HN Explorer

Show HN: Historical HN Hiring Data (hnhiringtrends.com)

146 points by sberens ↗ HN
Hi HN! A few days ago I saw a graph[0] that showed the # of job postings on HN was declining. I started wondering what other trends I could glean from the data, so I created this!

You can filter through the top level comments by keyword; for example you can filter by "remote" to see the massive spike around March 2020. Another interesting thing I found is that I can compare hiring across cities.

I hope you enjoy! I made it so that the links to your search are sharable so if you have some interesting data you should be able to just link the page you're on!

[0] https://rinzewind.org/blog-en/2023/the-tech-downturn-seen-th...

23 comments

[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 66.0 ms ] thread
comfypotato
Filtering by “remote” shows a very different picture.
phneutral26
If you filter for "Remote" in both looking and hiring, you can see a decline in people looking for those Remote Jobs, whilst the Hiring front skyrocketed. Overcompensation/adaptation at its best.
sberens
Actually I just realized because the "looking" comment format includes "remote: ", filtering by "remote" doesn't do much. You should filter by "remote: yes" if you want to see people who want to be hired remote.

I was thinking of preventing this using semantic search with OpenAI's embeddings, but I realized that the total size of the embedded comments would be around 2GB, which most people probably do not want to download.

deeg
Very nice! Could you perhaps add a third data point, which is total number of comments on HN? That would help indicate how much of the variability is due to overall traffic.
sberens
Thanks! Yeah, I'm working on adding an option to normalize everything by some measure of activity around each data point.
tombrm
Awesome project!

I've been doing something similar with all "software engineer" job posts for the last 10 months: https://devquarterly.com/insights/trends

Interesting to see the trends on YC are pretty much the same as they are on linkedin, indeed and glassdoor.

gigantino
I absolutely love it! You are missing Switzerland though which probably has the most interesting programming landscape in Europe.
jb1991
> most interesting programming landscape in Europe.

What do you mean?

gigantino
I personally believe that the salaries and quality of life in Switzerland make it the best place for programmers in EU.
tombrm
good point, and there are tons if interesting companies building R&D teams in Switzerland. I’ll look into the data and add Switzerland soon. thanks.
jb1991
in Switzerland though salaries need to be higher to account for the higher cost in living, no?
agolio
Very cool project.

A little feedback:

Something is off with the graph when I try to use multitouch gestures. May need to adjust the call in whichever javascript library to disable zoom if that is desired, or correct some parameter.

I might find it easier to read if there were fewer x major ticks, so one per year for instance.

But overall very nice. Simple and to-the-point data visualisation without bloat

sberens
Ah thanks for pointing that out! I'll see if I can fix it.

Edit: should be fixed!

coding123
We have more looking than hiring for the first time, ugh.
soneca
When did you scrape March data?
OJFord
Nice! If you could make the vertical axis (at least) toggleable lin/log, I wonder if the 'hiring freelancer' overlaid on the default hiring/looking lines might be more interesting (as it is it's dwarfed by them, so appears almost y=0).
pcthrowaway
The march data looks wrong? You show <400 hiring and the Who's hiring has 535 comments (though maybe it's only counting top-level by people who are actually hiring)
sberens
Yeah it only counts top level comments
bmo333
Why was there so many hired during Covid? I still don’t get it.