I am working on contract work through a third-party company, and I proposed them such a solution: I employ them, pay them a percentage [1], they keep me busy with work, just like any serious actor has an agent. It is a great business model for everybody, and their workload is small enough they can represent a dozen people with ease.
They actually liked the idea, have spoken of switching to such a model eventually, but the sad reality is that they make much more money the “classic way”: the big client gives them the contract, and they subcontract to me. This way they can skim 30-60% off the amount paid to the sorry bugger that does all the work at the bottom, without lifting a finger.
It is very sad no one seems interested to serve this need, except very few examples (there’s that NY management agency people have been recommending for the past 10 years, which have such a backlog of candidates there’s no real chance of getting in). If I had any interest in being a salesman and recruiter, I’d build such an agency in a heartbeat.
1: I’d pay for an actual agent 10-15% of my daily rate for the duration of the contract, which is much more than the numbers presented in the article.
The difference between a 10% agent and a 30-60% subcontractor is what's being purchased, and from whom. Actors and other famous creatives are selling their particular work, which is unique and demanded by clients mostly independently of details like who their agent is. When a client pays 2x to an agency that pays the subcontractor implementing the work 1x to complete it, what's being purchased is the agency's work - working directly with the client, finding developers to complete the work, and managing the process of delivery (and all the related bits: making sure their subcontractors know what they're doing and are appropriate fits for the project, keeping work on track, being accountable for delivery/operational execution to the client).
If that extra 20-50% were so easy/useless that it can be grabbed "without lifting a finger", why aren't you finding enough work on your own to keep yourself busy, or, why are you still working with that third-party company to begin with? Oh, you would, if you "had any interest" in doing that. That level of accountability to the client and attention to their needs is literally what clients are paying the agency for, and why they're the ones handling the demand for work rather than their subcontractors.
If clients aren't seeking out your particular involvement in their project, you're the guy working the mic, not the movie star.
> making sure their subcontractors know what they're doing and are appropriate fits for the project, keeping work on track, ...
I think this is where the reality falls apart. Often agencies are just skimming their percentage without adding real value to the project.
I.e. all those scenarios where a consulting company requires a PM and BA be billed, but the dev+customer are doing 99% of the communication and work directly
> being accountable for delivery/operational execution to the client
This is actually what most VPs are paying for: being able to pick up a phone and chew IBM GCS, TCS, CG, etc. out when the schedule slips.
As a client, I could just hire a consultant. There’s no shortage and they have reputation to uphold / less risky to me potentially.
It’s basically the same. I pay hire rate for labor knowing only a portion reaches the laborers. I can select based on the exact expertise I need which consultants would be most appropriate
True, but in practice large clients can’t be bothered with hiring consultants directly for a number of reasons, so that’s why they go through agencies, basically delegating the entire HR portion.
Because contractor satisfaction is important to them, as they're the ones that make them money at the end of the day? Of course this doesn't work for sweatshops, but when we're talking about big contracts and managing experienced devs, we're not so easily replaceable.
I have given them notice that I will end my engagement with them this summer, for example, and now they'll have to spend a couple months finding a replacement; if we had had a more sane arrangement, I might've stayed.
Of course being greedy and extracting maximum profit out of workers is a valid strategy, but I do not think that it is the only way to run a business.
This seems like such an easy way to create perverse incentives and profit off people who are already down on their luck. Imagine being told that the only way to get considered is to pay a fee. Then later on you get told to pay the gold fee for priority. Oh you're still not getting hired? Go for our platinum package that will definitely make the difference! Not enough money? No worries, we'll take 30% of your salary for the first few years. Or maybe we'll just give you some a fixed debt at a high interest rate. Aren't you glad you used us?
I wonder how the real estate market will look like in the biggest cities in the coming years. I haven't changed jobs for quite a while so I don't know if this article is accurate but if it's really that bad, then I wouldn't be surprised if we see a big crash. After all, the appeal of biggest cities was always, at least to me, the availability of white collar, highly paid jobs. If these ceased to exist, I don't see reason why people would want to move there anymore.
so: where do you go and what do you do? All your land and food is subject to property laws and the way things are going the owners will be allowed violence to enforce their rights. Essentially you'll be a serf again just like 99% of other people and 95% on this site (which sadly has owners very much intent to become our lords)
Demand for all those services (with possible exception of essential medical care) will shrink if big portion of white collar workers end up unemployed. Without a job people simply won't have much extra money to spend on them.
