[nlh]

Something isn't sitting right with me about this. Let me explore (my gut may be wrong here)...

I agree that it's important for freelance engineers and designers to have some business help. Being a good "creator" doesn't necessarily mean you're good at negotiations, and while its an important skill, there is something nice about being able to focus on doing the work (and doing a good job) vs having to find the clients, negotiate the deals, handle payment, etc. That can be an unwelcome distraction for some people who aren't naturally good at it.

But that's why design/development studios exist. Even in a small shop - there's a guy who specs the project, a guy who negotiates the deal, a designer, and a developer (yes, there's often overlap in those roles). You pay a premium for the full-service of those distinct roles.

I think what's bothering me here is that these guys are perpetuating the notion that, literally, hiring a "celebrity"/"rock star" engineer/designer ("10xer") is something that folks should be paying a huge premium for. And that if you are that rock star, that you're so awesome that you need talent management (who deserves 15%). The premium here isn't for a support staff to help manage the project - the premium here is to get that celebrity development talent.

Not saying this is necessarily a bad thing - maybe it's an innovation that's much needed in the industry. But my gut is that they're spreading the celebrity-worship mentality of the entertainment industry to the software industry, and I'm not confident that's the right move.

It works in the entertainment industry because the link is much clearer -- you put Vinny Chase in your movie, it's going to do better than if you put in a no-name actor (all else being equal). Does that same thing work in the software industry?

Thoughts?

[bicknergseng]

>I think what's bothering me here is that these guys are perpetuating the notion that, literally, hiring a "celebrity"/"rock star" engineer/designer ("10xer") is something that folks should be paying a huge premium for.

Bugs me as well, but probably not for the same reason. It makes me sad how many programmers and engineers who aren't the mythical "rockstars" get left behind in all this. Average programmers. People who haven't founded their own company or created a popular software library, but are still capable of doing the work of a hundred number crunching people by themselves with a keyboard. So much rhetoric gets thrown around about ninjas and the skills gap, yet the median salary in the industry hasn't kept up with inflation in the past 15 years. A lot of time and industry effort is being spent on finding or importing people rather than supporting the ones they have or just hiring people and teaching them how to be more effective.

[hollerith]

>the median salary in the industry hasn't kept up with inflation in the past 15 years

What are some of your reasons for believing that? Personal work experience?

[bicknergseng]

http://www.npr.org/2013/02/19/172373123/older-tech-workers-o... somewhat casually mentions the stagnation according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It's remarkably difficult to find wages by year.

[fecak]

I think the disconnect on this is how one will define celebrity/rock star type developers. I'm sure that ideally they feel they will be the agent to some of the bigger names in the business, who certainly don't need an agent for finding work but might like someone to handle their stuff.

Through my work running a Java users group for 13 years, when I reach out to big name speakers my reply comes from an assistant that handles that person's calendar and scheduling. This could be a service that someone who is speaking worldwide would pay for (as their employer pays for it if they are at Google).

In reality, talent agent's in tech will probably be managing very good coders who are probably not big industry names - and that's ok. They could be very good at coding but not very good at making career choices, negotiating, and the like.

The Vinny Chase reference seems to indicate that you feel that the quality of your engineers doesn't have an impact on the success of your software company. Is that accurate? I think that if you feel the quality of an engineer is not associated with the success of a product, at least to some degree, most of the people here would disagree.

[danenania]

The thing is that "celebrity status" is only loosely correlated with engineering ability. Someone who blogs a lot, is involved with a popular product, or is just very social and charismatic can build up a big following and become a celebrity without necessarily being a great coder. Likewise, a lot of amazing engineers are so amazing precisely because they keep their heads in the code and technical concepts all day, and don't spend time on self promotion. Of course, it's possible for someone to become famous purely through the weight of their achievements, but the I think the typical coder-celebrity has had to work pretty hard to become one.

[fecak]

Agreed, just like you can be a celebrity and not have any skills whatsoever in the entertainment or reality TV world. I think their message isn't necessarily about celebrity status but about the quality of work. It says they've done code reviews and reference checks on the 10x site, so they are saying that they've vetted the talent. My guess is that the types of people represented are probably not what one would consider celebrities, as many can afford their own support staff (assistant, scheduler, accountant, etc.).

As an aside, there is some value to hiring celebrity status folks, regardless of their coding ability (helps with recruiting, name recognition, company status, etc.).

[wslh]

I like the idea but not sure how much will the freelancer earn comparing with their current work. Saying it in a different way: if you already are a star developer you don't need them. As a consequence I see "star discovery" as a business instead of "star representation". They can discover stars outside the US or main US cities.

I know people who already did that, but the stars then moved to the Google(s), Facebook(s).

[amirhirsch]

They help the small shops outsource the person who negotiates the deals. When you get huge volumes of request for contracted development for a specific set of talents, perhaps because you built some library that lots of people want contractors for, then it helps to have someone filter inbound requests and negotiate pricing at a premium so you don't spend 10% of your time doing it.

ps. hi nlh!