Diverse Efficient
Vetted Developers
Select the skills you need in a developer. Contract or Full-time FTE.
Find relevant candidates. Try
them for free.
no talent churn with learn to earn
Our clients include startups, large and mid-size companies, universities, and labs. We've found that teams love motivated developers who are lifelong learners.
LD developers are the skilled few who make it through our tough vetting and training. They are smart, creative, responsive, and responsible. They have been held accountable for complex projects and have delivered. Click on some of them below to see what we mean.
The above of are just a small sample out of our large, vetted network.
You can invite developers of specific skill sets for contract or full-time opportunities. We describe our vetting process here
You can invite developers of specific skill sets for contract or full-time opportunities. If they accept, you will be introduced in the LD Talent slack.
Contract developers track time in half hour work sessions. Funds are only released when you as a client explicitly approve their work sessions after reviewing their work. This way you only pay for work you are 100% satisfied with. Learn more.
| Platform | LD Talent | Toptal | Andela | Gigster | Recruiters, Linkedin | Upwork |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free Trial | ||||||
| Vetting | ||||||
| Pricing |
Intl: $15+/h US: $50+/h Full-time: $1-2K 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 |
| Funding | Can fund any amount | Must Fund 1-2 weeks |
Must Fund 1 month |
Must Fund Milestones 5K+ |
One-Time Fee | Can fund any amount |
| Payment | Pay only if satisfied with tracked time | Must pay for all time tracked | Must pay for all time tracked | Must pay for milestones submitted | Must pay for all time tracked | Must pay for all time tracked |
| Buyout Options | Buyout Available ($1-2K Fee) |
Opt-Out case-by-case |
Opt-Out case-by-case |
N/A because Fixed Price | $25K+ | Opt-Out case-by-case |
| Time Tracking | Slack Based 30m Work Sessions | Tracker or Work Logs | Tracker or Work Logs | N/A because Fixed Price | N/A because Referral | Time Tracker Screenshots |
We've profiled more details about LD Talent and its competitors at freelancesoftwaredevelopers.com
Since 2014, while at Stanford, Gobi Dasu noticed the high demand for qualified developers, the quality problems with online freelance engineering, and the high attrition rates in massive online open courses (MOOCs). After a number of experiments, in 2018 he launched an effective business model to address these problems with one platform. LD Talent (Learning Dollars Talent) 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 developer 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, developers start accepting contract and/or full-time job opportunities.
While developers 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 developers get more and better matches.
Finally, our talent matching algorithm is constantly learning about the developers’ 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.
Literature from the learning sciences and development economics describes such CCT programs. While money may seem like an extrinsic motivator, it turns out that such financial boosts can incentivize knowledge workers, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds, to engage in lifelong learning. As they learn more and advance in their careers, the extrinsic component reduces and the intrinsic grows. So, we embrace with pride the fact that LD stands for "Learning Dollars". It represents the wealth of learning, and is a concept that can be translated into many languages and cultures.
To support engineers with the above 5 steps of project building, interdisciplinary innovation, 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 cheatsheets for interdisciplinary innovation.
The founders of LD Talent are themselves software developers. 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.
Our mission is to help teams become stronger by encouraging them to drop location biases and constraints that unknowingly and implicitly exclude qualified, motivated, and efficient people of color from impactful roles they are perfect for. These knowledge workers are undervalued and overlooked by industry, creating a an opportunity for a new type of global collaboration, particularly given the rise of remote distributed teams in the new normal.
Featured Posts
You can read more at:
blog.learningdollars.com.
