Thanks for the endorsement, Greg! Makes me incredibly happy to hear that you've had a positive experience with 10x.
Re: the praise for Michael Solomon, for the record, I (the technical partner at 10x) was originally very wary about starting this company with non-technical cofounders... but, at this point, the value they add to our clients and to our business is absolutely undeniable. Michael and Rishon are world-class advocates for talent.
Really, you don't know THP? Lots of demand for it these days...
J/K, yeah, I'm guessing that "P" happens to sound a lot like "T" on a fact-checking call. =P I sent them a note about the typo. Hopefully will be fixed online if not in print.
I'm with you, it's certainly not the most elegant solution to the problem, but we're basically Doing Things That Don't Scale. (http://paulgraham.com/ds.html)
As we grow, we identify bottlenecks, and we write software to automate those processes; I imagine we're iterating towards something like what you're envisioning. (At least internally, if not externally.)
But your last couple sentences got at an important point... as much as I'd like to see this problem solved with software, there are still a lot of unavoidable, messy, people-related issues that, currently, still require manual finesse.
No, we're constantly evaluating people during and after each project. Thankfully we've only had to drop someone in one situation, but we're not afraid to do that if necessary to keep the quality high.
Also thankfully, the people we rep tend to bring their A-game to projects because they understand that it's not just their reputation on the line... they're also representing 10x and all of the other consultants that 10x represents.
Max* is right... we have spent literally zero dollars on PR. The New Yorker approached us for this article. (As did Mashable for their piece last week which interviewed a bunch of 10xers: http://mashable.com/2014/11/09/digital-nomads/ .)
Frankly, it makes it even more exciting to me, because it means this is an actual trend, rather than a manufactured one.
* Yes, the parent is Max Nanis from the article. The article failed to mention that he also currently has a sculpture in the Smithsonian. :)
Yup, this pre-vetting is a key part of the service we provide for companies. (We work for the talent, but of course we need to provide value to both sides of the marketplace.)
A large company, which will remain unnamed, works with a handful of engineering contracting outfits, but they like us because we're the only one they trust to provide them with good talent out of the box. With the other companies, they have to go through the full interview rigamarole for each contractor; with 10x, they just tell us what they need and we hook it up.
Thanks for the shout-out, Aline! You point out the main difference in our models, which is exactly what makes our talent agency work: the key is the focus on contract/freelance placement.
Recruiters who do full-time placement optimize for the short-term -- a single transaction -- which leads to all sort of misaligned incentives and shady practices. With 10x, we work with the same talent over the course of years, so we optimize for the long term and help the people on our roster for (ideally) the duration of their careers. And the talent is more than happy to pay for our services.
>>> "Agents make sense when it’s hard to find a job or when the opportunity cost of looking for work is high enough to justify paying someone else.... For engineers, because the shortage is in labor and not jobs, paying out a portion of your salary for a task you can easily do yourself doesn’t make much sense."
This reminds me of the "adverse selection" argument we hear a lot, i.e. the best programmers have no trouble finding work, so wouldn't an agency only attract people who aren't good enough to source their own opportunities? The simple answer to this: Tom Cruise has no problem finding work, but he still has an agent. He wants to spend his time acting, not negotiating, invoicing, collecting, etc.
You also mention that the talent agency model works for niche skills, but then you say there isn't a big enough market for these skills. I'd disagree with the second half of that. Technology is getting increasingly specialized. Software, hardware, electrical, all have sub-fields and sub-sub-fields and sub-sub-sub-fields. The same general model applies to most of these sub-sub-sub-fields, and there are absolutely enough of them to justify a market.
In fact, the niche skills lend themselves especially well to the talent agency model, since companies don't necessarily need to employ those people full time. Data science is a good example of this... a lot of companies could benefit from the insights of a data scientist, but most of them don't need a salaried data scientist on staff. Through 10x, companies large and small have a la carte access to pre-vetted specialists (and generalists), on demand.
We're open to talking to anyone, from web+mobile devs, to designers, to data scientists, etc. We even represent a guy who does bioinformatics.
The one caveat is that obviously demand varies based on the skill. Our dealflow is steadily picking up as our network grows and as we get press like this, but customers aren't exactly knocking down our door looking for Erlang hackers... yet.
(The bioinformaticist happens to also be a kickass iOS dev.)
