Due to a corporate decision, the OpenTable branch office in Chattanooga, TN is being closed down. Many of us are unwilling or unable due to family and homes to relocate to San Fransisco. (No, not everyone wants to live in SF, and we have faster internet here.) So we're looking for an "acquihire" without a company name.
About 8 Backend and 4 frontend engineers as well as a few product & design guys—all ready to hit the ground running. Most of us are startup veterans.
Interested parties can email me: wil@wilwade.com
Interesting. I know there are Very good reasons for not relocating to either Los Angeles or San Francisco, but what were the specific reasons (aside from family/homes, if any) you and the team had for opting not to relocate?
Further to this:
2) Were team members offered raises as part of a relocation package?
3) Were team members offered the opportunity to work 100% remotely?
4) Has OpenTable approved this message?
5) Regardless of #4, are there certain conditions others would need to be aware of such as non-competes? I know NCAs are fairly (if not entirely) powerless in California, but I'm not aware of the laws impacting them in Tennessee.
Edit: per user @rfc's jogging of my brain, Stripe has a program for hiring full development teams. @wilwade, this might be worth applying to. I know I posted it in another comment, but it's worthy of top-order visibility: https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own-team
Do you need reasons other than family/homes?
Will look into Stripe!
Note I live and am from the D.C. area and graduated from MTSU.. visited SAN Fran many times for meetings with Google who stomped on me, a reality tv show and others startup adventures. Not my cup of tea even growing up close to D.C. And Baltimore which the same suffering isn't occurring on the same scale... maybe it's the weather... hoping in the next ten or more years SAN Fran changes/helps those in need.
OT is offering good raises, so it's not really a money issue. For most of us, if we wanted to be in SF we'd already be in SF. Chattanooga is just a great place to live.
I had a 3k s.f. house and an all-in monthly cost of ~$2k/mo (including mortgage, insurance, pest control, etc) for household expenses.
I recently had a soft offer (verbal discussion of salary ranges) of around ~$150k to move back to TX. To match that in CA dollars, it requires ~$200k/yr+ compensation.
Method:
Use the following two tax estimators:
https://smartasset.com/taxes/texas-tax-calculator
https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator
...count ~$1500/mo => $20k/yr for housing in TX/Dallas, ~$3000/mo => $36k/yr for housing in Bay Area.
...count ~$12k/yr for living expenses in TX, $20k/yr for Bay Area ($1000/mo for restaurants, etc, in TX, $1500/mo in Bay Area... this accounts for increased food / restaurant / drink / entertainment / parking prices in California).
TX: $20k housing + $12k living => $36k mandatory expenses
CA: $36k housing + $20k living => $56k mandatory expenses
Include a mandatory savings rate of 50% of yearly housing costs (insulate against layoffs / economic downturns) and you're at: $46k/yr for TX and $74k/yr for CA.
An offer of $150k in TX gets you income after taxes of: ~$108k minus $46k living expenses for a savings rate of ~$62k/yr.
To get to a $62k/yr savings rate in CA, you need $62k+$74k after tax income which is $136k total. That requires an offer of ~$200k/yr in CA.
Obviously these numbers are very hand-wavy, but it is instructive to go through this exercise. Running these numbers at a more modest $100k salary in TX and keeping expenses the same (leading to a ~$12k/yr savings rate), you need ~$86k in after tax income which is a ~$130k CA salary, which is ~30% increase over a baseline $100k in TX for a transfer to make any kind of sense (plus relo expenses, one-time-costs, etc).
A $12k/yr savings rate in TX for 10 years will get you $120k and a house.
A $12k/yr savings rate in CA for 10 years will get you a down payment and nothing more (ie: you cannot live/retire where you work/earn).
Ok, maybe third.
* This is not unprofessional
* It's fair if you'd prefer to opt out
* I don't believe this reflects poorly on OP at all.
Your employer is closing an office. Your team supposedly has a positive dynamic, which has value, value your employer is passing on. Why would it be unprofessional or unethical to advertise this when said employer is cutting the team loose?
I do not mean this to call out chattamatt; this comment is for those who come next who think about doing the same thing: no one is looking out for your best interests besides you. There is nothing wrong with putting an offer such as this out (except for those who may not want to participate, OP should've checked with his team for those who might have not wanted to be included)
EDIT: @chattamatt (HN commenting throttle has kicked in, I can't reply to your comment below)
I'm very sorry your team has to go through this. I hope this thread provides the necessary resources for everyone to make a successful leap to a new employment opportunity, regardless if its the entire team or individuals on their own. I can also appreciate how you feel about being represented without your consent, and my comment notes that isn't acceptable.
There are terms to our severance packages... While this post in itself doesn't violate any of those terms, it's a difficult time, and many of us, including myself, are still gathering our thoughts and planning next steps. I'm simply sensitive about having anyone represent us without first having our permission.
This behavior (OP) doesn't come off as unprofessional at all. You have nothing to worry about.
I get that you might feel upset if this was posted without your consent, but tech is becoming hollywood and there are plenty of people who'd like to hire a proven team.
I'm really interested in the belief system that led you to post this message. Details?
1) The only reason it could come across as unprofessional is because it goes against the typical power dynamic where the company holds all the cards and the employees get what they can. Screw that.
2) It has been shown over and over that functioning teams are greater than the sum of their parts. If this is indeed a well functioning team then an employer who understands the dynamics of things would absolutely rather hire as a group and pay a premium for it. Typically in this case you would still interview each team member individually, but the ones that got through your normal process would be regrouped after that. You could pay a bonus based on how many of the original team get hired.
