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 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.
yes, see prev comment. The training set data from this thread will be really fascinating as it has huge sample of writing from all the handles involved, with an indicator of landing some pretty serious roles. Classing out my ML talent hunter script now...
I got hired a few years ago by emailing a contact in a "who's hiring" post. Still working there, and it's a great job! A big step up from my previous role.
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 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.
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.
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?
I’m not sure why you think I’m lying, or why it’s so unbelievable that we’ve hired at least 10 engineers from HN? It’s true, and fairly easy to verify too.
I think your actual complaint is that coderholic's posts mostly (if not entirely) are about his company. It's true that good community members post about things that interest them generally, rather than using HN just for promotion (this is in the site guidelines: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity"). But it's also true that people sometimes end up posting like that because their startup is the main thing they have something to say about, and it's not some sort of nefarious intentional plan. Either way, the best way to get your point across is to be gentle and respectful. If you come out with guns blazing, not many people are going to react well to that!
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.
Thanks for the free database! I run several non-public services and It's and geo restricting it got rid all vuln scanning and exploit testing overnight.
I had 0 intentions of using an API to query every single incoming address for privacy reasons.
The database is super nice. Try out ASN based restrictions as well, you can block suspicious data centers as well.
Let me know if you have suggestions or feedback about it. Also if you are found a neat trick please share it as well. Because it is a data product there are infinite ways to use it, so, documenting everything is very hard.
I just integrated your service into a back-end system for a company building some VR stuff. I switched to your service because an issue in another IP lookup service was causing a bug in our server back-end. I think, over the years and various projects, I've had to integrate ipinfo.io at least a half-dozen times in a variety of projects, usually a server written in C or C++.
Oh hey Ben, it's fun to see someone I interacted with professionally out in the wild! I remember I guessed your email once and you responded immediately.
I'm asking because salaries here in Mexico are not exactly something to get super excited about compared those from some other places.
As a non-mexican living in Mexico, I don't bother applying for jobs here. With 20+ years of experience in development I just can't justify even spending time looking for them knowing the salary ranges.
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.
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.
They knew I was in Iran. None of us knew it's illegal to hire contractors we just thought it's some banking access issue. Also it was a small amount and not a systemic thing I was the only one.
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).
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 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.
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[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 285 ms ] threadI wish they promoted it more; cross links from the hiring and want to be hired would be good.
Last time was about 6 yeats ago.
If I ever want to find a job outside my network my first stop will be the whoishiring post. Thanks, HN.
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 )
It was a pretty good experience.
I think your actual complaint is that coderholic's posts mostly (if not entirely) are about his company. It's true that good community members post about things that interest them generally, rather than using HN just for promotion (this is in the site guidelines: "Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity"). But it's also true that people sometimes end up posting like that because their startup is the main thing they have something to say about, and it's not some sort of nefarious intentional plan. Either way, the best way to get your point across is to be gentle and respectful. If you come out with guns blazing, not many people are going to react well to that!
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.
I had 0 intentions of using an API to query every single incoming address for privacy reasons.
Let me know if you have suggestions or feedback about it. Also if you are found a neat trick please share it as well. Because it is a data product there are infinite ways to use it, so, documenting everything is very hard.
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'm asking because salaries here in Mexico are not exactly something to get super excited about compared those from some other places.
As a non-mexican living in Mexico, I don't bother applying for jobs here. With 20+ years of experience in development I just can't justify even spending time looking for them knowing the salary ranges.
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.
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).