Startup Uses Eggs to Poach Employees from Facebook, Google

http://www.freshtechapps.com/bigcommerce-an-e-commerce-site-is-literally-poaching-google-and-facebook-employess-waiting-for-their-company-buses-in-san-francisco/

by kumarrahul • 12 years ago

55 49 12 years ago

freshtechapps.com

jchrisa• 12 years ago

Now that's what I call a hack. Bravo!

smoyer5• 12 years ago

This may be a catchy way to make your company known, but I imagine you're only getting those who were thinking of leaving anyway.

zem• 12 years ago

yes, but you get first shot at the ones who were thinking of leaving, before they have turned that thought into actual action and you have several other companies to compete with.

smoyer5• 12 years ago

I didn't say it was a bad idea ... and the numbers seem to indicate it's working.

dasil0035• 12 years ago

Well yes, by definition, you can only poach employees from a company who at some point think of leaving the original company.

Seriously though, to your point, why do you say "but"? Are the ones who think of leaving somehow less valuable than the ones don't think of leaving? In my mind, those who never think of leaving probably tend to be the weaker talent. That could just be my unsubstantiated bias, but either way, I think the point is that they all got hired by Facebook/Google at some point which is a pretty good signal as far as tech signals go.

smoyer5• 12 years ago

It wasn't supposed to imply you were getting lower quality applicants BUT rather that you were getting some fraction of a bigger pool.

It's entirely possible I use the word "but" too much or that I don't need a conjunction there at all - would two shorter sentences be better?

Or maybe I'm just a butt?

stuaxo• 12 years ago

Egg sandwiches ... yuck !

nsomaru• 12 years ago

Alas.

If this comment was better phrased, we might have started a stimulating discussion as to the merits of egg sandwiches.

antonioevans• 12 years ago

You don't like Egg Sandwiches? They're excellent.

LukeB_UK• 12 years ago

I believe you mean eggcellent...

MicroBerto• 12 years ago

Those are not good enemies to make... seeing as though they probably drive well over half of your network's traffic.

bayesianhorse3• 12 years ago

On the other hand Facebook and Google might be encouraged to buy out the company to get their employees back.

Steko• 12 years ago

Similar gag from this cartoon on recode yesterday:

http://recode.net/2014/04/02/tim-cook-turns-up-the-heat-comi...

bayesianhorse3• 12 years ago

The article uses an interesting phrase "[BC] has been accused of poaching [employees]".

As if competition on the buyer-side of the labor market was morally suspect... Steve Jobs would have approved of the sentiment!

walshemj• 12 years ago

This is a well know political trick to shift the axis of a debate towards your position by continually drip feeding stories using loaded words so that eventually everyone tends to accept some or all of your position by osmosis.

AYBABTME2• 12 years ago

I think in this case, it's just a literary device to make the text more interesting.

At least it's more credible to me than a conspiration about manipulating the tech masses into disliking poaching.

chimeracoder• 12 years ago

Whatever the intention, it's still a very biased perspective - the fact that the bias is so subtle is what makes it even worse.

There's nothing to accuse - nobody's doing anything illegal or even unethical. A more appropriate line would be "[BC] has previously succeeded in hiring talent away from Google[0]", etc. "Accused" is the objectionable word - you generally don't accuse someone of something positive or commonplace.

It's similar to the effect when newspapers have headlines on how "Snowden's actions" have caused people to be more suspicious of the government. (His actions aren't the reason people are suspicious; they're just the reason people know about the facts that are what really make them suspicious)

[0] or, if they want to keep the word "poach" since the pun is part of the story, "[BC] has previously succeeded in poaching talent away from Google", etc.

kalleboo• 12 years ago

The mugs of coffee they're handing out say #poached on them along with their URL. They're serving poached egg sandwiches. http://www.freshtechapps.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Eggs...

It's not the article, it's the company themselves.

bayesianhorse3• 12 years ago

My point was about "accussation" rather than about "poaching".

ghfdaghkj• 12 years ago

If someone harassed me while I was waiting for the subway and tried to get me to quit my job, I definitely wouldn't want to work for them. I'd probably go out of my way to never use their product, actually. I don't see how this is any better than the "do you have a minute for ____" clipboard people that prey on tourists for donations/signatures on the sidewalk.

danbarker• 12 years ago

The writing on this site seems pretty terrible: http://www.freshtechapps.com/7-reddit-amas-that-went-horribl...

rachelbythebay• 12 years ago

Well sure, start with this: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Bigcommerce-tries-poachin... ... then rewrite it until it doesn't look like it was straight-up ripped off.

