[lynnetye]

Companies pay a yearly subscription fee for content creation and listing their profile on Key Values. I never charge software engineers and I don't charge companies any placement fees for the engineers they hire through Key Values.

Having a contingency model is definitely the more lucrative path, but I'm against it for two reasons: (1) I'm a dev, not a recruiter, and (2) I think placements fees are part of what's broken in recruiting. The incentives are misaligned among recruiters, candidates, and employers when recruiters only want to place someone just long enough to hit the 90-day mark.

[luminati]

^^The incentives are misaligned among recruiters, candidates, and employers when recruiters only want to place someone just long enough to hit the 90-day mark.

Precisely! That's why I think Triplebyte.com is such an overrated company. Behind all their new-age silicon valley spin, they are nothing but an old-school scheming recruiter, charging $10K++ per hire.

Think of about it - it's the ultimate rent-seeking industry out there. I feel that the $10K should go to the candidate who is actually going to do all the work and/or be re-invested into R&D (actually adding value to the world rather than paying fat recruiters).

[enraged_camel]

$10k per hire sounds like a lot, until you realize that engineers add hundreds of thousands of dollars in value to their companies per year, if not much more. And good hires are worth their weight in gold.

So clearly, Triplebyte’s success is at least to an extent the result of their delivering value to their clients.

[luminati]

you're attacking a straw man. I didn't deny the worth or value of a good engineer. "And good hires are worth their weight in gold." => So don't they deserve a chunk of the 10K triplebyte gets, considering triplebyte is just a middleman. Also wasn't the internet supposed to get rid of the middle man or drastically minimize the rent they seek?

I really like what key values does - I think it's a very sustainable way of doing it (both the incentive structure and the philosophy itself) and wish the very best.

I don't wish triplebyte, recruiters, and other rent-seeking middlemen well.

[mandeepj]

I have seen fees up to $30k for each FT hire.

[throw03172019]

It’s usually a percentage of first year salary. 10-15%

[alpenbazi]

I've seen contracts with hire fee of 25% of the mans salary. They were in pharma. 25%of100-200k per deal.

They both founders got money very fast

[nicholas73]

How did you solve the chicken-egg problem, where the site isn't valuable until you get a lot of viewers/postings? Thanks, and great site!

[ngrilly]

Great question! I'm wondering the same.

[jdp23]

Great point. Really impressed with how you've approached it!