£1500 If you find me a job I actually want to do

Sorry, but I'm not going to hire anyone for a technical position if they don't even have their own domain name. Seriously, talk about turn off. You're willing to spend £1500 on getting a job, but you aren't willing to spend less than £100 getting a domain and hosting for a year? (And I know that you can get domains for like $2 a year, and good hosting for less than $25, so £100 is far more than you need.)

Any professional tech person shouldn't having their email @ gmail (or any domain that isn't their own), or their website at something.wordpress.com or blogspot.com.

You can still use Gmail and Wordress.com, that's easy. If you're exceptionally lazy and can't be bothered using the incredibly easy ways of installing WordPress on your own hosting system (and using IMAP for email).

Also, for your education, I suggest recording it, to put the important stuff first: 2000-­‐2004: Bachelor of Computer Science (or whatever it was in), Babes-­‐Bolyai University, Cluj-­‐Napoca, Romania.

And if you speak Romanian, put that as well in your language section. If you only speak English, take out the entire section (looks stupid with only one language).

Interesting post. Probably worthwhile writing something similar as a covering letter with a CV. It might, however come across as a little pretentious. I'm not sure how to fix that.

I work contract/freelance/run my own business because the whole permanent job thing invariably isn't and for similar reasons why you're offering 1.5K to find a nice role. Good Luck!

I get a feeling that he is going about this the wrong way. While he lists all the things that he is not comfortable with and why it might not work out and is also willing to throw money at someone to 'fix' this problem of finding the 'right match', he doesn't seem to be open to accepting the idea that he will not get to choose every aspect of the company unless he also is willing to participate in every aspect. For instance:

    > the London startups I’ve interviewed with so far, all seem to have
    > committed the same sins: they’re recruiting for a role to exercise
    > technical ownership after they’ve made their decisions about the stack
    > and technical strategy.

and then ...

    > While I do use Python, Ruby, JavaScript, etc for different (non-critical)
    > components in the solution design, I’m mainly a Java engineer. All of
    > these aforementioned have their time and place, but my skills and passion
    > are not around using any of them as a core platform.

    > Since I’m a backend engineer I don’t do “full stack” when it comes to
    > coding. If you clearly need, but can’t afford (or don’t want) to hire
    > frontend or mobile developers, then we might not be compatible.

So, on the one hand he expects startups to not commit to a stack until he is there and be open to changing it if he feels there's a need to, after he comes in but he is not willing to accept the responsibility that comes with deciding the stack ?

If he doesn't do full stack (and that's a prefectly good thing) he should learn to interoperate with stacks that aren't decided upon by him.

Also, this:

    > With most startups I interviewed, I found the team dynamics and technical
    > stack to be more challenging than the business plan or the potential the
    > idea has.

That's just condesending.

IMHO, offers of $2000 as referral bonus if you find us a rockstar (while for the exact same role, recruiters will be rewarded with 2 to 3 months of salary, i.e., $20000 to $30000 per $100k of salary) are asking for a ridiculous arbitrage that does not exist : I know the value of my time and I will not do the job of a recruiter for you without commensurate compensation.

This offer is the mirror of these "wow, free money of $2k if you do the job that we normally pay $20k for" offers. I will rather read about Constraint Handling Rules in Prolog or something else that is likely to impact my resume or my mind in a positive way in the time it takes to play recruiter (for either party).

Please let me know if I got the economics wrong. "Talk as if you're right, but listen as if you're wrong", said someone wise, and I listen.

I found this to be rather big-headed and naive.

On one hand you're saying if someone finds you a job you'll give them £1,500, but on the other you're saying if a company comes across you via your wordpress blog then they OWE you £1500.

Demanding a referral fee for someone doing the work you haven't managed to do your self is ridiculous. Yes some companies offer it but its not a given. I'd think twice before hiring anyone who demands anything.

I like the idea of this post but the author comes across terribly.

Obtuse is not a verb. You want "object".

Been there. Ended up running something on my own.