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Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by sarciszewski on Thursday February 05, 2015 @10:10AM (#9003561)
Who are these industry leaders who only price their time at $60 to $120 per hour? (Certainly not anyone who's read the advice by tptacek, patio11, et al. about consulting.)
Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by tptacek on Thursday February 05, 2015 @10:48AM (#9003802)
You're right. This is absurd pricing, both from the perspective of what expertise at this level costs, and the value the service intends to generate. A 1-hour interview in this service is ~0.08% of first year salary. A recruiter takes 15-25%.

It's hard to take this seriously. It's one of those things where, if it worked, you'd have to assume the owners would be using it to print infinite money. At these prices, there's a positive ROI to having their panel of experts interview random people off the street.

It's also not clear what the price tiers mean. "Junior/Senior/Management" --- is that the skill level of the interviewer?

Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by toong on Thursday February 05, 2015 @10:55AM (#9003843)
>> "Junior/Senior/Management" --- is that the skill level of the interviewer?

That's the position you would be hiring for, right ?

Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by wavelet on Thursday February 05, 2015 @11:14AM (#9003971)
That's right, the technical depth that the interviews would dive to would be different depending on the experience your candidate is expected to have.
Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by sarciszewski on Thursday February 05, 2015 @11:18AM (#9004000)
How much does a typical software company burn on talent acquisition? I'd wager it's at least one or two orders of magnitude larger than the rates posted on this page, but I've never hired before.
Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by mooreds on Thursday February 05, 2015 @11:53AM (#9004256)
The rule of thumb I've heard is 25-30% of first year's salary is spent on finding, hiring, onboarding and training a full time employee.
Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by tptacek on Thursday February 05, 2015 @11:55AM (#9004281)
And it's worse than that, because not all hires work out, and that 25% number doesn't account for the costs you absorb with broken hires.
Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by sarciszewski on Thursday February 05, 2015 @12:03PM (#9004329)
So naively...

    (0.25 * base salary * (average number of broken hires - 1)) 
That is the value you can create if you have experts successfully vet new hires (assuming they succeed at this).

How much time would it take for an expert to do this? Not just in the interview part, but the after-service (write-ups)?

I'm sure if they tethered their prices to the value they're actually creating, and they had experts capable of screening clients, then I could see this taking off.

Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by wavelet on Thursday February 05, 2015 @11:19AM (#9004002)
Very interesting to see all these comments about pricing. Our introductory prices were based off similar services where you chat with an experienced dev for an hour for help with your code, etc.
Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by tptacek on Thursday February 05, 2015 @11:21AM (#9004011)
Are any of those services any good? People who can code well enough to improve a design after a 1-hour phone call generally aren't incentivized to spend an hour on the phone talking to random developers.
Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by Iftheshoefits on Thursday February 05, 2015 @02:52PM (#9005518)
Are you talking about, e.g. "AirPair"?

I wouldn't be an "expert" for hire on those services, either, because the prices are all race-to-the-bottom programming/engineering-skill-is-a-commodity prices.

Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by icedchai on Thursday February 05, 2015 @12:48PM (#9004629)
Perhaps they're doing it during their day jobs, meaning on top of their normal job, effectively "double dipping." Could be a good, low-risk way to fill downtime.
Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by sarciszewski on Thursday February 05, 2015 @01:01PM (#9004702)
Most employers don't tolerate this behavior.

"What, you're making money for yourself during the time you're supposed to be working for us?!"

It's unethical and almost certainly illegal, but IANAL.

Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by icedchai on Thursday February 05, 2015 @03:17PM (#9005716)
No argument that it would definitely be unethical. But how is it illegal? What criminal violations are occurring?
Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by wavelet on Thursday February 05, 2015 @10:14AM (#9003579)
This is an introductory pricing to get a feel of what people think / need. Our experts’ time are definitely worth much more than that in their day jobs!
Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by patio11 on Thursday February 05, 2015 @11:02AM (#9003877)
If anyone ever feels the need to do introductory pricing, do yourself a favor and estimate market rates, put them on the page, then strikethrough them and quote the introductory pricing. This conveys a) the customer is getting a deal and b) the service provider is not wildly irrational about what they're offering.

We're clear that this pricing is wildly irrational, right? $30 for a half hour is, literally, not what it would cost to assess someone's skill at performing haircuts. Many of your customers, who after all have hiring authority for engineers, can do the math about what your interviewers' market wages and chargeout rates must presumably be. Those rates make these rates look like a joke. That quickly sets your customers to thinking "OK, there must be a catch, because clearly one cannot sustainably pay a CTO $30 per half hour to do schedule-in-advance work with a half-hour minimum? What is that catch?"

None of the answers your prospects will dream up to that question will induce them to give you their business.

Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by yarone on Thursday February 05, 2015 @03:08PM (#9005651)
To add some data:

Companies like Gerson Lehrman Group (GLG) pay experts $750 per hour for one hour of talking to someone on the phone.

Re:HiredBox – Ask the right questions in your technical inte... by sarciszewski on Thursday February 05, 2015 @10:20AM (#9003611)
https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/saas_pric...

I highly recommend patio11's newsletter :)