It's much cheaper to drink at home when you're unemployed though. I live in a country with seriously rising unemployment rate (highest in EU), and bars/night clubs are going bankrupt left and right here.
> After all, the appeal of biggest cities was always, at least to me, the availability of white collar, highly paid jobs
You are definitely unusual.
Since remote work became more common because of Covid, remote workers have moved within the same city or moved to smaller cities. Only 4% relocated to rural areas[1].
Cities are appealing to most people because they have entertainment, variety, walkability, and many other benefits that rural places don't provide. The urbanization of America isn't only because work has changed, but because people generally prefer urban or suburban living over rural living.
I don't think he's arguing for rural, just expressing concern about the *biggest* cities.
> entertainment, variety, walkability, and many other benefits that rural places don't provide
I appreciate all of this as well, but at the end of the day, I moved to a city with 80x the population of my hometown because of a (specific) job. Rent is also significantly higher, and if I had to consume my savings to survive here, I'd surely move out. Entertainment and walkability have secondary importance compared to putting food on the table and saving for retirement.
> ‘Smaller cities’ in the US are what most of the world calls ‘rural’.
What? No it's not. In the study I linked and also for most people's purposes, "smaller city" is something like Milwaukee or Pittsburgh, a place with an urban center, a real downtown, some skyscrapers, and probably a few corporate headquarters.
To somebody that lives rurally in the US, a town of 10,000 is where you go to get groceries. 100,000 gets you a movie theater and shopping. Pittsburgh? That's basically a megacity.
Not only expect to see a "big crash", but expect to see total collapse of Capitalism with French style Revolution within 5 years. There will be blood in the streets literally not methaphorically as it should be.
We know people need to eat or else they die painfully. We also know you can buy food with money. We also know job gives money for majority of populus. We also know jobs are being eliminated completely within 5 years and then physical jobs also with robots.
So knowing this, if people have no job, no salary, no money to buy food with, they will get their food by force. It's just a logical conclusion.
And no, nobody will give you UBI, stop being naive. UBI has been depunked by economists numerous times, it just doesn't wokr mathmetically. World will transition to communism and the upper class will be simply eliminated physically as it has happened in the past.
Maybe this is new in US, but paying recruiting agencies is nothing out of the ordinary in many European countries, at least if you actually want to have a recruiter that cares about where you land as position.
Does this have an alternative market-based solution?
I see a big problem with job scams from "legitimate" companies advertising jobs they have no plans to fulfill or which do not exist at all. They seem to do this because they employ HR and recruiters, and it looks good if job openings are on their site. It's a real problem.
I believe there could be a solution: charge $500 to post an opening and give $50 to each of ten AI-vetted qualified candidates. That means the candidate had a real job interview and passed it without AI assistance. They get $50 to interview.
If the company doesn't hire any of ten qualified candidates, then they can pay another $500, or stop pretending that the job they're advertising for is real.
What do you think of this novel model?
On the candidate side, it allows them to interview once and then only be called into a job interview if they're being paid $50 to do so.
The system could also go the other way and prevent candidates from making interviewing their living, by only inviting them to a limited number of interviews with job offers on the table - such as three such interviews job offers. After that they don't get more job offers since they're not really on the market.
The AI could also represent salary reality more transparently.
Basically, overall it should be the companies hiring that pay, not candidates who have lots of their time wasted.
What do you think of such a market-based approach?
“If you are not paying, you are the product,” said Andre Hamra, Refer’s CEO. “It incentivizes us to actually help the person.”
What joke. That phrase does not apply to this situation at all, as it is not like you got a service for free, it is just that it was someone else paying.
And that dude thought it would be a good idea to take the money of people looking for jobs instead of the companies that are swimming in cash.
