I have been looking for something like that but I couldn't find anything.
Below are details of what I am looking for and what I have tried so far.
This question is not a duplicate of Finding talent agents for software developers - see below.
Problem
This is the situation I'm in right now:
- I get a lot of job offers on LinkedIn, Stack Overflow, Twitter and by email.
- I don't have time to read all of them, not to mention responding.
- Most don't quote rates so I immediately disregard them as too time consuming to evaluate.
- I probably miss a lot of good opportunities that way.
Wanted solution
I would like to have someone who:
- Reads all the offers I get.
- Responds to all of them to see if they are a good fit.
- Negotiates good terms.
- Gets a commission for all my future earnings.
- Has a financial incentive to renegotiate and get better jobs for me.
- Represents me in all negotiations.
Nice to have
- Invoicing and other paperwork.
- Tracking of my calendar to start new project after old ones end.
- Terminating old contracts if there are new ones on better terms.
- Legal advice.
Non-goals
I am specifically not interested in:
- Looking for clients for me.
- An agency that has clients and hires me to do the job.
- Any solution where it is a secret how much the client is paying.
- Any solution that is just for freelance contracting (I have some offers for full-time jobs in big corpo who offer real employment contracts and those should not be out of scope)
What I found so far
So far I found services like:
- Toptal
- CodementorX
- Upwork
- X-Team
- Gun.io
- 10x Management
All of those services looking at their website advertise as a place to hire good developers. This is not what I want. I am looking for services whose only clients are developers.
Looking at other online resources I found:
- Is there such a thing as a talent agent/agency for software engineers? on Quora
- Why talent agents for engineers don’t exist on Aline Lerner's Blog
- Finding talent agents for software developers on Stack Exchange
with quotes like:
- "Great programmers don't need talent agents"
- "Agents make sense when it’s hard to find a job"
- "Ultimately, there's really nothing like leveraging your own network."
So I think it's important to stress out that it's not about agents to find a job for someone who doesn't have a job or cannot find a job, but to handle the situation of too many job offers to handle and evaluate, and that indeed I would like to leverage my own network but the problem is that I don't have time to discuss all of the offers that I get from my network.
The 10x Management seemed closest to that so far when I read all the news about them in Network World, Valleywag, VentureBeat, The New Yorker, Bloomberg and an impressive number of other places, but their website starts with:
"HIRE THE BEST ON-DEMAND TECH TALENT
We've vetted the greatest freelance
tech talent, so you don’t have to."
All of it is directed to clients looking for talent, with only a small "Become A 10xer" button at the end and it seems that their main focus is on finding clients for their developers instead of representing their clients in negotiations with potential employers and going through job offers that the developers already have. I may be wrong about it but this is the impression I got so far.