Edit: this, too, complete with the same photos: http://mashable.com/2014/04/04/startup-eggs-recruiting/

Blogspam.

sergiotapia• 12 years ago

This is fantastic! Don't be fooled a company has _zero_ allegiance towards you, sure they pay you but when things go south they will drop you lickity-split. I've seen it done and I've had it done to me once.

Employees out there: don't feel guilty about leaving a company, always find what's best for you - not the company.

lost_my_pwd• 12 years ago

I have no issues with companies courting employees from other companies; it shifts the power balance a bit back towards the individual for a change.

I am, however, a little put off by the term "poached", which BigCommerce is actively using in their campaign. It implies the sentiment that these people are simply a quarry being hunted as a prize rather people, of their own free will, deciding that the grass is greener elsewhere. Language matters.

ryandrake• 12 years ago

I posted a rant about that word on an earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7463417

Really, unless we think of ourselves as deer being stolen from the local land owner, we should stop using that word.

mark_l_watson• 12 years ago

Is using the word "poached" just a joke since they are handing out poached egg sandwiches?

samatman• 12 years ago

Nope! The poached egg sandwiches are a joke, since they're "poaching".

zodiac• 12 years ago

I think they used it, in part, to make a pun. Because BigCommerce offers them free poached egg sandwiches.

kevrone• 12 years ago

Nothing wrong with this at all.

ma2rten• 12 years ago

The recruiter of Bigcommerce, Steve Donnelly, will ask the guys waiting for the Facebook bus whether they were interested in changing the world of e-commerce. But to his disappointment, many of them replied no.

Obviously, they are going to reply that in a situation where they are together with their co-workers.

codeonfire• 12 years ago

Are you saying there are people out there that want to change the world of e-commerce? Maybe someone who owns a large share of an e-commerce firm will feel this way. Some guy waiting for the bus to go to work to pay the bills definitely does not give a shit about changing e-commerce. A more apropos question is to ask if the person wants to become financially secure quickly and not have to take the bus to work every morning. Alas, there's no company that makes that as a goal for its employees.

jobseekr• 12 years ago

I don't think they're poaching anybody. I'm looking for a new job and this company has been posting the most ridiculous, desperate ads on Craigslist.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eng/

Y work for 1 startup, work for 50K - Software Eng (PHP, Ruby) Product

Are you down with OLTP?- Database Engineer (MySql, Innodb)

Are you SaaS-y enough? - System Engineer (Linux, Perl, PHP, Ruby)

Are you ob-cess!d?- Front End Engineer (HTML, CSS, Javascript)

Engineers: Last day to RSVP here for Happy Hour at our new SoMa digs!

Engineers: RSVP here for our Happy Hour at our new SoMa digs!

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/web/index100.html

Rich and Sexy- Front End Engineer (HTML, CSS, Javascript)

The headlines are horrible.

The postings are horrible...

  We are SoMa's hottest new startup and we are building a team of badass engineers to help us take the world's fastest growing e-commerce solution to the next level.

The image (which doesn't show anyone working) is horrible...

http://i1286.photobucket.com/albums/a605/Bigcommerce/CL-Ad2_...

The recruiting video (with swearing!) is horrible...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uibkWc26MgQ&hd=1

These guys have been posting this crap nonstop on Craigslist for a while so I'm not surprised at all to see them trolling bus stops.

usujason• 12 years ago

Like the 'poached' campaign, dislike the misspelling of 'employess' in the article's headline.

raldi• 12 years ago

More like, startup uses eggs to get free media coverage. The eggs do nothing to help recruiting.

rpwilcox• 12 years ago

Hmm. Seems like a technique with a very low success rate: out of 1,000 applicants they hired 2? So what's that, a .2% success rate?

Seems like there has to be techniques with better success rate than that...

Startup Uses Eggs to Poach Employees from Facebook, Google

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