Make your
ideas come to life.
We’ll help you find the right, motivated engineers for
your company. Local or remote, full time or contract.
World-class without exception.
no talent churn with learn to earn
LD Talent ("Learning Dollars Talent") is a network of vetted engineers, who are financially incentivized to engage in continuous and lifelong learning.
Our engineers are the skilled group who actually make it through our tough vetting and training. They are not only smart and creative, but also responsive and responsible. They have been held accountable for complex projects and have delivered. Engineers have proven themselves through tests and lab practicals in software engineering, algorithms, business communication, and mathematics. They have either gone through LD Talent's internal paid training program or they are from top global Computer Science institutions. For each engineer we introduce you to, we will provide you their resumé which attests to their ability.
The above of are just 8 out of the 100s of engineers in our network.
You can invite engineers of specific skill sets for contract or full-time opportunities.
If you need introductions to contract, full-time, or student software engineers (US-based or international), LD Talent has a pretty big rolodex. You can invite engineers of specific skill sets for contract or full-time opportunities.
Our clients include seed-stage and pre-seed startups, large and mid-size companies, as well as universities and labs.
You can invite engineers of specific skill sets for contract or full-time opportunities. If the engineer accepts your invite, you will be informed over email.
For Hiring Contractors: You will be introduced to engineers via slack for an interview. After interviewing engineers, you can "Try" them for contract work using your free trial or funded hours balance.
For Hiring Full-Time Engineers: You can press "Request Referral" next to the engineer's resumé. You will be sent a HelloSign agreement within 1-2 days. Once signed you will receive an email introduction to the engineer. Only if the engineer works for you for over 100 days, will you be sent an invoice for the finder's fee.
Contract engineers track time in half hour work sessions, but funds are only released when you as a client explicitly approve their work sessions after reviewing their committed work. This way you only pay for work you are 100% satisfied with.
If you like an engineer a lot and want to hire them directly, we make that easy. It's a 1K buyout fee for international talent and a 5K buyout fee for US based talent.
Since 2014, while at Stanford, Gobi Dasu noticed the high demand for qualified engineers, the quality problems with online freelance engineering, and the high attrition rates in massive online open courses (MOOCs). After a number of experiments, he developed an effective business model to address these problems.
LD Talent (Learning Dollars) is an endeavor not just in engineering, education, and incentives, but also in meaningful economic uplift and meeting industry's demand for talent.
Our secret sauce is financially incentivized education of talent in our network, which lets us match you with quality engineers at affordable prices. Our goal is to solve the Computer Science skill gap. Industry wants the best and brightest talent but stigmatizes the need for engineers to constantly learn and grow. We have a culture where learning is embraced, and our training and vetting funnels bespeak these values.
Each engineer either goes through the LD Talent paid training pipeline or joins directly as an elite developer, depending on his or her existing university affiliations.
The paid training pipeline includes training and vetting in Business Communication, Computer Science, Algorithms, Source Control, UNIX, Internet Concepts, and Elective Skills such as Full-Stack or Mobile Development, Machine Learning, Game Development, AR/VR, Blockchain, etc.
Then, engineers start accepting contract and/or full-time job opportunities.
While engineers are not assigned to a contract or hired for a full-time opportunity, they can choose to learn online and do paid passion projects to grow their skills. Doing these passion projects also help the engineers get more and better matches.
Finally, our talent matching algorithm is constantly learning about our engineers’ changing knowledge, performance, responsiveness, reliability, and other critical attributes. It therefore helps you find the best-fit contract or full-time talent your company needs.
To support engineers with the above 5 steps of project building and learning, LD Talent actively maintains https://github.com/gobid/knowledge-map-cheatsheets, a project with the goal to assemble all established knowledge into an efficient set of cheat sheets for interdisciplinary innovation.
| Platform | LD Talent | Toptal | Andela | Gigster | Recruiters, Linkedin | Upwork |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free Trial | ||||||
| Vetting | ||||||
| Pricing |
Intl: $35+/h US: $80+/h Full-time: $5K Fee |
Intl: $60+/h US: $120+/h |
Intl: $50+/h | Us & Intl: $50K+ (Fixed Price) |
Full-time: $25K Fee | Intl: $10+/h US: $40+/h |
| Payment | Can fund any amount of hours | Must Fund 1-2 weeks |
Must Fund 1 month |
Must Fund Milestones 5K+ |
One-Time Fee | Can fund any amount |
| Buyout Options | Buyout Available ($1K-$5K Fee) |
Buyout Available | Buyout Available | N/A because Fixed Price | $25K+ | Opt-Out case-by-case |
| Time Traking | Slack Based 30m Work Sessions | Tracker or Work Logs | Tracker or Work Logs | N/A because Fixed Price | N/A because Referral | Time Traker Screenshots |
We've profiled more details about LD Talent and its competitors at freelancesoftwaredevelopers.com
People, including current clients, who refer new clients to LD Talent will be compensated $100 in LD Talent Credit. The credits will become available when the referred client funds their first 20h invoice.
Engineers will be compensated for each International or US-based engineer they refer to LD Talent. If you are an engineer interested in referring a friend or peer, then please see the ld-engineers channel in the LD Talent Slack.
The founders of LD Talent are themselves software engineers. They are affiliated with Stanford, Northwestern, UC Santa Cruz, and IIT Delhi. LD Talent is a company born out of the Stanford Venture Studio and The Northwestern Garage incubators.
Featured Posts
You can read more at:
blog.learningdollars.com.
