
Show HN: Startup jobs of 2018, visualized - keesj
https://startup.jobs/trends/2018
======
wmab
It's great that you have lots of data to be able to analyze, but I think
you've missed the point with that you're analyzing. I'm not sure what the
visualizing is doing to offer any insight? Just graphs of months where it goes
up or down at a slight varied rate, and a geo graph showing that (obviously)
CA and NY have the most job openings?

I think the only interesting "insight" (If you could call it that) is the
popularity of different technologies (though not how its changed in 2018 vs
2017, or how it differs by company, or salary range).

Who's the audience - those looking for jobs in startups? Those who research
the industry? Job posting sites use their data as a leading economic indicator
- can you point to anything in this realm from this data?

Analysis that would make this more insightful and actionable would include:

a) Show the data compared to previous years, to say for example if hiring by
month was actually cyclical

b) Jobs by startup - ie, what percentage of Carvana jobs are eng, sales,
finance etc

c) No salary information analyzed - probably the most interesting data is
missing

d) A table of top 10 countries by no. postings vs their previous year would
give more info to your geo graph

e) Is startup appetite for remote workers growing over time? As a number of
jobs and as a percentage of jobs - and what areas are there higher % of jobs
going to remote workers?

A good example of a valuable data company is Statista [1] (links to how a geo
graph works with a table), where they have this sort of data over a longer
time horizon - which provides more actionable insights (eg, is my industry
growing, what is the penetration rate?).

If there were more ways this pie was sliced then I could see many interesting
insights coming from such a useful dataset!

[1] [https://www.statista.com/outlook/15000000/109/consumer-
elect...](https://www.statista.com/outlook/15000000/109/consumer-
electronics/united-states#market-globalRevenue)

~~~
keesj
These are some great points. I appreciate you taking the time to write them
down. I'll see which of them I can implement.

a) Comparison with previous years will be totally doable. As a quick hack you
can simply compare with
[https://startup.jobs/trends/2017](https://startup.jobs/trends/2017) – but I
understand ideally you want the graphs to show the comparison.

b) Jobs by Startup. This is indeed something I'm planning to add to the
Startup pages like
[http://startup.jobs/@carvana](http://startup.jobs/@carvana)

c) I agree salary information would be super interesting. Unfortunately very
little of that is public information so I simply don't have it.

d) Data goes back to mid 2016 so we don't have a ton of historical data. But
for next year I could look into historical line graphs for top 10 companies.

e) I like the idea of cross referencing sector/skill and remote work. I do
have the data to compare e.g. engineering jobs versus communication/PR jobs in
terms of remote job openings.

Thanks again!

~~~
wmab
Thanks for this, yes I think these could be good ideas. Just quickly on d) I
meant it would be visually useful to see a table showing the data for the top
5 or 10 countries too, or else you have to hover over each country to see, and
then you could show vs 2017 to see if there has been a large increase in a
given country for example.

Understandable about salary data, a shame though! Thanks a lot!

------
irontoby
I was curious as to why neither C# nor .NET appeared on the "Top Technologies"
graph. Then I realized it apparently combines C, C++, and C# into a single
bucket, given that the same tag [1] also shows jobs for all three.

[1] [https://startup.jobs/c](https://startup.jobs/c)

~~~
cdoxsey
This website is a great example of the challenges with being data-driven. It
leads to a conclusion which is terribly flawed because of a failure to account
for relevant nuance in the data.

C# is definitely not C++ or C. It would be better to lump it with Java.

But how many developers are now going to walk away thinking they should bone
up on C since there are apparently so many positions out there for it?

And how many other statistics out there are similarly flawed? How much of our
day-to-day off-the-cuff knowledge is based on poor data entry?

------
teacpde
Feels weird to see Microsoft as a technology in the top technologies diagram.
Also it is surprising that there are many job posts for assembly.

~~~
pkaye
If you drill down the assembly jobs seems related to manufacturing assembly.

~~~
teacpde
Ha, that makes sense but also doesn't, manufacturing assembly as a technology?

~~~
pkaye
Remember this is a list of startups which doesn't always imply technology. And
even technology companies need people to manufacture and assembly stuff.

------
giarc
I'm getting 404'd on many pages

[https://startup.jobs/@spacex](https://startup.jobs/@spacex)

[https://startup.jobs/@shopify](https://startup.jobs/@shopify)

------
mikekchar
I'd be curious to know what the ratio of location dependent remote jobs
compared to world wide remote jobs are. I suspect that the latter are
practically non-existent (i.e. 10s total at best), but you never know...

------
adjkant
Over 90% senior positions is very interesting to me.

~~~
warent
I'm pretty sure this is a result of non-technical people calling the shots on
what roles they're hiring for.

    
    
      ROLE: Sr. Full Stack Engineer Level 5
      MUST HAVE:
      10+ YEARS JAVASCRIPT EXPERIENCE
      4+ YEARS JSON EXPERIENCE
      7+ YEARS PERL ON RAILS EXPERIENCE
      Linux
      Sketch / Adobe Photoshop / InVision
      PhD in Machine Learning
    

And not to soapbox here too much but but sadly I actually have come across a
job ad demanding "4+ years JSON experience"

~~~
arkis22
Don't you love it when companies signal that you really probably shouldn't
work there

~~~
irontoby
I wouldn't count out a company based solely on a poorly-written job
description. Those are often put together by less-technical recruiters or the
HR department. And yeah, maybe the team that's hiring should be more involved
in the actual job posting, but the whole hiring process is such a huge PITA
and time-suck that they're too happy to hand off whatever part they can.

------
cozzyd
West Virginia really had no postings?

~~~
keesj
I double checked our database and there were indeed no postings for West
Virginia. There were 2 in 2017.

------
andreyazimov
This is great. What tools/languages have you used to build it?

------
diegorbaquero
Unfortunately I'm getting a 404 not found. Looking forward to see it!

------
piotrkubisa
Hugged to 404?

~~~
keesj
Afraid so. The 404 is happening because the server cannot find a 50x.html
file.

I'm adding caching as we speak. Expect the site to be back up in a few
minutes.

~~~
keesj
…aanndddd we're back!

~~~
piotrkubisa
Thanks!

------
rhapsodic
Linkedin and Netflix are still considered startups?

~~~
keesj
Developer of Startup Jobs here. We use a pretty broad definition of the word
startup. In future analysis I'll see if we can differentiate between early-
stage, later-stage, etc.

~~~
dentemple
LinkedIn is straight up a Microsoft property now, so it's not even considered
"late-stage" anymore.

Netflix was founded in the late 90s, so if you consider them a startup, then
the term is pretty much meaningless.

This really puts your overall methodology in doubt.

~~~
keesj
Some good points. We don't concrete criteria for which companies we consider
startups, but it's something along the lines of "is this a technology company
that is disrupting the marketing, and/or rapidly evolving its business model"?

I do think that's the case for Netflix, even though technically it was founded
a while ago.

LinkedIn is a bit harder to defend as its business model seems to have
stagnated.

~~~
jkaplowitz
I wouldn't think any publicly traded company, nor any subsidiary of a non-
startup, qualifies as a startup, even if they previously did before they
exited. The tough categorization calls in my opinion are for slow-growing or
stagnant long-private tech companies.

With your definition, doesn't Amazon still qualify? It's majorly disrupting
markets and rapidly evolving its business model. And it's definitely a tech
company.

------
debt
120,000 jobs is almost within itself the size of Apple.

I mean unless these jobs are serving totally unique products and market
otherwise I can envision a future where all these jobs overlap in some form
and coagulate into a single giant startup.

