Developers of Hacker News – How did you find your job?

5 points by ready2order ↗ HN

3 comments

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My last two decades of jobs, including long-term freelance customers, in reverse order:

Agency referral

Approached by former colleague

Referral from friend

Referral from friend

Recruited based on referral

Placed by recruiter

Placed by recruiter

Referral from friend

Hired at friend’s startup

Placed by recruiter + referral from mutual acquaintance

Cold call to owner

I can’t remember the last time I applied for a job. I find out about jobs through my network, which includes a few competent and connected recruiters.

Current job (Java dev, mid sized SaaS, 2019-now): Local specialist recruiter via random inbound LinkedIn message. Worked out really well, despite the horror stories I had heard.

Previous job (Tier 1-3 support to Java dev, startup SaaS, 2013-2018): Asked a friend how they liked it there, took a tour, met some people, was in for an interview the next week. First non-freelance or self-employed gig in many years but it turned out to be a great match.

Before Times: Post-college-dropout drift for a decade or so. Helped run a massive LAN party (dates it a bit, heh), did some PHP/Java work for friends’ small consultancies, worked retail, repaired computers, freelance music writing and photojournalism, random open source project contributions here and there.

I love seeing other “non-traditional path” stories on here. Not everyone ends up in dev work, or their current job, the same way. :)