That said, if you have your own dealflow for your skills -- no matter how obscure -- and are interested in our services beyond just sourcing gigs, we're happy to work with you.
(Altay from 10x here.) Not exactly sure what you mean, but if you're suggesting this is a problem that can be solved with software, I actually think one of our competitive advantages is that we're approaching it as a high-touch, people-oriented, service business rather than a software problem.
Obviously, this makes it less scalable, but I do spend my nights writing software for 10x to automate the things we find ourselves doing more than once. (I spend my days working on deals... still working out the balance; see PG's essay about maker/manager schedules.) And one of the things that's always at the back of my mind is how to maintain the high-touch, personal approach as we scale.
To be honest, I'm a little nervous about the fluff, too, but I do sincerely believe we're doing something different with 10x.
First and foremost, our clients are the developers. (Admittedly, this nomenclature gets a little confusing sometimes, but it's important for us to constantly remind ourselves that we work for you.)
Rather than thinking of it as a consulting agency, we see our job as making freelancing suck less. In the process, we're building a network of freelancers who share best practices. They even share customers... our customer development has revealed that the #1 complaint from freelancers is that it's feast-or-famine. Since each person in the 10x network brings in his/her own dealflow, one person's feast can ease another's famine. Imagine a P2P network for gigs.
Additionally, the article only briefly touched on the lifestyle design aspect, but that's really important to us. Just like managers in the music or movie industry, we're entering a long-term relationship with our clients, and strive to understand their goals and help them achieve them. For some people, that means we save them cycles that they can put towards their startups. For others, we enable them to travel more. (I started out as a client before we founded 10x, and I spent my time on music, e.g. recording albums, touring, learning the cello.)
Also, my cofounders come straight from the entertainment world. They managed John Mayer from being an unknown singer/songwriter to playing sold-out stadium shows. They bring a really unique outside perspective to our industry.
And finally, as the article mentioned, our cut is only 15%. My understanding is that consulting agencies often take 50%+.
Long story short, I was freelancing as a full-stack (Rails) dev, and also playing in a couple bands. Through the music scene, I met some music managers in NYC. They've been in the biz for 15-20 years (managed John Mayer, Martin Sexton, Bruce Springsteen's tours, etc.). In talking, we realized what they do for music clients would be really useful for me as a freelance programmer.
Basically, a manager's job is to take care of the business side, so the talent can focus on what they're good at. So, in a strange experiment, I hired them to act as my agent for programming gigs. They started taking care of all my negotiation, invoicing, collection, scheduling, etc.
It worked out really well for both of us, so we partnered up and started 10x Management, to do this for more people. Essentially, we're bringing the concept of a talent agency to the tech world.
Unlike the OP, we focus only on freelance work (not full-time placement), but so far the model is working very well for all parties. The talent is happy (we've been described as a "virtualization layer" for freelancers), the customers are happy (we represent the best), and we're happy (it's very gratifying to help people with their long-term career and lifestyle goals).
We're growing fast, so if you're interested in representation, or you need a badass freelancer (web/mobile dev, design, data science/viz, PM, etc.), or you just want to learn more, get in touch via our website or hit me up at [email protected].
This is what we're doing at 10x Management (http://10xmanagement.com). I'm a YC alum and experienced web dev freelancer. I also play a lot of music so, through serendipitous connections in that world, met some music managers, and realized what they do for their music clients would be really useful for me as a freelance programmer.
So we started with them representing me -- taking care of the business end of my freelancing -- and it worked out so well that we've partnered to create 10x Management, to expand the model. I bring the tech experience, and they bring the talent agency experience.
He's got an interesting approach to entrepreneurship -- rather than coming up with novel ideas, Fabrice takes ideas that work in one location and replicates them somewhere else. First he built (and sold) the eBay of Latin America + Europe, then he brought ringtones to America from Asia (!). After selling his ringtone company for $80M, he founded OLX, to bring craigslist to other countries.
Re: the praise for Michael Solomon, for the record, I (the technical partner at 10x) was originally very wary about starting this company with non-technical cofounders... but, at this point, the value they add to our clients and to our business is absolutely undeniable. Michael and Rishon are world-class advocates for talent.
Btw, you all can learn more about Greg (the parent commenter) in last week's Mashable profile of nomadic coders -- http://mashable.com/2014/11/09/digital-nomads/ -- and at his excellent blog, http://typicalprogrammer.com !