Twice actually. One time thru who's hiring and once thru who wants to be hired. Both were great jobs that I enjoyed. Good way to get straight to the hiring manager
Some scammer "founder" invented a "job" to pick my brain while pretending to be hiring. Absolute liar. One of those customer/feedback chat widgets with video call features.
The startup was ServiceBell. It was a feature company in a crowded market with little defensibility. They're still around.
It's easy to get rich quick in business when you're dishonest for a short time, but it's slightly more difficult to be honest, trustworthy, and not a pathological liar. Karma, reputation, and the law eventually catch up with shady people who didn't learn anything about the social contract from their parents.
Sorry, I’m not really sure what part of my comment is disrespectful other than you may disagree with it. Reality certainly doesn’t align with the assertion that eventually justice is metered out to people doing bad things. Do you have evidence that it does?
More times than I can readily remember. A number of contracts, a number of full time jobs. Have attempted to hire on here a couple times as well though I don't recall it working out. I've been on here since 2007 though, so recent experience is substantially different. It's as bad as the dotcom bust in 2001 the last year or two.
I generally prefer YC companies and early stage startups, so it's generally been good for me.
Really? I wouldn't have thunk that this place would have contract roles. Were they w2 or c2c or 1099? The last 2 are super hard to come by. Got any tips to share on where to find such roles?
There's a monthly "seeking freelancer" thread, or at least there used to be. I also always mention my comfort working contract with people even when I'm interviewing for full time roles, in case that's helpful for them. "Any way that gets the money from your bank account to mine".
Edit: Also, I do recommend the "startup match" system they run, I've been having good success with that this year, found my current role and a number of solid roles that were candidates for acceptance. Be forewarned, that there are many well-intentioned but unserious people on there, so you definitely have to do a ton of legwork. Don't judge a book by it's cover, some of the best roles were people who frankly seemed somewhat unhinged but ended up being really interesting and compelling.
I found my first job out of school and my current job both through HN Who's Hiring. I have also hired 2 people myself from posts I made to Who's Hiring.
Happened to me once. I was only contacted by the company that hired me (and like 2-3 spam emails) so I wouldn't really count on HN as my main strategy.
got contacted by a trading firm when one of the founders saw one of my Show HN posts. Was my breakthrough into the quant / hft industry and I now run my own trading firm: that one event massively changed the trajectory of my entire life.
I used a throwaway account because I was hired through HN. The work environment was terrible, extremely stressful, and led me to become very depressed. It wasn't until I shared my experiences with a friend, who was shocked and convinced me to quit, that I realized how bad it had been.
This hasn't completely discouraged me from being hired through HN in similar situations, but I will definitely do more research on the company beforehand.
This comment was rewritten by AI to anonymize the writing style.
I was hired, just reached out to the contact on a "Who's Hiring" thread for a company doing work I had some experience with but was looking to expand on. So far so good.
For background the hire before that was through a colleague and the job I got before that was through a news list. I don't really ever get any success through more traditional job seeking services.
I was extended a good opportunity to do entry level web dev but left the interview because I felt the coding puzzle was too hard for the role, even tho I could’ve solved it. Computer Science/math heavy and easy if already familiar. I still feel bad and entitled about that but I acted on the signal I felt and told the truth.
Aside, I am all for suitably difficult challenges, and I distinguish engineer from developer. Dev shouldn’t get CS stuff, Eng should. Mention it to benefit other hiring managers who may be reading, if it rings fair.
I was hired after interacting in a comment thread with a founder that was building the same thing I was NIH-ing at my current job. Easy fit to come on since I was currently doing it, but not ultimately a great fit. It pulled me out of my first five year gig at a huge corporation and helped me see the extreme opposite of that, and paid hugely better. I don't think it was a huge resume pad, as it wasn't a well known FAANG, but I appreciated the perspective it gave me and the redirection of my career.
I got my first job through Who Wants To Be Hired in 2019. An engineer at the company reached out to refer me based on my resume. It was very good for allowing me to break into the industry, and it was a great place.
Once at Singly, in 2010-ish. Was a contractor for about 4 months, they brought me on full time, and I spent about a year there, left to go to one of the big 4 consulting companies, spent 7 years there.
The second was at Greenhouse (the ATS) in 2021 -- was there until Jan of this year.
I'd love to list the founders on here who reached out and totally wasted my time trying to figure out how they should build the team they are hiring for vs trying to hire me the couple of times I posted on here about working with one of you. Totally overt bait and switch. I'm pretty sure a bunch of you would go "hmm, surprised those guys did that" given they're "known".
Not directly, but someone on HN reached out to me in 2014 to ask if I had time to review their new app. Turned out it was a job board (can’t remember what the USP was) and among the scraped initial data was a GOV.UK job ad that ended up being the single most influential position to my career that I’ve ever had.
I had around 10 interviews via HN jobs, and around 50ish through the startup match making thing.
