, your profile is yanked from the site. We're only approving candidates who intend to switch jobs in the near future.

We offer a cash-back on our fee (which your recruiter probably doesn't) and we'll present you to a much wider pool of vetted, venture-funded companies than a single recruiter will. And because it's a competitive bidding environment, the offers you get should be the same or higher than you would get through the other process.

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