3) It's a rare opportunity to actually grab a whole team like this. For a company that is trying to ramp up a project quickly this is a great find.
Being able to truly take advantage of the job market requires that workers be:
1. Willing to relocate, the further you're willing to go the wider a net you can cast and the more leverage you have in negotiations.
2. Willing to hold out on many offers, waiting for the one you feel you deserve, even if it takes time to find it. This also gives you a lot of leverage at the negotiation table, and can't really be faked: you actually have to be fine with walking away.
Some developers want to stay near their family and existing social network. Some developers have big bills or debt and can't afford to wait for better offers. Some people live in cities where the tech community is super .NET based, or where salaries are way lower than the ones they hear about on HN, or where pretty much all the shops require a suit and tie and don't let you work from home. And some people just want to live a comfortable life focused around things other than work. And that's totally fine.
All of this isn't to say you shouldn't be on the lookout for better jobs and workplaces. If you're young, rootless and don't have much debt, you should totally drill the market for all it's worth, and there may be many people like that. And if you're truly miserable at your job, totally look for a new one, and consider whether you can accept temporary uncertainty in return for a better quality of life. However, these are complicated life decisions, and it feels kind of frivolous to unilaterally decide them based on one or a few pieces of criteria.
(Sorry for being harsh, this rant has been building steam for a while)
If you're trying to get hired as a team, that sounds new, so employers might not have heard of such a thing.
It's the first time I've heard of something so preposterous. Maybe if it was a progressive state like Colorado, I could understand, but Tennessee? I can't stand the hot, humid summers myself. Then you have chiggers and scorpions to worry about. ;)
Getting hired as a team is hardly new. Acquihire is incredibly common, and this is essentially the same thing.
As to Colorado vs Tennessee: Maybe it's not for you. I personally prefer our city as a well kept secret.
My previous company also was relocating and we wanted to stay as a team. We sent few e-mails to companies that had similar profile. We thought about placing advertisement in national and financial newspaper, but because it was relocation and not lay-offs we were not sure if that would backfire. Few companies hired more than 3 persons each out of it and maybe one had small team afterwards.
You have to be lucky to pull this off.
As for hiring a team, I have heard of companies poaching their competitors' employees before, not as a whole team at once, but one by one (they hire one guy, then he talks to his former co-workers and they switch to the new company too). I'm not sure why companies don't do more of this when they can; it'd be a great way of beating your competitors, since the employees are the ones who build the product and know everything about it. There's likely some non-compete issues in some places, but in California that shouldn't be a problem, as case law already bans enforcement of non-competes, and that lawsuit a few years ago with the big tech companies proved that non-poaching agreements are also illegal.
Edit: The hiring company was in Alabama. The closing company was in the back woods of California (not SV).
https://stripe.com/blog/bring-your-own-team
@wilwade, check the link. This might be your best shot aside from somebody reading this thread and offering directly.
- Identify a number of potential network contacts working for companies that may need the help, reach out to them, tell them about what you're doing and ask to meet for coffee to talk about how you can help them
- Work your network to see who is looking for the kind of service you want to provide - find one client and start small and build on that work
- Find companies you'd like to support and contact the "right" person (maybe the CTO? Maybe CIO? Maybe head of purchasing?") and see if they need what you want to provide or at least give them something to think about for when they need it
- Look for companies putting RFPs on the street for software work (public sites or otherwise though this win rate is probably a lot lower)
- Ask larger businesses in the area and/or consulting companies from more established industries if they are interested in subcontracting for software development
- Ask your current employer if there's any interest in continuing the relationship as contractors for specific applications to give you some runway.
This is by no means a complete list but it's what I would do in order to get it started. Then you'll want to keep doing it all the time and if you get big enough hire a sales / BD person.
I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I believe you would be better served to either find individual jobs here, or be willing to relocate. (And just to be clear, I'm not pushing the relocation thing. I love this city and wouldn't want to move either.)
Plus, how does hiring a team of 12 work any differently than interviewing 12 candidates and giving offers to the qualified ones?
Methinks "Developers for Hire in Chattanooga" would be more useful.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/no-bosse...
Just the other day HN had an article on them. They are in Atlanta, so not far from you.
They are looking to hire 150 new employees within the next year.
>> "[MailChimp] now employs about 550 people, and by next year it will be close to 700"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12642824
Since OpenTable sends email confirmation for restaurant reservations, your team might bring interesting insight for MailChimp since it's possible you might be a current customer of them.
I was in Chattanooga from 2013-15 and have nothing but good things to say about their team. Most notably they ran a functional programming meetup that covered pretty advanced topics but was still inclusive to beginners. I'll remember the encouragement I got there for a long time.
If anybody who cares about the Chattanooga tech scene reads this: do your best to keep the OpenTable team intact. A lot of the programming community's enthusiasm is either directly coming from or being encouraged by them.
DISCLAIMER?: I was in Chattanooga a couple weeks ago and they gave me a bunch of useful, free advice on my current project. This isn't really a disclaimer though because IMO it just reflects even better on them.
I decided not to move because I didn't think the local economy offers a lot of choice for software engineering jobs. When I visited people remarked, we've got VaynerMedia, we've got OpenTable, we've got CarbonFive, etc. etc.
This news sucks because I really want to see Chattanooga grow into a techhub, but it also confirms the suspicions I originally had. :/
