Apparently, good developers are now such a hot commodity that some of them need agents to represent their interests. A new firm called 10X Management helps freelance developers find jobs and negotiate pay and perks, and it handles the invoicing details for them. Agent Altay Guvench, a former programmer, explained that he himself first tried hiring an entertainment industry agent to represent him. “Friends of mine started seeing I was happier,” said Guvench. “They started asking how they could get in on it.”
Currently 10X Management represents 30 developers and takes a standard 15 percent cut of the gigs it finds for them. Guvench admitted some employers weren’t sure how to handle working with an agent at first: “Yeah, the employers can be taken aback a bit, but the ones we work with regularly have come to appreciate it. We handle all the awkward conversations about salary and the scope of the projects and make them less awkward.”
