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 will 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 submit 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 stated that he would create a contract for each events to signal, making certain 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 acquired a proposal.
“After I receives a commission, you receives a commission,” De La Rosa wrote in a LinkedIn submit with over 400 reactions. “It is that straightforward.”
De La Rosa informed Enterprise Insider that he acquired “nonstop” messages from individuals within the first 24 hours after he posted. The messages included mentorship or referral provides from engineers at tech firms, although some have been “very sketchy” gross sales pitches, he stated.
He informed the outlet that he rapidly acquired three job interview provides within the month because the submit went dwell, although he’s nonetheless searching for full-time work.
Then, Ryan Prescott, a Maine-based engineer, noticed De La Rosa’s submit and made his personal. The one distinction between the posts is that Prescott requested extra particularly for a software program developer function paying a minimum of $120,000, not only for a six-figure wage.
Prescott’s LinkedIn submit went viral when an X person screenshotted it and posted it on X. The submit 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 via 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 submit helped him get seen in a crowded market.
“I might actually simply encourage extra individuals to distinguish themselves in unusual and memorable methods,” Prescott informed BI.
Different LinkedIn members wrote comparable posts over the previous month, and a few even elevated how a lot they have been prepared to pay for assist getting a developer job.
Jean-Philippe Lebœuf, a senior product engineer searching for work, wrote that he was prepared to pay $30,000 to anybody who helped him discover a distant job paying a minimum of $120,000. Ray Morrison, a software program engineer, stated he would pay $15,000 in increments of $500 per thirty days for anybody who helped him land a task with a wage of a minimum of $140,000.
Tech hiring has dropped by a minimum of 20% in August 2024 in comparison with August 2018, per LinkedIn information. Software program engineering roles are down by 26%, IT by 27%, and venture administration by 25% in that time-frame.
