The best talent agent is actually just 2000 other engineers
Why community is your strongest advantage in any job search
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Something about news headlines labelling Meta’s talent acquisitions “poaches” last week made tech twitter go full ESPN mode — I've never seen more Jerry Maguire references from people whose idea of sports analytics is optimizing their climbing route beta and Whoop sleep scores. Naturally, the question started floating around: if we’re going to fight for engineers like they’re athletes, shouldn’t engineers get athlete-level representation?
The comparison is tempting when you look at the gap in support. Kevin Durant had an agent, a publicist, and an entire crew making sure all his needs were met last month when he got traded to the Rockets. You can be one of the top 50 engineers in San Francisco and the prevailing negotiation strategy is asking a few friends how much they’re making and doing some reddit deep dives. But in the excitement about engineers-as-athletes, our rush to copy professional sports misses something crucial: individuals have real constraints. One person can only know so much, have so many connections, and be in so many conversations at once, especially when it comes to tech. The NBA has 450 players and 30 teams — the tech industry in SF alone has 100x that.
I’m not saying I’d turn down Rich Kleiman if he offered to handle my next job negotiation. Community, however, aligns with basic engineering logic: why rely on one data point when you can aggregate the collective wisdom of thousands of job switches? When you try to search for your new role on your own, you’re stuck with your own network and whatever’s publicly available. Meanwhile, founders have entire teams — lead investors, subscription services, other founders — sharing intel about what offers are being made in similar roles and what equity benchmarks are being accepted.
Being a part of a great community helps to level the playing field. Getting the real story from recent hires about team culture is infinitely more valuable than parsing Linkedin fundraise updates or Forbes lists. You get real-time intel with a community, because people are constantly switching jobs, negotiating offers, or interviewing at places you want to work at. There’s no incentive to inflate or deflate figures or bluff about equity offers. Half the best startup roles never even make it to a job board in the first place. Instead, they’re filled through networks and internal referrals. We watch the power of community work its magic every day at FYSK — a strong community can take you from stranger to signed offer in under 18 hours (true story).
That’s why we’re bullish on the power of community, and you should be too. The FYSK community is full of thousands of data points from people who’ve actually worked at the companies you’re considering, and they’re not taking 3% of your salary for to tell you the truth.
Best of all, communities like FYSK are free, low pressure, and as hands-on as you want them to be. Today, we’re introducing a better way for you to take advantage of the vast amount of knowledge in our community. About to sign an offer but want to sanity check that the equity is actually competitive? Considering working at a startup but you want to know more about their culture? These are questions we get everyday, and we’re making it easier for you to get answers to them with Ask FYSK. Just share what you want to know about your next move and we'll tap into our community to get you the inside scoop.
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