[sph]

I'm in the same position, and I am once again asking for "talent management" to become a thing. I am a software engineer, I am willing to pay a recruiter/manager some percent of my revenue to keep sending work my way and find new quality clients.

Yes, I would pay a recruiter to keep around so that I do not have to spend time sending resumes and searching job boards whenever a contract dries up.

Right now I am looking for work. If you're a recruiter (or another engineer for that matter) interested in such an arrangement, email is in my profile.

[ethanwillis]

This is exactly the conclusion I've come to as well. It's not that I don't have the soft skills capability to do it myself. And maybe it's an ego thing but I think I'm also pretty strong on the soft skills front.

HOWEVER, and it's a big "however" -- I don't truly enjoy it. I don't mean that I don't like building a relationship with clients, putting thought into my communication, etc. In some way I do enjoy those facets of it a lot. But, I'm an introvert by nature and when managing clients, acquiring clients, etc... It feels like I'm putting on a persona that's not truly myself and it's very draining emotionally and intellectually which ends up actually impacting the quality of my work over time.

I would love to be able to find a "talent manager" who can do the job of "talking to the customer and bringing the specs to the engineers."/officespace I think to most people this sounds exactly like just "having a job." And people will ask what's the difference from simply having a manager?

I think this perspective is also why there's not a solid existing industry that fits the needs here.

As well, I don't know if this is necessarily true but having someone with at least some basic level of software knowledge I think is a huge plus to being a talent manager as you or I would think of them. That helps to ensure that the quality of working coming in meets at least some base level. The problem of course is that anyone with the right knowledge will either be a developer themselves or in some other role already. To make this work they might need to be able to manage multiple talents.. but then it runs the risk of turning into an agency of sorts, right?

And I don't off the top of my head know exactly what the qualitative differences are here between an agency managing multiple contractors and a "talent manager" but I think there are some and would love to hear thoughts on what those would be. I think it's all centered around how the relationship actually works. As you say you want to hire/pay a percentage and I would as well. That keeps the talent manager working for the engineer(s) versus the other way around.

[sph]

Actors don't have to go door to door knocking at film studios' doors asking for a job. They pay an agency, get a call once in a while to star in some crappy movie, or, if they're lucky, a blockbuster. In exchange, the agency gets 20% of their million dollar salary and a place in the credits.

I don't get why freelance software engineering can't be the same. I would pay a recruiter handsomely to do that exact service. I mean, we're not actors, but this is a rich sector, there's a ton of demand, it's a worldwide market, so where the heck are they?

I want to act^H^H^Hwrite code for a living, not getting real good at job hunting.

[badpun]

Bad analogy. Actors go to dozens of auditions to get one role. It's basically interviewing hell.

[AlwaysRock]

When I was a recruiter I did this. It was difficult though. It worked best when the dev had a specialized skill set. In 2015ish a lot of companies needed native ios or android devs in Chicago. I had 1-2 folks who would dive in, build a mobile app, then leave. They were awesome. Clients were okay with it because they needed something fast and it wasnt their core app. I remember doing it a few times with vue, ember, and react (early in the react days) as well.

We were a lot less likely to be able to talk a company into doing that for a typical full stack dev.

That being said you will probably have to talk to a lot of recruiters to find someone who has the right relationships to do this. Like 2 out of the 80 recruiters at the company I worked for would have gotten you to me. The rest would have pressured you to interview for a full time role. That is just at one recruiting agency.

[f0e4c2f7]

I haven't tried it yet but I've seen 10x Management[0] mentioned on Hacker News. It's essentially the model you're describing.

[0] https://10xmanagement.com/

[sph]

I've seen this one yet the fact that it's the only one recommended over the years (AFAIK from the same user that works with them) means it's a very rare and scarce service.

[pyuser583]

I read an article (decade ago?) about talent agents for software engineers. It was a thing, for a bit at least.

[calvinmorrison]

How is this different than just working with the same recruiter over and over?