Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

I got hired to be an analyst for a MLB baseball team off of a HN post like 7 years ago. Because of HN I have 2 world series rings! Life is very strange but I'll forever be grateful for that Who's Hiring post.

George Costanza got his job at the Yankees off HN too.

Very cool - didn't realize staff can receive rings as well.

Would love to hear more about this. Have a blog or anything written about the series of events?

In 2018 I was hired as full-timer number 13 from an HN thread. I stayed there for 4 years.

The company was 90-some people when I left. We posted in the HN threads every month, but as far as I know, I was the only one hired from HN. One time I asked someone from HR about it, and they told me that we only got a very small number of responses from the HN threads, but that they were generally high-quality candidates, and that it just never worked out. In at least one of the cases we tried to hire the person, but he ended up ghosting us (I remember that one because I interviewed him... and now often notice his username in the comments).

Interesting, could you elaborate on why 4 years is the magic number?

For a variety of reasons job seeking via HN is a decent fit for me: I prefer to work for smallish companies, I have modest ambitions but a pretty strong resume, and remote work suits me.

I’ve posted a a few times on “who wants to be hired?” and despite explicitly ruling out full time work, I’ve gotten some decent offers. The last time I posted a little over a year ago, things worked out and I was hired.

I got my current job by responding to a "Who's hiring" comment. It's by far the best job I've ever had.

I responded to one post on here 6 years ago and was hired as the second employee of a startup. There are about 50 of us now. We post every month or so, but don't get much traction. I believe I am the only person hired from HN.

Do you get a lot of replies, but the candidates are low quality or "poor fit"?

Sample size of one, obviously, but back when I was in a position to hire I absolutely checked those threads each month and reached out to people that seemed like good matches. Never got any responses that I can recall, though…

I'll double the sample size. I've both posted a few times and replied to ads.

The people were mostly nice, but they tended to want very specific niche skillets, had a fair amount of hoops to jump through for sucky comp and no equity.

There was one exception but they hit me with several "2 hour" take home tests and I tapped out because there's easier money even in this market.

I suspect the story is a bit better for the US cohort, but comp wise if you can get into FAANG you probably should.

( I turned down FAANG for CTO of a UK startup in 2020, and despite stellar performance, I became much poorer whilst the owner became a paper billionaire, so part of the problem might be I'm just not interested in wooly promises that can be revised )

I got hired ~1 month ago as a software engineer by a startup based in Switzerland in one of the “Who wants to be hired?” post. I was unemployed for 6 months before that, couldn’t even imagine that I could get a decent offer on here to be honest.

As someone currently living in Switzerland I'm curious, is it a remote job?

Also curious about that! A few years ago I was thinking about freelancing (as a developer) for a Swiss company. I heard it is quite hard to do that.

Im still interested in doing work for a swiss company, remote mostly though. Which might make it harder. I am based in NL. Also not strictly a developer, also like product ownership or product management.

Any tips or tricks?

It's hybrid actually, I'm not really that much into remote working and I enjoy the office but I am still in the process of relocating so I do wfh for half the week.

I got my current job by posting on a "Who wants to be hired" thread in 2019.

To be fair, though, I was only contacted by that one company (and like 2-3 spam emails) so I wouldn't really count on HN as my main strategy.

On the other hand, I'm Mexican and HN is very Silicon Valley centric, so maybe people from the Bay Area get more replies?

I did, I applied to a start-up with 2 people in 2018. I was hired as engineer number 1. Worked there for 2 years and left right before the series A investment and the team had grown to 35 people.

It was a pretty good experience.

HN is my favorite place to hire engineers for ipinfo.io - we’ve hired at least 10, although most of those have applied to jobs that I’ve posted on who’s hiring. I do browse who wants to be hired and ask people to apply who look like a fit too though.

Coderholic hired me from HN!

I wanted to be a DE, but I got interviewed for a success engineer post for one company. So, in a random thread, I described what my plans would be if I got hired in a success role.

So, Coderholic saw that comment, he sent me an email and asked me to apply to be their first DevRel. He was extremely patient with me and was kind enough to give me a shot.

That's how I made it IPinfo. I really love my job, and I feel privileged to be a part of the team.

It looks like ipinfo works in a fascinating problem space. I see that you had a few “Who is Hiring” posts earlier this year, but none in the May or June threads. Do you have a sense of whether you’ll be looking for more engineers in the near future?

