Tech Talent Drop - Edition 24

Welcome to Tech Talent Drop Edition 24! 🎉

AI is no longer a sidecar to recruiting—it’s becoming the operating system. This week brought privacy shifts that affect candidate comms, fresh infra bets that will keep DC/infra hiring hot, and multiple raises that mark where talent will cluster next.

The Drop

LinkedIn will start training its AI on member data (opt-out available) beginning Nov 3.
This week brought new reminders and help pages explaining the rollout and how to opt out. Expect candidates to ask about data use; add a short privacy note (and the opt-out steps) to outreach. Regions affected include the UK/EU/EEA, Switzerland, Canada and Hong Kong (not the U.S.).

Perplexity makes its Comet AI browser free for everyone.
Comet blends browsing with an AI assistant that summarizes pages, runs tasks, and keeps a running workspace. Useful for quick company research, prospect prep, and competitor scans before screens.

Meta will mine chatbot conversations to target ads/content.
Beginning mid-December (user notices rolling out Oct 7), Meta will use chats with its AI to inform ads and feed recommendations. For employer branding and paid campaigns, expect sharper interest targeting—paired with new candidate privacy questions.

California: app-based drivers win the right to unionize.
Gov. Newsom signed a bill granting Uber/Lyft drivers the ability to unionize as independent contractors. Expect recruiting and policy teams at marketplace/logistics startups to revisit labor strategies, comp, and compliance hiring.

Reality check on AI infra: Stargate momentum and scrutiny.
Fresh reporting this week spotlighted the first Stargate site in Texas and reiterated five new U.S. sites announced late last month, plus Nvidia’s planned up to $100B investment tied to 10GW of systems. Translation: sustained demand for data-center ops, reliability, capacity planning, and energy/cooling skills.

AI Tool of the Week — Continue.dev

Open-source AI coding assistant for VS Code and JetBrains, plus a CLI that works in the terminal and in CI. You can bring your own model, run local or cloud models, and build custom agents without vendor lock-in. Good fit for teams that want speed and control.

What it does

• IDE extensions for chat, inline edits, and code understanding.

• Terminal TUI and headless modes so you can script refactors, run fixes, and automate tasks in CI.

• Open configuration. Connect to OpenAI, Anthropic, or local models, and wire in community tools.

Hiring / Interview Insight

Assess judgment, not just velocity.
Add a 15-minute scenario where a candidate:

1. audits an AI-generated prospect list, flags data-use/privacy concerns, and proposes a verification plan;

2. decides when to pause/escalate an automated workflow (e.g., outreach or scheduling) and explains why.
   Score for reasoning, safety, and data hygiene—not just output volume. (This directly maps to this week’s privacy and platform updates.)

Funding Watch

• Vercel — AI-native dev & AI Cloud — $300M Series F (post-money ~$9.3B). Hiring: runtime/infra, security, “v0” agents, enterprise GTM.

• Supabase — open-source database platform — $100M (post-money ~$5B). Hiring: Postgres/LangChain integrations, DX, partner eng.

• Feedzai — AI fraud prevention — $75M (≈$2B val.) + framework selection for digital-euro fraud detection. Hiring: ML, real-time systems, compliance.

• DualEntry — AI ERP for finance ops — $90M Series A (≈$415M val.). Hiring: data engineering, integrations, enterprise implementations.

• Axiom Math — AI mathematician/“reasoner” — $64M seed. Hiring: formal methods, theorem proving, applied math, evals.

So what? These dollars point to near-term openings in AI runtime/dev platforms, fincrime AI, AI-first ERP, and reasoning-centric research—plus the usual demand in partner engineering and enterprise integrations.

Quick Bytes

• Huawei open-sources an LLM shrinking method (quantization) to run on cheaper hardware—watch for more “on-device” inference job specs.

• South Korea breach cadence stays high—monthly major incidents raise the bar for SecOps and incident readiness.

• OpenAI DevDay preview hints at a potential ChatGPT browser reveal—expect ecosystem shifts that impact hiring for extensions/agents.

What to do this week

• Update outreach templates with a one-liner on data privacy + LinkedIn opt-out steps; be ready for candidate questions.

• Roll out Continue for a 2-week coding assistant pilot

• Keep an eye on infra hubs around the new Stargate sites for DC ops/reliability

That’s all for this week’s Tech Talent Drop — stay informed, and see you next week!