Mastodon is looking for recruiting support to help us hire two exceptional backend engineers for multiple ambitious projects. More news on the specifics and the job description to follow soon.
This is a rare opportunity to work closely with our team on a non-technical project. If you might be interested in this or know someone, please get in touch. Ideally this should be fully or partially pro bono and start end of January.
@mellifluousbox I'm not a recruiting manager but I am a software developer. I have experience mainly as a full stack web developer, but I can become an exceptional back end engineer.
I am based in Sydney, Australia and you can view my portfolio here: https://sashin.dev
I also want the fediverse to succeed and have been on Mastodon for years.
I haven't made anything with ActivityPub but I am interested in learning.
@mellifluousbox I'm not sure about the pro bono, but @Thayer is the absolute best and would be a great addition. But you should totally pay her 💅🏻
@mellifluousbox if you're willing to go b2b, i run a tiny consulting company (phobos group) and we do a bunch of architecture and systems work!
"Shake for me girl
Let me be your backend engineer
Woah, hey, oooooh"
Led Zeppelin, "Whole Lotta Love"
@mellifluousbox I would be interested.
I underpin my recruitment strategy with Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion though.
My background is recruiting tech people as a hiring manager for the last 20 years.
I also run a technical internship program where I recruit 80 interns per year for complex open source and research software projects.
@rowlandm Thanks for considering this. Let's talk, I think we will be very aligned on DEI. I'll send you a DM.
@mellifluousbox Sourcing top backend talent for non-technical projects? 🏗️ Clarity is key! To attract the best, recruiters need high technical literacy. If you can't speak "engineer," your dev team ends up doing the heavy lifting – filtering out unqualified leads. 📉
Define the specific tech contributions early on. A recruiter who understands the stack isn't just a gatekeeper; they're the bridge to top-tier talent. 🌉 Let’s vet with precision! 💻✨
Is the programming-language already decided?
(And, if it is already decided — what is it?)
Or, is it up to the 2 back-end engineers to decide (which programming-language to use).
@mellifluousbox Hi! I know an early career recruiter that would be interested in helping partially pro-bono. Are Mastodon open for this, or only more seasoned recruiters?
@caiogomes That's great, would love to be connected to them. Early career is totally fine, although some experience with recruiting engineers would be important although we'd also be keen to teach this part (and have good experience with it within our current team).
@mellifluousbox Cool! Let me know once the details are sorted out, so they can share their details by email/link/message
@mellifluousbox
Hi — if you’re also speaking with potential candidates already, I’d love to be considered myself. I’m a senior backend engineer with 20+ years of experience working on large, long-lived systems, distributed services, and production infrastructure. I care deeply about open, community-driven platforms and would be excited to contribute to Mastodon’s backend work. Happy to share details or talk further when roles are posted.
@power88 Thanks for your interest. It's a bit too early but please look out for the job description.
@mellifluousbox This is some shit.
Pay people a living wage or GTFO!
@SnyperWolf Please see my other post here which explains the concept better hopefully. https://mastodon.social/@mellifluousbox/115905667285796382
@mellifluousbox No seriously, I expect you to step down as CEO, or start doing your job "pro bono"
@SnyperWolf Do me a favour and please look up my name on page 12 of our latest annual report and tell me how much I earned in 2024. https://joinmastodon.org/reports/Mastodon%20Annual%20Report%202024.pdf Have a nice day!
@jaygooby @mellifluousbox would love to help cc/ @andypiper for references!
@Thayer Fantastic!! When would you be able to talk next week? Happy weekend! @jaygooby @andypiper
@mellifluousbox @jaygooby @andypiper perfect, dropped you a DM
@mellifluousbox You should probably hire someone to write these posts or at least an editor—it's completely confusing and unclear and it sounds like that you want to 1. not pay the engineers and 2. have them do non-technical work.
@thomasfuchs Thanks for the feedback. I'm afraid we can't afford an editor at the moment. I hope I clarified it.
@thomasfuchs Thanks for the feedback. I'm afraid we can't afford an editor at the moment. I hope I clarified it.
