from Hacker News

Developer Auction out of beta; accepting developers from all backgrounds in US

by allangrant on 1/16/13, 7:14 PM with 73 comments

  • by iamleppert on 1/16/13, 10:20 PM

    I would recommend steering clear of these guys. They spammed me several times, at work, trying to get me to join their site. Although the founder professes they "are not your typical recruiter sending unsolicited emails".

    On the surface it sounds like a good idea, but it is nothing more than lipstick on a pig, plain old recruiters. You're better off using multiple recruiters, who will expose you to many companies and get you the best possible price.

  • by cyborg on 1/16/13, 11:22 PM

    I had an extremely bad experience with Developer Auction. Ultimately using the site got me fired from my job and the team at Developer Auction was extremely non-responsive/uncaring about it all. Matt Miszewski in particular was extremely callous.

  • by donretag on 1/16/13, 7:41 PM

    Most of these new services trying to disrupt the recruiting market, such as Developer Auction and Pitchbox, are narrowly focused on Silicon Valley. Obviously, the issue is more acute in the Bay Area.

    They are still curated with a manual selection process, in other words they are still recruiters. A true disruption would need to occur for every locale. Not everyone is looking to move to Silicon Valley and not only Silicon Valley companies are looking to hire.

  • by T-hawk on 1/17/13, 2:45 AM

    A few random site comments:

    - Posting a picture is a legal minefield for US employers. Companies literally don't want to know anything about your age/race/sex at the screening stage for fear of a discrimination lawsuit. The only safe policy is to ignore/reject all candidate applications with a picture. (It's not illegal for the employer to know or even ask, but it's illegal to make decisions based on such information, and the best way to convince a belligerent labor attorney that a decision wasn't discriminatory is to never possess the information in the first place.)

    - The salary box has a hilarious pair of up/down arrows for increments of 1. Yeah I'm going to click 110,000 times to enter my desired salary. :)

    - Am I blind or is there nowhere to list skills/responsibilities/experience under the work experience section? Or is that the point, to avoid that stale format?

  • by axlerunner on 1/16/13, 8:04 PM

    The name sucks. Makes me feel like cattle on the block.

  • by sandis on 1/16/13, 7:26 PM

    Developer Auction now accepting developers from all backgrounds in the USA

  • by robomartin on 1/16/13, 10:26 PM

    Why are recruiter fees so ridiculously high?

    I've been on both sides of the equation. I've used recruiters to try and find people and have used recruiters to try and find work.

    On the receiving end it is always shocking to see someone ask you for a $25K fee to hire a $100K employee. I'd rather give the employee more money.

    At best a recruiter should be perfectly happy with a 5% finder's fee. Why are they asking to get paid the equivalent of what a person will take a quarter of the year to earn?

    This is particularly true in this age of database-driven recruiting. It costs them just about zero to have you in a database.

  • by bcbrown on 1/16/13, 8:11 PM

    If the only hiring companies are early-stage VC-backed startups in the Bay Area, that's not very interesting to me. That's the impression I got.

  • by Cub3 on 1/16/13, 10:56 PM

    Forgot about this, sent through my details on 9/24/12, still seem to have an account "waiting for approval" (i'm non US though)

    email I got at the time said "We're reviewing developer applications over the coming week" and there seems to be no way to delete my account now... so my information is sitting in triage

  • by blaines on 1/16/13, 8:23 PM

    Developer Auction was a great opportunity. I was able to get introduced to companies previously not on my radar, and startups I may have never heard of. I received offers from companies across the country in LA, SF, NYC, Chicago, and more.

    AMA

  • by n9com on 1/16/13, 10:32 PM

    Why do you only allow 'funded' startups to bid? What about highly profitable bootstrapped companies? Drop the angel list requirement.

  • by chetan51 on 1/16/13, 10:15 PM

    I recently got hired through Developer Auction, and I just want to say that it was a really great experience. +1 from me :)

  • by cjbprime on 1/17/13, 1:42 AM

    Looks like the signup form (which asks you for a password) does _not_ use HTTPS -- beware of exposing a shared password.

  • by pairing on 1/17/13, 7:34 AM

    I applied when the site first launched, but my profile is still being approved... It would be nice if they had a section to highlight side projects. Most of my software work out side of my day job is in side projects, and not open source.

  • by codegeek on 1/16/13, 8:01 PM

    Is it just me or the top navbar is really hard to read with the color combinations?

  • by robomartin on 1/16/13, 10:14 PM

    "Start working and receive 20% cash back on our fee, typically $3,000 to $5,000+"

    What does that mean? Somewhere else it says that it is free to developers. Is the hired developer receiving a portion of the fee you charge the employer?

  • by elliottcarlson on 1/16/13, 8:36 PM

    I tried creating a profile, and accidently linked the wrong Github account (work vs personal) and there doesn't seem to be a way to unlink it.

  • by jsemar on 1/16/13, 10:28 PM

    Can't seem to edit my profile. Hitting submit returns me to /profiles with a 404 page (Obi wan kenobi)

  • by BayAreaDev on 1/17/13, 1:53 AM

    alright took the plunge! So far using the site, feel like the whole thing is 'in development' -not a finished product yet. Hopefully it will reach the critical mass soon.