On top of this, they're going to have mandatory bed position assignments. Just like you currently can't choose which desk you're going to sit at, and have to put up with the most annoying person on the team as your deskmate, in the near future you're going to have to cuddle with him/her at night too, whether you like it or not, and regardless of his/her bad hygiene, just because your manager decided to stick you two together.
> in the near future you're going to have to cuddle with him/her at night too, whether you like it or not
A solid solution to reduce heating costs. Maybe one can go a step further and remove the bed though, a large mattress (or let's say rubber mat) should be enough.
https://archive.is/OAEU2
That’s the contract agent, something I wished existed years ago. Some interesting discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32838336
I am working on contract work through a third-party company, and I proposed them such a solution: I employ them, pay them a percentage [1], they keep me busy with work, just like any serious actor has an agent. It is a great business model for everybody, and their workload is small enough they can represent a dozen people with ease.
They actually liked the idea, have spoken of switching to such a model eventually, but the sad reality is that they make much more money the “classic way”: the big client gives them the contract, and they subcontract to me. This way they can skim 30-60% off the amount paid to the sorry bugger that does all the work at the bottom, without lifting a finger.
It is very sad no one seems interested to serve this need, except very few examples (there’s that NY management agency people have been recommending for the past 10 years, which have such a backlog of candidates there’s no real chance of getting in). If I had any interest in being a salesman and recruiter, I’d build such an agency in a heartbeat.
1: I’d pay for an actual agent 10-15% of my daily rate for the duration of the contract, which is much more than the numbers presented in the article.
The difference between a 10% agent and a 30-60% subcontractor is what's being purchased, and from whom. Actors and other famous creatives are selling their particular work, which is unique and demanded by clients mostly independently of details like who their agent is. When a client pays 2x to an agency that pays the subcontractor implementing the work 1x to complete it, what's being purchased is the agency's work - working directly with the client, finding developers to complete the work, and managing the process of delivery (and all the related bits: making sure their subcontractors know what they're doing and are appropriate fits for the project, keeping work on track, being accountable for delivery/operational execution to the client).
If that extra 20-50% were so easy/useless that it can be grabbed "without lifting a finger", why aren't you finding enough work on your own to keep yourself busy, or, why are you still working with that third-party company to begin with? Oh, you would, if you "had any interest" in doing that. That level of accountability to the client and attention to their needs is literally what clients are paying the agency for, and why they're the ones handling the demand for work rather than their subcontractors.
If clients aren't seeking out your particular involvement in their project, you're the guy working the mic, not the movie star.
> making sure their subcontractors know what they're doing and are appropriate fits for the project, keeping work on track, ...
I think this is where the reality falls apart. Often agencies are just skimming their percentage without adding real value to the project.
I.e. all those scenarios where a consulting company requires a PM and BA be billed, but the dev+customer are doing 99% of the communication and work directly
> being accountable for delivery/operational execution to the client
This is actually what most VPs are paying for: being able to pick up a phone and chew IBM GCS, TCS, CG, etc. out when the schedule slips.
Exactly, there’s different types of agencies.
Some focus on sourcing labor at a markup.
Others focus on producing a work product that they specialize in. From my experience these guys tend to have larger margins.
As a client, I could just hire a consultant. There’s no shortage and they have reputation to uphold / less risky to me potentially.
It’s basically the same. I pay hire rate for labor knowing only a portion reaches the laborers. I can select based on the exact expertise I need which consultants would be most appropriate
> As a client, I could just hire a consultant.
True, but in practice large clients can’t be bothered with hiring consultants directly for a number of reasons, so that’s why they go through agencies, basically delegating the entire HR portion.
well, maybe you should own your agent and fund a cooperative for that purpose?
You said it yourself - they make more money and have more control doing it the other way.
Put differently - why wouldn’t you do it?
Because contractor satisfaction is important to them, as they're the ones that make them money at the end of the day? Of course this doesn't work for sweatshops, but when we're talking about big contracts and managing experienced devs, we're not so easily replaceable.
I have given them notice that I will end my engagement with them this summer, for example, and now they'll have to spend a couple months finding a replacement; if we had had a more sane arrangement, I might've stayed.
