Probably, but not everyone has the luxury of a great tech person to lead their remote tech team.
Also, if it’s a field where the nontechnical person has some level of domain expertise, they arguably have a better sense of product direction, even if they’re lacking product dev mechanics.
I'm looking for a technical partner. I think there's no secret recipe, but I especially like the answers below that suggest to be methodical about finding people and assume most won't work out due to life circumstances, timing, not liking each other, and more.
OP here: I wrote this post to shed some light on everything I've learned about managing remote developer teams when you're nontechnical (as in you don't write usable code for your product).
I also wrote this to shed light on how we build product at The Lobby, in hopes that it will attract the candidate we're looking for to lead our engineering efforts in NYC.
Happy to answer questions or discuss anything here!
They already spend time doing this for friends/alumni/family. Whether or not employees are fully productive at work is a completely different discussion - we're just trying to give people without inside access the same benefits someone with access would get. Also most of our insiders do these calls on weekends, not on company time.
OP here: Thanks so much to the HN community for all the amazing support + critical feedback. Deeply appreciated! Apologies if I don't see / respond to more comments, will try to check back and answer when I can. If you want to keep chatting, please reach out here: [email protected].
definitely a concern. For something like this to happen, The Lobby has to have already reached a very large mass (i.e. employers wouldn't care otherwise), but we'll think of guard rails or measures to avoid this from happening. I think something to verify the candidate's identity in the onboarding before booking calls is a good way to do that - but haven't thought through it.
again my only concern is when The Lobby does pre-screening without giving any coaching, we again resort to arbitrary measures such as resume, good grades, etc. instead of trying to be a source of coaching, insight, & improvement for candidates.
For the candidates that reach a certain threshold on The Lobby (say, 3 insiders screened them over a call and see potential), then something like this makes sense so they can make their money back. Vettery gives candidates a $500 incentive to use them to get hired, which is a nice idea. Thank you!
Exactly on chicken & egg - but we feel the hyper local approach is a really actionable way to solve it, we're already seeing it work in our niche.
It's not really our responsibility at all, even to make sure people abide by company policies or to prevent insider trading.
I still however answer all these questions because we think about the ethical implications a lot and we thought through everything in detail before choosing this model. I'm comfortable with the risks, I believe the rewards far outweigh them. Thank you!
Again here would suggest you check out GLG, Alphasights and other expert networks. They deal with much more sensitive info than "interview prep,"and much larger dollar figures; they do this with 1099's and have no issues for their supply side (which are employees or former employees at highly regulated institutions).
You are not required by law to report 1099's to your employer from what I understand - but we still encourage them to check with employers before agreeing to join The Lobby.
Last point, we've learned that if you use marketplace features on Stripe or PayPal, you potentially don't need to issue 1099's if you make less than $20k in a calendar year, which we don't know any of our individual insiders will make even at scale (if they make $20k, I suspect they’ll find a way to make the paperwork work!)
Hello! Appreciate your deep dive on the thread and agree that if we look at bits and pieces of my comments, it's not totally clear. So let me write up a unified answer here.
In some cases, this is definitely against the company's policy. For those companies, we focus on former employees most of which are no longer bound by any contract (if any).
We protect our insider's identity and that leaves them protected, but we also encourage them to check with HR to make sure they're allowed to do this.
I already addressed the ethical/moral bits - we are simply giving more people access to the same insights you would get if you had a friend on the inside. You're just paying for it in this one interaction, whereas the privileged person paid for it by being born into or falling into the right circles (higher kindergarten, middle school, high school, college tuition, and being in the right families or circles).
Without The Lobby - the alternative is to live your life cold emailing and trying to find these connections, which is both inefficient and in our view very different. If you get some of these folks to answer you - you're not sure if they're going to be helpful or just discount you as a non-eligible candidate because you don't have what they're looking for. Being in a friendly dynamic where their goal is to help you makes this the opposite.
In terms of legal risks, please look up GLG, AlphaSights, and other expert networks. They have been doing this in what I consider to be a real ethical gray area with higher up executives and much larger dollar sums - and still is legal. Let me be really clear here - I'm not agreeing with what they do, I'm just pointing to it as an example where this has worked with much more sensitive information than "interview prep" and has maintained to protect its supply side and operate, which is why I'm confident we will be able to as well.
The only thing I hope this thread proves is that HN or those seeing The Lobby execute is that we have the right intentions. That goes a long way - whether you agree with our particular approach or not.
This was a personal problem, and our solution we've seen solve a real problem mainly as an information gap. Solutions like the ones you're suggesting on karma points or donating to charities as suggested below are on our roadmap- but for now we're staying focused on making this work well first :).
Hope this answers the question and if anyone wants to chat on this topic further - please reach out! [email protected]