HN Explorer

Ask HN: Is HN the best place to be listing job posts?

34 points by phantom_oracle ↗ HN
I see that quite a few companies (big and small) post on the monthly "Who is hiring?", but I've found that the so-called UX of browsing through this is quite discomforting.

Between the "expired or unknown link" issues and the blocks of text, is there a better way to do the monthly hiring thing?

Maybe someone is scraping HN to display the job posts in a more appealing way. If not, would anybody like to work with me to build something like that?

I could do it on my own, but I seem to find it more interesting to try building things in a remote, distributed team.

We can also open-source the code once we build it.

21 comments

[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 29.9 ms ] thread
hydralist
how about condensing those monthly threads into a monthly email digest?
tptacek
Until about a year ago, HN was our single best hiring vector. Some of the smartest people at Matasano got to us through posts on hiring threads. So, I'll go with "yes" on the headline.

On the other hand, I am always a little irritated when people scrape the hiring threads and reframe them. When we've posted job ads on HN, we've done it deliberately and with the expectation that those ads will be seen in the proper context. You should get permission before you scrape content off HN and reframe it.

dharma1
what works better for you now?
nickbarnwell
I'd hazard a guess that it's the effort they've invested in the Matsano Challenges or their collaboration with Stripe during their last CTF
meowface
Probably recruiting through their crypto challenges and CTF.
stormbrew
The only thing that bothers me about the format is that the jobs are almost all always outside my area (and for a variety of personal reasons I'm not interested in moving right now) and so the only ones I really want to look at are the ones tagged remote, but so many postings mention that they're not hiring remote that it makes it more difficult to find them with a simple text search.
rdl
In theory, but it seems like it's gotten substantially worse over the past year or two.

The only ironclad hiring process I've ever had has been "work on non-commercial/open source/fun project with someone, then hire that person". But that doesn't scale at all.

karangoeluw
I can help out. Message me so we can talk about it.
necubi
I run http://hnhiring.me, which scrapes the monthly posts and presents them in a nicer format. I haven't had much time to work on it lately, but the code is open at http://github.com/mwylde/hnhiring if you'd like to contribute or use it as a starting point.

Also, personally I've found the posts to be very useful. I found my current job from a post on the monthly thread.

phantom_oracle
I think this one is pretty okay to resolve some of the difficulties:

http://curatedhnhiring.com/

It seems to have filters in place to find the right type of work (like remote, h1b, etc).

What I'm curious to know is whether we can get a hold of this guys code and extend it even more (like use openstreetmap, etc.)

Okay the code is available!

https://github.com/perspectivezoom/curated-hn-hiring

It looks to be written in Node and was last updated in November. A majority of the work is done (scraping, etc.) so we could just build on top of it now.

sunwooz
I started an HN scraper like necubi at http://hackerjob.herokuapp.com. It's nowhere near done, but It's getting there! I'm a student at flatiron school in nyc and this is my first side project.
500and4
I built http://www.zonino.co.uk with some pals to try and scrape all the jobs available at tech startups in London. Works reasonably well and doesn't look awful. We don't scrape HN for jobs and right now we only have London companies. We're not making any money from it... is it the kind of thing you've got in mind?
e12e
No votes for http://careers.stackoverflow.com/ ? While I'm not quite looking for a job right now, that's been one of the most interesting places for me (as a potential coder/system engineer) too look (other than here on HN). UI is much better, and a lot of the positions look interesting.

Any experience from the hiring side with stack overflow?

mooreds
I was hiring a junior webdev in Boulder, CO and got some good candidates from SO. About 300 bucks for one month lowest tier ad. It was useful because I felt I had tapped out my network and the free sites.

Their UI is great, and the times (not many) I had to deal with sales they were helpful.

Ended up making the hire from CL, though.

IndieDevClub
I thought this post was going to ask... why are any of you looking for jobs? Isn't HN for entrepreneurs and founders? Is everyone else too scared to live in poverty until their ideas succeed?

That's what I think when I see "Who's Hiring" thread, but maybe I think differently.

phantom_oracle
I think HN itself is meant more for people interested in technology.

I would go out on a limb and say that there are likely more workers here than founders.

Also, somewhat ironically, very few "Who is hiring" posts are from startups themselves, unless you broaden the definition of startup and consider profitable young firms in there too.

GFischer
Yes to "too scared to live in poverty until their ideas succeed?". I live in Uruguay, where failure (especially bankruptcy) is extremely punished socially.

I have a side project (not yet released), I know it's not a startup but it lets me tinker and learn :) . If it does well (and I manage to build some savings) I might take the plunge.