Of course being greedy and extracting maximum profit out of workers is a valid strategy, but I do not think that it is the only way to run a business.
In the current market, they may be able to find folks easier than they previously were.
What they do may be a local optimum.
That doesn’t answer my question?
I you have the vision and don't have the "tyranny" of say, impatient shareholders, you can you chase a longer term goal than maximum profit right now.
They're going to turn this into a double dip model where the client and the freelancer both pay them.
If you think the labor market is tough now, just wait until if/when the claims AI aficionados come to fruition.
This seems like such an easy way to create perverse incentives and profit off people who are already down on their luck. Imagine being told that the only way to get considered is to pay a fee. Then later on you get told to pay the gold fee for priority. Oh you're still not getting hired? Go for our platinum package that will definitely make the difference! Not enough money? No worries, we'll take 30% of your salary for the first few years. Or maybe we'll just give you some a fixed debt at a high interest rate. Aren't you glad you used us?
I wonder how the real estate market will look like in the biggest cities in the coming years. I haven't changed jobs for quite a while so I don't know if this article is accurate but if it's really that bad, then I wouldn't be surprised if we see a big crash. After all, the appeal of biggest cities was always, at least to me, the availability of white collar, highly paid jobs. If these ceased to exist, I don't see reason why people would want to move there anymore.
White flight all over again but this time it’d be white collar flight.
so: where do you go and what do you do? All your land and food is subject to property laws and the way things are going the owners will be allowed violence to enforce their rights. Essentially you'll be a serf again just like 99% of other people and 95% on this site (which sadly has owners very much intent to become our lords)
1. medical specialists and hospitals 2. sports clubs and vibrant leagues 3. professional sports facilities 4. concerts: arts and music. …
Demand for all those services (with possible exception of essential medical care) will shrink if big portion of white collar workers end up unemployed. Without a job people simply won't have much extra money to spend on them.
5. Bars (and pubs, in appropriate cities) that you can walk to.
It's much cheaper to drink at home when you're unemployed though. I live in a country with seriously rising unemployment rate (highest in EU), and bars/night clubs are going bankrupt left and right here.
Younger generations are also drinking far less (and smoking more weed, in general).
Yes the broader economy would crumble without white collar jobs. They employ many blue collar jobs. It would be a huge shock to economic activity
> After all, the appeal of biggest cities was always, at least to me, the availability of white collar, highly paid jobs
You are definitely unusual.
Since remote work became more common because of Covid, remote workers have moved within the same city or moved to smaller cities. Only 4% relocated to rural areas[1].
Cities are appealing to most people because they have entertainment, variety, walkability, and many other benefits that rural places don't provide. The urbanization of America isn't only because work has changed, but because people generally prefer urban or suburban living over rural living.
1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11551397/
I don't think he's arguing for rural, just expressing concern about the *biggest* cities.
> entertainment, variety, walkability, and many other benefits that rural places don't provide
I appreciate all of this as well, but at the end of the day, I moved to a city with 80x the population of my hometown because of a (specific) job. Rent is also significantly higher, and if I had to consume my savings to survive here, I'd surely move out. Entertainment and walkability have secondary importance compared to putting food on the table and saving for retirement.
> Rent is also significantly higher [in a larger city]
For most people, pay is also significantly higher. Most employers adjust salary based on location.
‘Smaller cities’ in the US are what most of the world calls ‘rural’.
Rural in the US is truly remote, not just ‘has farmland’.
> ‘Smaller cities’ in the US are what most of the world calls ‘rural’.
What? No it's not. In the study I linked and also for most people's purposes, "smaller city" is something like Milwaukee or Pittsburgh, a place with an urban center, a real downtown, some skyscrapers, and probably a few corporate headquarters.
To somebody that lives rurally in the US, a town of 10,000 is where you go to get groceries. 100,000 gets you a movie theater and shopping. Pittsburgh? That's basically a megacity.
Generally smaller cities are the surroundings and suburbs to cities like that.
Not only expect to see a "big crash", but expect to see total collapse of Capitalism with French style Revolution within 5 years. There will be blood in the streets literally not methaphorically as it should be.