@mellifluousbox @thomasfuchs it seems this proves the point of why they are asking for support in the hiring process
@mellifluousbox would be great if you would describe the task and requirements. What are you looking for?
How much time do you plan to require per week, since it's a non-paid position?
Is this cool backend non-technical pro bono project secret?
@mellifluousbox I'm sure you'll get a range of responses, but encourage you to establish a pay rate & share that...
Hiring engineering staff for this type of work is important & a technical skill, I know folks who do it well and it's not a volunteer/pro bono thing
This is also an extremely difficult market for recruiters & recruiting, so it's likely to cost you more in reputation to ask for free work than finding budget for it
I'll even pitch in a couple hundred dollars if it helps
@mellifluousbox Once you find a recruiter, please let me know. I'd like to apply.
@mellifluousbox
Back-end engineers for non technical projects ? Documentation ?
What a teasing
@tykayn No, the projects will be heavily technical 😊 The recruitment is not (which doesn't make it less challenging as we're looking for the very best backend engineers 😊 ).
@mellifluousbox aaah ok 😊 go go go!
@mellifluousbox What does "pro bono" mean here, especially in the context of hiring?
@afeinman @mellifluousbox I understand that the pro-bono part is the "support for recruitment", then whoever is recruited is paid
@afeinman Correct, the engineers will be paid. The (partial) pro-bono help is needed for the recruiting process.
@mellifluousbox @afeinman @rafa_font I don't understand why you want recruiters since there are tons of qualified available engineers likely to respond directly. It would be way more interesting if you could post the job description up front.
@solrize I agree with you and that's the experience we've made with previous hiring processes. We need the recruiters to help us process the hundreds of highly qualified applications in a professional and respectful way. This sounds like a luxury problem but the strain on a tiny engineering team to also do recruiting on top of delivering an ambitious product roadmap shouldn't be underestimated. We've worked with an (internal) recruiter before for almost all the positions we've hired for.
@mellifluousbox Well I'll forward your post to a firm I worked with. No idea if they will be able to work pro bono though. What is the job? Does it involve AI (boooo...)? I feel like you're being unnecessarily mysterious but whatever.
For that matter, what is the organization doing the hiring? I didn't realize that Mastodon itself was big enough to have a significant development org. Are the wages anywhere near competitive with industry?
@mellifluousbox @afeinman @rafa_font
Recruiters are also people who need to pay rent, buy food, and pay bills. They deserve a living wage.
If you can't afford a recruiter, you can't afford to hire someone.
@fadedoasis You misunderstand the concept. This has nothing to do with disrespecting a profession. Usually very large and very financially successful firms (or just people with good karma) provide these services for free by financing it with profits coming from the 99% of their paying clients and give it for free to the 1% which need it. There's nothing unethical about it and there is usually a very clear contract between the client and the principal. @afeinman @rafa_font
@afeinman Thanks for asking. Most firms offering professional services, provide a small percentage of this either for free, heavily discounted, or "at cost" to selected clients, which don't have the financial means to pay market rates (this is us, thanks to our decision to build a social network the non-profit way). For example @neil provides pro-bono legal help to @Mastodon (♥️). We're hoping there might be someone in the recruiting space doing the same.
@mellifluousbox @afeinman @neil @Mastodon this is familiar batshit mozilla-style "we're doing something unrelated and stupid that nobody asked for", but the "please do it for us for free" angle is a nice fresh twist
or, you could try the dusty but reliable free software community technique of saying wtf you'd like to do before bringing in corpo terms like "hiring" and "recruiter"
@migratory @mellifluousbox @afeinman @neil @Mastodon ...that's not at all what they're going after here. They're looking for (preferably) pro-bono help in recruiting people to work for Mastodon. That's the "non-technical project" part of the Toot. Whoever is hired would be paid. They're not enshittifying Mastodon, as you've implied, they're simply asking "Hey, does anyone with recruiting experience want to help us grow?"
@thekerker @migratory @mellifluousbox @afeinman @neil @Mastodon It literally says "job description " not volunteer opportunity. Those are two very different things.
@neil You are right, if someone is wealthy, they can choose to do free work... however Mastodon is not an all volunteer project, which is why I offered the feedback I did...valuing work early & often is a good practice.
