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Jonathan Siddharth: Connecting the World’s Engineers with Global Companies

Jonathan Siddharth: Connecting the World’s Engineers with Global Companies

Hi! It’s me, Spiffy the interplanetary journalist reporting from Planet Earth with the latest scoop on entrepreneurs making a difference in the world of work and the economy. Today’s rockstar is finding innovative ways to connect the world’s engineers with the world’s engineering jobs. I’m happy to welcome Jonathan Siddharth, CEO and co-founder of Turing

Spiffy: It’s great to have you here Jonathan! Tell me about Turing and what challenges you’re addressing.

Jonathan: It’s great to be here, Spiffy! Turing’s mission is to dis-intermediate geography from opportunity, making it possible for skilled engineers — regardless of where they live — to find great jobs, while helping companies work with talented people all around the world. Turing levels the playing field for talent coming from diverse backgrounds all over the world. 

Spiffy: That’s brilliant! How does this contribute to a more equitable world?

Jonathan: Smart talented people exist all over the world, but until recently, their ability to secure good, high-paying jobs was determined by their proximity to companies that required engineering talent. Turing makes it possible to source, vet, match, and manage highly skilled people from all over the world and match them with companies that need their skills.

Spiffy: What kind of milestones have you achieved lately?

Jonathan: In the past year, Turing has raised nearly $50 million to further the development of our platform and secure even more opportunities for the top 1% of the global engineering workforce. Our goal is to create over 1,000 new job opportunities for people around the world by 2022.

Spiffy: I’m speechless. And that doesn’t happen often! What about failure? Have you experienced it and how did that impact you?

Jonathan: When I started my last company, Rover, we were financially limited and couldn’t compete with companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple for the most skilled people in our local market. By figuring out how to source, vet, and manage remote engineering teams, we were able to do an end-run around our local competition and build a successful business. We then took what we learned at Rover to build an entire company based upon the idea that talent is global while opportunity has traditionally been local. Our challenges at Rover led to our continued success at Turing.

Spiffy: What is something unexpected you’ve learned?

Jonathan: I've learned the value of keeping 50% of your calendar free. As CEO, it's important to allocate sufficient time for strategic planning, problem-solving, and de-risking the business's big unknowns. With a calendar that's fully booked, you risk being too reactive to the situations you encounter that day/week/month instead of working toward creating the situations you want the company to be in six months to one year from now. You need to free up mental bandwidth for this.

Spiffy: That’s a great visual, Jonathan! Is there anything else you would love to tell our audience? 

Jonathan: Yes, Spiffy, companies are now realizing the value of hiring the best people in the world and not the best people who happen to live near their offices. This has huge implications for talented, motivated people all over the world. Your opportunity radius is not 20 miles from your home. It’s the entire planet. People with diverse backgrounds from all over the world, working together towards a common goal will be a significant step forward towards equal access to opportunity and world peace.

Spiffy: Thanks for leaving room in your calendar to talk to me, Jonathan! It’s been an honor!


Jonathan Siddharth is CEO and co-founder of Turing.com, an automated platform that lets companies "push a button" to hire and manage remote developers. Before starting Turing, Jonathan was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Foundation Capital, following the sale of his first AI company, Rover, that he co-founded while still at Stanford. In his spare time, Jonathan enjoys helping early-stage entrepreneurs build and scale their companies. (Nominated by Gaingels)