7/10 job interviews were fake jobs that actually didn't exist and where there's not even a budget available for them. These jobs were abused as early customer feedback and I didn't believe what happened there. I was basically braindumped.
The interviews from the startup matchmaking site were also kind of ridiculous. More bullshit consultants there than actual founders or actual developers that could or want to be building anything. These consultants want to hire you as a cheap developer, not as a founder, and definitely not as a shareholder. Happened so many times that I am not using this site for anything startup related anymore.
In general I'd argue that HN has a huge vetting problem, and by vetting I mean whether or not the intent of the people attending there come with honest intentions as to both their experience (which pretty much is almost always totally made up if you discuss more technical problems) and the idea of putting a lot of work into a problem to solve it (a _lot_ of people think that having a startup gig on the weekend, but only afternoons, leads to anything successful).
Most people come with so high expectations that it feels like being inside a ponzi community. Startups are a percentage game of luck, and you can only get an advantage if you have the right team at the right time, which implies that teams have to be absurdly motivated by a problem.
The people I found on this site are the opposite of that. They see it as a way to make quick cash because "they heard this is how to get rich fast".
I was very disappointed and am now much more involved in our local startup related meetups and events, and found a lot of team members through that.
I got my current job by posting on a "who wants to be hired?" thread. I was contacted by the person who ended up being my manager and got fast tracked through the interviewing process. It's at a company that I probably never would have heard of otherwise (Fullstory), but I like it enough that I'm still there ~4.5 years later.
On the flip side, I can think of three people who were hired via "who's hiring?" posts I put up.
I was hired for my current role at Cortical Labs via a “Who wants to be hired?” thread a year ago. First time I had tried via HN, I had a great experience and I recommend trying it if you haven’t.
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It's easy to get rich quick in business when you're dishonest for a short time, but it's slightly more difficult to be honest, trustworthy, and not a pathological liar. Karma, reputation, and the law eventually catch up with shady people who didn't learn anything about the social contract from their parents.
This is comforting to believe but I'm not sure reality aligns with that.
I generally prefer YC companies and early stage startups, so it's generally been good for me.
now companies are worried about that classification
Edit: Also, I do recommend the "startup match" system they run, I've been having good success with that this year, found my current role and a number of solid roles that were candidates for acceptance. Be forewarned, that there are many well-intentioned but unserious people on there, so you definitely have to do a ton of legwork. Don't judge a book by it's cover, some of the best roles were people who frankly seemed somewhat unhinged but ended up being really interesting and compelling.
By the way, here's a thread with the same question form last year (June 2023): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36160198
How is that life anyways? I know very little about it?
Neither was a startup though.
This hasn't completely discouraged me from being hired through HN in similar situations, but I will definitely do more research on the company beforehand.
This comment was rewritten by AI to anonymize the writing style.
They had a good "vibe" from their I want to get hired post.
Got them their first gig in the tech space. Now with me at another tech play.
This place is great for connecting, the signal is way above noise.
For background the hire before that was through a colleague and the job I got before that was through a news list. I don't really ever get any success through more traditional job seeking services.
Aside, I am all for suitably difficult challenges, and I distinguish engineer from developer. Dev shouldn’t get CS stuff, Eng should. Mention it to benefit other hiring managers who may be reading, if it rings fair.
Once at Singly, in 2010-ish. Was a contractor for about 4 months, they brought me on full time, and I spent about a year there, left to go to one of the big 4 consulting companies, spent 7 years there.
The second was at Greenhouse (the ATS) in 2021 -- was there until Jan of this year.
Not the ads, but the Who’s hiring posts.
No regrets. I just found a new job, same way.
I had around 10 interviews via HN jobs, and around 50ish through the startup match making thing.
7/10 job interviews were fake jobs that actually didn't exist and where there's not even a budget available for them. These jobs were abused as early customer feedback and I didn't believe what happened there. I was basically braindumped.
The interviews from the startup matchmaking site were also kind of ridiculous. More bullshit consultants there than actual founders or actual developers that could or want to be building anything. These consultants want to hire you as a cheap developer, not as a founder, and definitely not as a shareholder. Happened so many times that I am not using this site for anything startup related anymore.
In general I'd argue that HN has a huge vetting problem, and by vetting I mean whether or not the intent of the people attending there come with honest intentions as to both their experience (which pretty much is almost always totally made up if you discuss more technical problems) and the idea of putting a lot of work into a problem to solve it (a _lot_ of people think that having a startup gig on the weekend, but only afternoons, leads to anything successful).
Most people come with so high expectations that it feels like being inside a ponzi community. Startups are a percentage game of luck, and you can only get an advantage if you have the right team at the right time, which implies that teams have to be absurdly motivated by a problem.
The people I found on this site are the opposite of that. They see it as a way to make quick cash because "they heard this is how to get rich fast".
I was very disappointed and am now much more involved in our local startup related meetups and events, and found a lot of team members through that.
(Just in case there was a misunderstanding)
On the flip side, I can think of three people who were hired via "who's hiring?" posts I put up.