My previous role was from a posting I read here. I was searching for a few keywords (remote, Python), saw a short post that outlined briefly about the role and the projects. A few calls later, I was part of the team and stayed there for a couple of years.

I did about a month ago from last month’s post. I was in finance before and had a few offers from finance companies, but I had an offer that stemmed from last month’s post in a totally different field that seemed better. Very happy with it.

Been posting in the "who wants to be hired?" and the freelancing posts for more than a year. Just have got three mails - one asking for a price for a project, and they bailed when I asked for details and mentioned a standard freelancing rate; other wanting me to do a project and asking me to wait for them to complete information to begin, but it's been months; and the latest, someone (a scammer?) offering to get me a position in a startup but by receiving a 10-15% cut (or something like that) of the salary.

But I still have to try, maybe someday I can get lucky.

I got hired ~3 years ago by a small Clojure startup. Both the CEO and the CTO reached out to me and said: hey, we use one of your OSS libraries, would you like to talk maybe?

I got hired from posting to a HN thread. Sadly the company shut down, but it was worth the experience and I met a couple of cool guys.

I know a lot of people that will only use HN for that post alone. Don’t know if you’ll get a true representation here.

I was hired this past January off of a Who's Hiring post! After 6 months of unemployment no less. Also, 3 of my current teammates were also hired the same way. At least from what my manager has said, apparently the people applying via HN seem to be higher quality. Of course that's anecdotal, but do with that what you will.

I got hired off of a HN thread a few years back. Worked on an open source message queue in Go for a year or so before lay offs hit. Overall, I’d do it again, HN is a solid culture fit litmus test apparently.

Sub-question: who landed their job from one of the "who's hiring" posts

I did! Back in 2020, I found a job after 6 months of job search thanks to that thread. A very well paid job as a PM for a remote-first startup after PMF.

In the past two years, my employer has hired 6 people through the monthly "who's hiring" post... there is some seriously good talent here!

While I was in school, I once got an internship through an HN monthly hiring thread. (Though this was a couple years ago, when the job market was probably a bit better.)

I got my first real tech job back in 2012 this way (thanks, mek and stephen). When that company went under I got my second real tech job this way, too (thanks marek and marc and rene).

If I ever want to find a job outside my network my first stop will be the whoishiring post. Thanks, HN.

I got a few good freelancing clients off the “seeking freelancer” thread back when I was contracting. The last one ended up being $100 / hour for a long term gig lasting over a year, which was great money for me at the time.

i was hired after inquiring on a Nov 2021 post, started Jan 2022 and am still there.

I got my job in 2019 from a who’s hiring post

I reached out to about 5 companies between January and February on "Who is hiring?" and landed a job through that. Great company.

~10 years ago I was living in Iran and was hired as a contractor in a US company.I was being paid using Bitcoins (due to sanctions).

Wow, I can't believe a startup would willingly take that risk. Violating US sanctions law is no joke for a US company!

Did you intentionally not tell them you were in Iran and instead just said you wanted to be paid in bitcoin without explanation? I'm extremely curious.

I did, more than once. I’ve also hired many from those threads. I find it’s still my best source of quality candidates. LinkedIn stands out as particularly terrible.

So looks like 30 people got hired from a decade of posting both threads every month ;) As someone said here still a better Signal to Noise ratio than elsewhere

I've been on both sides and have gotten mixed results. But the SNR is higher than all the other places which is just wading through floods of bullshit

I got hired after reaching out to a company (the known as Dopamine Labs) that hit the top page, but it wasn’t one of the monthly threads - one of the founders popped into the discussion with “AMA” so I asked if they were hiring. Took a couple months (December, you know how it goes) but that was a great gig.

I regularly engage in freelance assignments through HN. I have found most of these clients to be serious and committed professionals / businesses who value my work, and pay on time.

I used to post every month for my previous company. The candidates we would get were always junior and low quality: this was likely due to our description and target market. I don’t recall hiring from one of those posts. We did however hire quite a few terrific engineers from workatastartup.

Got hired two different times, found consulting clients and also made several IRL friends through here.

Thanks HN!

After moving to the UK in 2016, I found my first job in London via Who's hiring. I formed deeply meaningful, very strong relationships with some of the amazing people I was fortunate enough to meet there.

I was offered a job in Munich I think in 2014. Unfortunately, the Cost of Living increase to be expected from living in Munich didn't stack up against the increase in salary.