We know people need to eat or else they die painfully. We also know you can buy food with money. We also know job gives money for majority of populus. We also know jobs are being eliminated completely within 5 years and then physical jobs also with robots.
So knowing this, if people have no job, no salary, no money to buy food with, they will get their food by force. It's just a logical conclusion.
And no, nobody will give you UBI, stop being naive. UBI has been depunked by economists numerous times, it just doesn't wokr mathmetically. World will transition to communism and the upper class will be simply eliminated physically as it has happened in the past.
Oh and this is a good thing btw
Looks like suits are making a comeback.
(For those who don't get the reference: https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)
That seems incredibly grim. Pay to play but you need to have played to be able to pay
https://archive.li/OAEU2 (archive.is seems down for me)
Maybe this is new in US, but paying recruiting agencies is nothing out of the ordinary in many European countries, at least if you actually want to have a recruiter that cares about where you land as position.
I do care. Please, give me a couple of such good recruiters if you know them.
I never used this kind of recruiters, but after a quick search, this was one I found,
https://www.ircgmbh.de/en/applicants/application-coaching-an...
Usually what is asked to pay for are improvement related activities, regarding coaching for better CVs, training for interviews and such.
Don't do it. Move instead. It's substantially easier to get a job if one is willing to relocate to where the job is.
The jobs today are in India, which has its own unemployment woes.
Is this still the result of COVID-era overhiring (caused by free cash)?
That's an interesting way of saying "total collapse of capitalism and built-up for bolshevik style revolution"
Does this have an alternative market-based solution?
I see a big problem with job scams from "legitimate" companies advertising jobs they have no plans to fulfill or which do not exist at all. They seem to do this because they employ HR and recruiters, and it looks good if job openings are on their site. It's a real problem.
I believe there could be a solution: charge $500 to post an opening and give $50 to each of ten AI-vetted qualified candidates. That means the candidate had a real job interview and passed it without AI assistance. They get $50 to interview.
If the company doesn't hire any of ten qualified candidates, then they can pay another $500, or stop pretending that the job they're advertising for is real.
What do you think of this novel model?
On the candidate side, it allows them to interview once and then only be called into a job interview if they're being paid $50 to do so.
The system could also go the other way and prevent candidates from making interviewing their living, by only inviting them to a limited number of interviews with job offers on the table - such as three such interviews job offers. After that they don't get more job offers since they're not really on the market.
The AI could also represent salary reality more transparently.
Basically, overall it should be the companies hiring that pay, not candidates who have lots of their time wasted.
What do you think of such a market-based approach?
And that dude thought it would be a good idea to take the money of people looking for jobs instead of the companies that are swimming in cash.
I bet he actually believes his lies himself.
Sounds like crony capitalism, which is quite common in developing countries.
I would call the USA a developing country except it’s deteriorating.
coming soon to a town near you: indentured servitude.
hopefully they will at least have nice bunk beds in the corporate dorms.
That reminds me of the grim lodging houses described in Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier.
Nah, they can save money by buying larger beds and making employees share the beds. A single king-size bed can fit 4-5 employees.
> A single king-size bed can fit 4-5 employees.
... at a time.
So if you also run three shifts that's 12-15 employees per bed!
Exactly right.
On top of this, they're going to have mandatory bed position assignments. Just like you currently can't choose which desk you're going to sit at, and have to put up with the most annoying person on the team as your deskmate, in the near future you're going to have to cuddle with him/her at night too, whether you like it or not, and regardless of his/her bad hygiene, just because your manager decided to stick you two together.
> in the near future you're going to have to cuddle with him/her at night too, whether you like it or not
A solid solution to reduce heating costs. Maybe one can go a step further and remove the bed though, a large mattress (or let's say rubber mat) should be enough.
Soon? Most people pay taxes on their income and have a mortgage for their home, or even worse pay rent.
Slaves used to have the option to purchase their freedom.
Oh. Basically this is the scam they use at Offerzen.
When I saw wsj.com I figured this would be an "article" that's mostly manipulative, fear-mongering and doom and gloom.
If you're paying to maybe get hired, you're not the client - you're basically being sold to yourself.
Special place in hell for people who share locked articles.