A friend of mine who is an expert Python/SQL Web developer is looking for a new job here in Boston. He says “It’s the best job market that I’ve seen in my 10 years of working, but really I’d like to find a great start-up.” I said “What site can you go to and find all of the companies that have at least Series A funding and that need Web developers as opposed to, say, phone app or big C program developers?” He replied that dice.com was popular, but not that well organized nor comprehensive. Monster.com was hopeless. There were some job boards on sites such as stackoverflow.com and 37signals.com. People ended up working their networks of friends and acquaintances.
If the market for connecting software engineers and employers is as inefficient as he says, perhaps the LinkedIn valuation isn’t so crazy (though maybe tech people would be more likely to use Facebook or Google+ to network). But really that still leaves open the question of why the job market is so inefficient. Why can’t a guy with his skills easily see all of the Boston-area employers who need those skills?
My theory is that those who need to employ software engineers usually know so little about software development and maintenance that they are looking for completely the wrong kinds of people. Even recruitment firms specializing in software development seem to imagine that developers are slightly better educated bricklayers or agricultural labourers – rather than the equivalent of civil engineers, and at least the equals of lawyers.
So it’s not surprising there is no reliable mechanism for putting employers in touch with suitable candidates.
I think he’s connecting 2 things that few people want to connect. Crunchbase is great for seeing companies and what funding they’ve gotten. I don’t know that most people think of the funding *first* and then want to see job openings. I think developers do research on what jobs might be available in an area, then do due diligence on things like funding after that.
Perhaps someone has mashed up a funding database and a job board, but I’ve not heard of it.
Generally there aren’t SO many companies in one specific area that you’re not able to narrow a search to an area and then from that area, pick out the start-ups.
However, as Joe says above, in order to find out how much funding a company has, you’re going to have cross reference the company name with information on the net…or just contact them via their listed contact info and ask.
BTW, the inefficiencies of internet job boards for developers has been known for a very long time. Stackoverflow, 37 Signals, Techcrunch, etc have made a killing addressing that inefficiency. Given your readership Phil, you could probably do alright in this area yourself.
I think you are onto something there. I do most of the recruiting for my startup through Craigslist and LinkedIn, but I have also used StackOverflow to identify suitable candidates, and then look them up in LinkedIn to approach them. I wouldn’t consider using Facebook or Google+ for recruitment, however.
Recruiters and hiring managers match up words on resumes. That seems to be the only way they have of screening candidates.
Job postings can be nonsensical, like the ones requiring “four years of OS/2 experience” two years after OS/2 was released.
You have experience with Red Hat Linux? Sorry, we can’t use you. We use CentOS here.
You’ve done JSP, Struts, EJB3 and JBoss? Sorry, we can’t use you. We run Tomcat and Spring.
You’ve done Python and MySQL? Can’t use you; we do PHP and PostgreSQL.
http://tinyurl.com/3tpc95q
what’s wrong with startuphire?
Jay: Thanks for the link. However, it still isn’t just one site for my my friend. He might, for example, want to work at Google. I think that we can all agree that Google is well-funded.
To help your friend out today, I’ll mention that Hacker News does a “Who’s Hiring?” thread every month.
August’s “Who’s hiring?” thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831646
Obligatory google search: http://www.google.com/search?q=hacker+news+who's+hiring
As for the bigger question, I have no good answer. Indeed.com is the closest thing we have to a solution today as it agreggates the more mundane job sites (e.g. monster.com/dice.com). But it’s not what you’re asking for.
I assume that building a job site is harder than it looks, mostly because there are so many scammers and slimy recruiters out there, not to mention the hordes of unqualified applicants.
My experience is that tech companies are extremely paranoid about who they hire because they never want to fire anyone. I usually haven’t had much trouble getting hired, but I think I’ve been usually lucky.
I think they might also have read one too many Joel Of Software articles, and think that “if we only hire 1% of the people we interview, it means that we are hiring the best 1%!”
Hiring people seem to demand specialists over generalists.
(I’ve never really cared much about the funding of the companies that hire me. Do you have money to pay me for the next six months? Cool.)
Maybe he could get a clue and look at http://python.org/jobs
Thanks, Rolf. I think he would need more than a clue to use the Python.org jobs board. He would also need a lot of time because he’d have to wade through listings for jobs in Poland, Montreal, London, and Tampa. It would be nice at least to have a filter for “jobs in locations where I am legally employable.”
Google Reader is pretty useful for this. Just plug in RSS feeds from python.org, jobs.37signals, etc. Google can then filter, or it’s easy enough to just visually scan them for relevance. It might be a lost cause though, because he is a boob if he’s looking at Dice and Monster for a Python job at a startup.
The tech job market for programmers actually seems quite efficient. There aren’t many jobs for Python programmers. There are maybe 5-10 such positions in the Boston area. Google, Echo Nest, and a handful of labs at MIT and Harvard Medical School are his best bet.
To address your bigger point: yes, it would be nice if there was a relevant job board. It’s been tried so many times, there are now meta job boards which aggregate the other job boards. Someone else already mentioned it, but indeed.com is probably the closest you will get.
Rolf: 5-10 Python programmer jobs in the Boston area? I found about 100 just on one site: simplyhired.com.
Well then, what’s the problem?
Rolf: What’s the problem? Thought experiment for you: If you needed to fly from Boston to Los Angeles tomorrow, would you have a more difficult time choosing your flight if there were just one flight at 10:00 am or if there were 100 different flights, some nonstop and some connecting through different cities.
[I.e., my friend, being one of the better programmers in the area (and fully qualified with a Bachelor’s in CS from an excellent school), is not likely to have difficulty finding some job, but he wants to find the best possible job.]
I think the (typical) hiring process for software engineers is broken. Think of the typical buzzword compliant job listing – it will discourage many of the best potential candidates and trim the viable ones to a generally weaker herd. If you *really* think you need a very specific set of technologies today, consider how long you really think you’ll need them and hire accordingly. For example, perhaps you should just hire a contractor to satisfy your short-term specific needs and then you could hire broader skilled software generalists to server a longer-term goal. In my experience, whatever specific technologies you might be using today are not necessarily those that you will be using two years from now. I’m a big fan of software generalists (being one myself), but it seems its always harder to convince people to hire you.
Market inefficiencies tend to persist because those benefiting from them have no incentive to change things, those being hurt by the inefficiencies lack the means to transform the market. Those hurt most by the current market for hiring software engineers are the developers with poor social networking skills, and small companies who lack the resources to get their job opening in front of the right people. These folks are the ones with the least leverage to change the status quo.