A pity maybe, it would have allowed working with Clojure.

may I ask what position/salary you were offered?

It was September 2013 actually. Offer:

Software Engineer with EUR 45.000 yearly salary + bonus up to EUR 5.000 and 6 months probation and cancellation period of 3 months from both sides.

I'm Dutch and lived in the Netherlands and it would have meant moving abroad.

It doesn't sound too bad for that time if it was an entry level position. I started with a similar salary as a DevOps engineer in Munich at the end of 2019. Munich isn't cheap though, I pay 1,5k € in rent for a 54 sqm 2,5 room apartment in a good neighbourhood.

At that point I had 3 years of experience and a masters in Econometrics. A year later I got a much better offer in Amsterdam.

I've seen this over and over again: German software engineer salaries are just too low.

I have a dumb question. Do advertised salaries in EU include tax or are tax deducted. Because I'm the US you get paid $100k but there are taxes and healthcare costs that need to be deducted.

Generally those numbers are gross. The ones I posted were as well. Health care is of course a lot better for less money (unless you're rich).

I got hired multiple times not through applying but from the freelancer post.

Did you feel that contacting from an HN thread gave you an edge over other candidates? Or a fast track through the interview phase?

Submitted title was "Ask HN: Who got hired?" and the submitted text referenced just the "who wants to be hired posts".

I added "from HN" to the title because people are responding about lots more than just ""who wants to be hired" and I think the more general question makes the thread more interesting.

I did, for a Frontend role. Was fun, but now I'm seeking UX design roles and they're a bit rarer here! All good :)

I got a consulting gig a few years ago, which is what I wanted.

Twice in the last decade. Both REMOTE.

not specifically from a hiring post, but i was hired in 2020. however, it was about a year after a prototype project of mine made it to the front page here.

had some other legit/promising inquiries and interviews prior and after this as well.

I was, in 2015. And now I'm at a startup with some people I worked with there.

I was hired from from one a little over three years ago. Still my current gig in fact.

I got hired from one about 8 years ago. It was cool.

I had networking HN founders share my info roughly 10 years ago.

I landed 3 jobs from here starting from 2014

I got hired. About three years ago. Thanks HN.

I got hired from there about a year ago as well.

Never even heard from anyone on those posts. Stopped posting.

Not directly what you asked, but I've hired two people as a result of HN's who's hiring/who wants to be hired posts.

I've gotten several very good clients from the freelancer/seeking freelancer threads.

Could you link me? Thinking of posting myself.

So I guess HN is on a death spiral too, when submissions like this get 100+ upvotes in 4 hours. There's a lot of people that want to know how to signal properly to get a job here. That never bodes well.

Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Dang should delete this submission.

Also, I've expressed this before, but in case Dang is reading this: HN needs to ice new users for much longer. A week or two until they can submit a post, a month or more before they can upvote.

I’m not sure asking Dang to arbitrarily censor posts that reflect existential feelings about where HN is heading is the best idea. That’s what not pressing the upvote button is for.

Agree on submission icing for new accounts I guess, as it would help people get a better idea of the guidelines and community first.

I think when submissions like this stay up, it encourages other people in the future. If you search for "hired" and sort by time you'll get this submission along with other "Who wants to be hired" posts.

"Who wants to be hired (June 2023)" : 140 points, 17 hours

This submission: 121 points, 4 hours

There's a certain kind of user / member that really craves being a part of the group and yet never really tries, he'll just try and ape what the "successful" people do. As communities get larger, these people increase in number. Submissions like this are basically crack for them. You'll get a couple of these threads every single week, and in the end you'll have to moderate the problem away anyway, because they won't just stop at "Who got hired", they'll start with "How to get hired on HN" and then try to game the entire thing. It'll tank people's confidence in getting good talent off HN. After all, there's only so much you can do to filter candidates, you can't conclusively claim "fraud" if someone has 7/10 "good" indicators.

I speak from some experience, I moderate a small niche community that doesn't require any physical capital to initiate the "hobby". There's a lot of people that just want an exclusive "community" but don't care if they're genuine about it. Some people get it, it invites countersignalling (not always direct, in-your-face stuff) and then the community degrades rapidly unless you can silo the good users away.

A link to the official guideline would be nice. Asking for a friend.

Isn't this overreacting a little bit over a single Ask HN? Are you surprised people look for jobs on a news board from a startup incubator, of all places?