Quora, DropBox, Others Made $30M in Job Offers To Engineers via DeveloperAuction (opens in new tab)

(techcrunch.com)

27 pointsvrikhter13y ago9 comments

9 comments

> "currently open only to employees of Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Zynga, and Google as well as Stanford & MIT graduates"

So it's really a site for a small number (130+) of "start-ups" (all sharing some common investors?) to poach talent from an extremely small A List of the biggest tech companies around.

The $30 million for 88 engineers is an average of $341,000 per engineer. It sounds like they are adding up all the offers for every engineer rather than the top offer for each engineer. Perhaps some got no offers. Perhaps some got 20 offers of $50,000. The $30 million total offers for 88 engineers tells us almost nothing.

up_and_up13y ago

"DeveloperAuction.com is currently open only to employees of Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Zynga, and Google as well as Stanford & MIT graduates"

Wow. I guess I'll take my lowly UC Berkeley degree and startup VPE experience somewhere else. What a crock of elitist bullshit.

23david13y ago

Isn't the point that the job offers amounts are supposed to go up for good developers because of the auction format? Don't necessarily blame developerauction.

It's probably just some intern or SEO monkey at AOL/Techcrunch completely blowing the headline. Not exactly the first time I've been underwhelmed by their reporting prowess.

gobengo13y ago

Because as a startup hacker, I always want to work where I will earn the most.

Evbn13y ago

Seems like a vanity metric to sum all the offers, which can't be simultaneously satisfied. instead of keeping separate the counts amd something like average or max per company or candidate.

jhuckestein13y ago

I'd say it's an appropriate measure for demand.

mdonahoe13y ago

I agree, yet I have never heard this technique to describe other auctions. For instance, any time a ridiculous item is for sale on Ebay, the news stories describe the top bid and the number of bidders.

Perhaps the actual sum of the max bids for all 88 developers would be less misleading.

1 more reply

droithomme13y ago

I agree. This could be 33 low ball $1 million offers for a single guy who is a VP of engineering at Facebook. Without a histogram or something better than this metric, we can't tell.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

9 comments

droithomme13y ago

> "currently open only to employees of Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Zynga, and Google as well as Stanford & MIT graduates"

So it's really a site for a small number (130+) of "start-ups" (all sharing some common investors?) to poach talent from an extremely small A List of the biggest tech companies around.

up_and_up13y ago

"DeveloperAuction.com is currently open only to employees of Facebook, Apple, Twitter, Zynga, and Google as well as Stanford & MIT graduates"

Wow. I guess I'll take my lowly UC Berkeley degree and startup VPE experience somewhere else. What a crock of elitist bullshit.

23david13y ago

Isn't the point that the job offers amounts are supposed to go up for good developers because of the auction format? Don't necessarily blame developerauction.

It's probably just some intern or SEO monkey at AOL/Techcrunch completely blowing the headline. Not exactly the first time I've been underwhelmed by their reporting prowess.

gobengo13y ago

Because as a startup hacker, I always want to work where I will earn the most.

Evbn13y ago

Seems like a vanity metric to sum all the offers, which can't be simultaneously satisfied. instead of keeping separate the counts amd something like average or max per company or candidate.

jhuckestein13y ago

I'd say it's an appropriate measure for demand.

mdonahoe13y ago

Perhaps the actual sum of the max bids for all 88 developers would be less misleading.

1 more reply

droithomme13y ago

I agree. This could be 33 low ball $1 million offers for a single guy who is a VP of engineering at Facebook. Without a histogram or something better than this metric, we can't tell.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse