

How I got a job from a Hacker News post - kmccarth
http://bostinno.com/channels/a-little-bit-of-luck-and-a-whole-lot-of-backend-as-a-service/

======
patio11
This is Networking 2.0. Good on you, but hypothetically if you hadn't gotten
"lucky" by having the predictable consequences of directed effort come to
pass, you (and similarly situated geeks) still had options.

1) What if big names in your space hadn't retweeted you? Well, since you know
who the big names in the space are, you take an hour or two to lookup their
email addresses. Then, you send a one-paragraph email:

Hiya Bob,

My name is $NAME and I really like your work on backends as a service at
$COMPANY. In particular, your post on the blog last year about $TOPIC was
really insightful. I was able to apply a few ideas from it to my work.

I just wrote a post on BaaS myself. $LINK

I'd appreciate any thoughts you had on it.

Regards,

Anyone who writes you back is _no longer a stranger_. Instead, they think
you're intelligent about a field where they currently cannot hire for love or
money. You can then followup with "As it happens, I'm looking for
opportunities to put further my interest in BaaS professionally. Do you happen
to know anyone who is hiring?"

2) What if he wasn't really close for coffee?

Planes, we've got them. I am totally serious. A day off and a few hundred
bucks versus a career upgrade, which has the higher NPV? "I will be in Boston
for one day only on XX/YY (or, alternately, week of XX/YY). Would you let me
buy you breakfast to talk about this?" is a very compelling offer
psychologically. Your time is scarce, and hence valuable, plus you've already
demonstrated three things they'll get out of saying "Yes." (Food, interesting
conversation, and "the ability to get to know someone whose comportment
suggests that _he is going places_.") Note that that is the only decision they
need to make - after you have yes, then you can schedule the details.

3). What if he wasn't hiring?

He knows someone who is. Get warm intro.

~~~
solutionyogi
Patrick, this is great for our field where there are tons of influential folks
blogging and/or tweeting. But what if you don't work in IT industry?

My very dear friend works as an Internal Auditor. She earlier worked for KPMG
and now she is working for a Fortune 50 company. She is looking for other
opportunities as she feels that she is not growing in her current position.
Now, there aren't that many Internal Audit bloggers and certainly no hiring
manager is blogging/tweeting. What approach should she take to get noticed by
the right people?

~~~
patio11
There's _so many_ possible answers to this question but the easiest possible
one is to go to a conference in the industry, on your company's nickel if
possible (trivial), and start making friends. Or you can use existing contacts
in your Fortune 50 network and get warm intros to the right sort of people at
peer firms, clients, vendors, etc. Or, since I'm guessing one does not become
an Internal Auditor the first day out of high school, you work the alumni
network at your college.

Also, even if nobody in your industry blogs, doesn't mean you can't start to
generate a portfolio for yourself. How many blogs have you ever read by
Japanese salarymen who do Enterprise Java development? Can you think of any
which had an article or two that suggest maybe the author is smart enough to
take out for coffee? (You can _totally_ do this without bringing down the
wrath of God on yourself for spilling company secrets. Just talk in very
general terms about challenges in Internal Auditing and how one could overcome
those, optionally with heavily anonymized anecdotes.)

~~~
EwanG
Almost hate to say it, but this is where a place like LinkedIn can really
shine. Almost any profession has one or more interest groups on there where
you can share stories with folks of a similar interest. You do have to be
careful as more popular professions have their share of groups that are little
more than recruiters and desperate job hunters in a mortal spiral. But reading
for a while before joining can usually help you steer clear of those.

~~~
refurb
Agreed. If you don't have the network to find a job, create it. Cold
calling/emails is a pretty inefficient way to do it, but it does work. Figure
out what kind of job you want, find people that have that job and start
talking to them. The most important thing is DON'T ASK THEM FOR A JOB. Just
ask them how they got there and what advice they have for you. I've gotten
more job offers that way than any other method.

------
kylemaxwell
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." Edison was kind of a jerk in a lot of ways, but he was spot
on with this.

~~~
davewasmer
A far better quote than the one I used in the article - thanks for this one,
I'll be hanging on it!

------
bherms
I too got my current job from a HN post. I posted about Bay Area salaries as I
was flying out here for an interview. I included some of my background
information and got a reply saying if I wasn't gonna be making X, they would
love to meet and talk while I was in town. Later that night I had an offer. I
love Hacker News.

------
lutorm
"Given enough exposure, the impossibly lucky becomes the inevitable."

Nice story, but I don't know if I would go that far. You don't have an
unbiased sample, so you don't know how many do exactly the same thing and
nothing comes of it. It's the classic "what do successful people have in
common" fallacy. An equally justified conclusion, based on "the hundred ways I
failed leading up to this moment" might be "the chances of success are about
1%".

~~~
baddox
The "what do successful people have in common" fallacy is more commonly
referred to as survivor bias.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias>

~~~
davewasmer
I agree that survivorship bias is something to watch out for. Stories that
tend to do well on HN are the ones that end well.

However, I don't think that should hold back someone who is in the same
position I was (a longtime lurker trying to break out). For me, a primary
takeaway from this experience was the small downside compared to the large
upside of each of my decisions.

Worst case: your post goes nowhere on HN, the person you reach out to ignores
you, or your conversation turns up nothing fruitful.

Best Case: your post pins it on HN, the CEO agrees to meet, and it turns into
a job offer.

For 30 minutes of effort - that calculation is a no brainer to me. It just
takes getting over that lurker inertia, and a lot of patience for failure!

------
mikeyur
My last full time job I got by leaving a comment on Fred Wilson's blog. He
shared my info with a bunch of investors in my area and they connected me with
people in their portfolio who were hiring. About 3 weeks from comment to my
first day on the job.

~~~
maayank
can you tell more about it? sounds like a story.

------
jeffool
After reading a monthly job post a while back, I had a couple of phone
interviews with factual.com. While I didn't get that job, I can tell you that
Ron, their recruiter, is still the nicest and most down to Earth guy I've met
in my job hunt.

A month or two later, I actually got a cold email from someone who apparently
really liked the way I replied in a thread. (I never found out which.) Sadly
it didn't happen either; the person assumed that I could program simply
because I was here. I went to school for it years ago, but can not with any
proficiency whatsoever.

For all the talk that occassionally pops up about community quality, as I see
it, this place is doing all right. Better than the profession my experience
resides in anyway; journalism. Then again, I'm the genius that didn't see
visiting 4chan as a big deal, in search of a direction to find an irc for
Anonymous talk. Be warned, your boss may think differently!

(Yes, that last sentence was slightly tongue in cheek. I realize most would
take theobscene material seriously rather than as childish outlashes. But I
didn't think a journalist would.)

------
kls
Congratulation this is a great bored for people to discover each other and
cool projects. I actually learned about another provider in that post who
supports a technology stack that I have been looking for a BaaS provider that
supports it. The company you got the job from was contributing to it too and
seemed like a great bunch of guys, I would have definitely used their product
if it supported what I am trying to do. I love reading the win-win storied on
HN.

------
mpeg
I got my job from a reddit post I made (a year ago), and we were acquired two
days ago ! high five from a fellow 'employee from the internet' :)

------
EnderMB
I was at one point skeptical that frequent activity on the Internet would ever
amount to anything worthwhile. I was offered an informal interview for my
current job through a follower I occasionally talked to on Twitter.

I knew about the opening a few weeks before. What surprises some is that if I
wasn't asked to interview I probably would have never applied for the role.

------
loeschg
Would you like to meet up? I will buy you some breakfast.

------
mistermann
sounds like an interesting article, wish i could have read it, but the
floating social toolbar on the left side covered a quarter of the article on
my phone.

