[michaelochurch]

Neat concept, but the exclusivity douched it up bad and I'd short-sell it because of that. In the age of the Internet, you have to find a way to create exclusivity that isn't elitist. Hacker News is an exclusive community (the people we don't want here find technology boring) but not elitist.

By the way, I think you should limit your field to people who would never work for Zynga, not people who currently work there.

[overgard]

I get why the developers of this might want to limit the initial pool for practicality's sake (I imagine it is helpful to have people who are at least somewhat pre-vetted), but I have to agree, when I saw that my initial reaction was "you think the only people worth their salt are part of a very small insular world of large companies that are able to overpay talent to keep them off the market?" I'm sure that wasn't the intention, but that's the impression it left me with.

In a sense though, this reminds me of professional sports free agency in a lot of ways. You have the teams/companies that are willing to overpay for names, and you have sort of the moneyball thing going on with groups that are looking for really good bang for their buck and trying to measure undervalued talent. One thing I wonder if this site could have the potential to do is help out the second group, although I don't think the current setup does that.

[Matt_Mickiewicz]

I'd love to hear your suggestions on how we could better vet that second group, and identify who they are, so that employers place a credible value on them.

[bjourne]

I don't care about the other requirements, but the part where you get in if you have a degree from Stanford or MIT is downright mean. Those schools costs tens of thousands of dollars to attend to per semester but does not make you a better developer than having gone to a cheaper college.

There is no correlation between the amount of dollars you spend on your education and how educated you are. There is a correlation between having rich parents that can pay for it and going to an expensive school. But I wish people would stop perpetuating this myth about how a great school automatically makes their alumni great. The schools themselves aren't going to do it because expensive fees is what they live on. People who spent that kind of money aren't either because they gain a lot of free and undeserved opportunities from the reputation the school has. But we, the smart techies should know better. George W Bush graduated from Yale for gods sake.

[hnwh]

As an MIT grad, and a PhD, I must say.. you've nailed it. Bravo

[wiredd]

I'm curious how you vet the first group, e.g. that someone works for Zynga. Verifying a corporate email address seems like the easy way, but I would imagine many current employees would be reluctant to use their work email to interact with a recruiting service.

[veyron]

It's adverse selection: the type of people who would use this service are probably not the people you want working for your startup. The really successful people would be picked off in other ways (not actively recruiting) so you are left with the B and C players (which ironically are a dime a dozen)

[michaelochurch]

They have a hard problem. Looking for a job makes you less attractive, and there are a lot of people on the market who aren't qualified at all (non-Fizzbuzzers). They want to have only desirable applicants, which means they need to control quality (otherwise they'll get spammed) and the intention behind the exclusivity is rate-limiting, which makes a lot of sense, but I think they douched it up by focusing on the wrong things (school and company affiliation). That's especially bad now with all the MBA carpetbaggers in tech. Focusing on degrees and prestigious companies makes you (at least seem like) the wrong kind of people.

I would have made it Silicon Valley only: either you live there, or you'll move there. (I'm in New York, so it might seem unusual that I'm suggesting excluding my city, but you need to limit inflow and that's the best way to do it, because job markets are pretty local. You add cities once you have traction and are looking to scale.)

Then I would have partnered with a company like Kaggle in order to get access to people who can actually code. I've met a lot of mediocrities with prestigious resumes. One of the biggest problems with hiring is the number of people who have established a great connections <-> great jobs loop but don't know anything.

[veyron]

"but I think they douched it up by focusing on the wrong things (school and company affiliation). "

They focused on the right thing. The target audience isn't the startup that cares about getting the best people, just the ones with the best pedigrees. This would be perfect in finance.

[aneth4]

Not entirely true. Really good engineers may not be good at getting what they are worth and be willing to see what they can get. Finding a job for a higher salary is a lot of work, finding the maximum salary (not that that should be your goal) is very difficult, negotiating is a huge challenge while auctions usually increase prices more easily.

Sure, an excellent engineer employed at $200K with a vast network is unlikely to send his resume to Craigslist ads, but they may use a simple way to find out whether they could get $300K and a $500K signing bonus.

[Permit]

That last point is completely wrong. Zynga is a lot more than the flash games you see on the front end, at least from a technical standpoint. Even with your obvious bias, you have to admit that they operate at a huge scale and that alone must pose some interesting technical problems.

Try to leave your distaste for their business model at the door.

[rapind]

I disagree. I believe the ethics of the people you work for are important, maybe even as important as fun technical challenges. Please do take your distaste or love for their business model wherever you like.

[Permit]

The idea behind choosing Apple, Faceboook, Twitter, Zynga etc. is to simply provide a filter for technical skills. Culture-fit, ethics and other flexible, qualitative criteria were not the target of this filter.

Although if you're prepared to make the sweeping accusation that no-one at Zynga is morally righteous enough to work with you, I won't stop you. That reflects on you, not them.

[rapind]

Please don't put words in my mouth.

[bbrtyth]

I second the disagreement. There are a number of companies that deal with interesting technical problems without being complete scum. People like you that don't "discriminate against" morally bankrupt business models are what allow distasteful businesses all the way down to flat-out illegal businesses to continue.

[Permit]

So instead of trying to hire the great technical people from companies like Zynga, you condemn them to continue working there?

Not hiring someone from Zynga does nothing to hurt the company, simply the individual who worked there. The idea that one should be discriminated based on past workplaces is a bizarre one to me.

[talmand]

I agree, this was the same mentality towards Yahoo back when they sued Facebook. We were getting nonsense such as developers having no soul because they still worked for Yahoo after a specified amount of time.

[Matt_Mickiewicz]

Hey Michael --

The criteria in the story is what we used for our first auction, we love talented engineers that work at all companies not just the half dozen or so listed in the TechCrunch story.

We'd love your feedback on additional testing/vetting criteria that we could use. At the moment though, if you work at Gilt Group, Intuit, Etsy, Square Space, Microsoft, Amazon or any other number of "big brands" in one of the major cities we'll get you approved in one of our upcoming auctions (but only if you're serious about switching jobs).

[lawnchair_larry]

Two of those companies are headquartered in WA, where unlike CA, non-competes are legally enforceable. I've seen contracts for both Amazon (which had a 18 month non-compete clause) and Microsoft (which had a 12 month non-compete clause). Do you plan to address this at all, or are you leaving that up to the employer/employee?

If I were shopping for candidates on your site, I'd be pretty upset to be sold a candidate that is a liability due to contract violations (especially at a startup). It might be worth flagging for potential employers that a given company is known to force non-compete agreements on their employees.

[Daniel_Newby]

"douched"

Please aspire to a higher standard of discussion.

[michaelochurch]

Actually, "douched up" is exactly what I wanted. "Fucked up" would be too severe and suggests irreversibility (which is not the case) and the types of people who would be attracted by the exclusivity would be douchebags.