Would you pay to land a job?
A software program engineer went viral final month after promising to pay upwards of $10,000 to anybody who may help them discover a related six-figure job. It labored — and now it is changing into a pattern.
Argenis De La Rosa, a pc science undergraduate on the Harvard Extension College, wrote in a LinkedIn put up that he would give somebody the five-figure sum in the event that they helped him land a software program developer function.
De La Rosa mentioned that he would create a contract for each events to signal, guaranteeing that every time he began getting paid in his six-figure function, he would repay the $10,000 debt in increments. The deal would solely undergo if he obtained a proposal.
“After I receives a commission, you receives a commission,” De La Rosa wrote in a LinkedIn put up with over 400 reactions. “It is that straightforward.”
De La Rosa informed Enterprise Insider that he obtained “nonstop” messages from folks within the first 24 hours after he posted. The messages included mentorship or referral provides from engineers at tech corporations, although some had been “very sketchy” gross sales pitches, he mentioned.
He informed the outlet that he shortly obtained three job interview provides within the month for the reason that put up went dwell, although he’s nonetheless in search of full-time work.
Then, Ryan Prescott, a Maine-based engineer, noticed De La Rosa’s put up and made his personal. The one distinction between the posts is that Prescott requested extra particularly for a software program developer function paying no less than $120,000, not only for a six-figure wage.
Prescott’s LinkedIn put up went viral when an X person screenshotted it and posted it on X. The put up gathered 1.6 million views on Elon Musk’s app.
i’ve by no means seen something like this earlier than—this takes “open to work” to a wholly new stage. pic.twitter.com/nWNGcd2yMJ
— signüll (@signulll) February 24, 2025
After Prescott posted, a startup CEO contacted him a few senior front-end engineer function. Prescott went by a number of rounds of interviews and finally landed the function. As a result of his boss was the one who reached out, Prescott will not be paying the $10,000. Nevertheless, Prescott says that the put up helped him get seen in a crowded market.
“I might actually simply encourage extra folks to distinguish themselves in unusual and memorable methods,” Prescott informed BI.
Different LinkedIn members wrote related posts over the previous month, and a few even elevated how a lot they had been keen to pay for assist getting a developer job.
Jean-Philippe Lebœuf, a senior product engineer in search of work, wrote that he was keen to pay $30,000 to anybody who helped him discover a distant job paying no less than $120,000. Ray Morrison, a software program engineer, mentioned he would pay $15,000 in increments of $500 per thirty days for anybody who helped him land a job with a wage of no less than $140,000.
Tech hiring has dropped by no less than 20% in August 2024 in comparison with August 2018, per LinkedIn information. Software program engineering roles are down by 26%, IT by 27%, and mission administration by 25% in that time-frame.
