
Ask HN: Has anyone ever been hired from “Who wants to be hired?” threads? - threwawasy1228
Just a simple question, I have seen stories of people who were hired based on the job postings threads. Never once have I heard of anyone getting anything other than recruiter spam from the Ask HN: Who wants to be Hired threads. I think it might be useful to hear stories either way.<p>Were you hired after someone contacted you?<p>Did you receive responses that weren&#x27;t recruiter-spam from your posts there?
======
jader201
I started the "Who wants to be hired?" threads over 5 years ago [1] after dang
giving his blessing on it [2], and was super excited that it led to the job
[3] that I still happily hold today.

I really wish these threads were more active -- and received more upvotes --
relative to the "Who's hiring" threads, as it seems like the signal to noise
is so much better, and also seems like the success rate would be quite a bit
higher.

I'm not sure if a) people aren't aware of the threads, or b) people don't have
confidence in their success rate.

But as someone whose career -- and as a result, life -- got a big boost from
it, I highly recommend anyone considering a move to try posting there. Seems
like it could only help!

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7685170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7685170)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7682189](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7682189)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7833251](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7833251)

~~~
epage
I've thought about it and my concern with using the thread if I were job
hunting is that if a coworker saw me on it, it might come out that I'm looking
elsewhere when I'm not wanting that out yet.

The Who's Hiring Thread would help me keep my search more private.

~~~
chii
And this is the reason why your online persona needs to be separated from your
real life persona.

~~~
jader201
Or, just use throwaways (with throwaway contact info) when you want to post
but remain anonymous (assuming you don’t need to go into details that would
otherwise identity you).

------
pranavjoneja
Yes! I posted in the threads on Jan 1 and Feb 1 of this year. I was contacted
by a cumulative total of 14 companies, of which 2 were actually interesting to
me. I'm a mechanical engineer working in robotics hardware, so that's a little
different to the typical opportunities listed here. For both companies I was
interested in, the process started with 2-3 phone interviews, then I was
invited to fly out for on-site interviews (very important when working on
hardware!). I was offered the position at both places, and ultimately accepted
one. I joined a couple of months ago, and I'm loving it so far!! Feel free to
ask me any questions

~~~
StreamBright
I have just general interest in robotics. Would you mind sharing what are you
working on?

------
Peretus
Absolutely. I posted a message on a 'Who wants to be Hired' thread and was
contacted about a month later by a lead developer who was hiring for a fully
remote front-end developer position. After a few video chats and a 2-hour
take-home coding exercise they extended an offer that I accepted.

I've been there for about 10 months and it's been a wonderful experience.
Working remotely has literally changed my life, and the team members I work
with are all fantastic people.

There are great companies out there and it's definitely worth posting. Good
luck!

~~~
wilkystyle
Not related to the original topic, but shout-out to working remote. It's been
a game-changer for me, too. There are too many benefits to list, but the
biggest one for me has been physical; after trying for years to stick with
working out, it finally clicked for me with remote work + a gym in my garage.

~~~
dubb20
I have been working out since 2011, and I have been working 90% remotely since
2016, I even edited my linked in to say Work From Home so anybody who intends
to write to me knows in advance, I still visit the office rarely - when some
big manager comes over, or to collect some documents.

~~~
jezinka
Is there possibility to working remotely and learning tech lead skills?

~~~
tasuki
Yes!

Also, "jeziňka" is a Czech fairy tale being [1]. Did you know? Or perhaps it's
a Polish word play on "jeżynka"?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jezinkas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jezinkas)

------
Jaruzel
My view on these 'Who wants to be hired?' and 'Who's Hiring?' threads...

90% of the readership of Hacker News are Web Developers, either front end
only, or full stack. As such the hiring threads are mostly jobs in that
discipline.

I'm an oddball on Hacker News, I have a keen interest in all tech development,
but my official skill set is Windows Server Applications based
Architecture[1], and Identity & Access Management Design with a bit of Azure
and Office 365 thrown in for good measure. I've posted a few times in the 'Who
wants to be hired?' but not surprisingly had no responses.

For what it's worth, I _am_ looking for work, remote/wfh only. My LinkedIn is
here:

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattowen/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattowen/)

\---

[1] Although I do hands-on admin as well. I'll design it for you, and then
build it as well.

~~~
minxomat
Based on your skill set, we'd hire you immediately (we're a listed, 3000+
employee company). I work in the Berlin office, but we do have offices in
every world region. The other comment here is BS. People who work with Windows
Server, AD and .NET are sorely needed. Even more so in Europe, where an
enterprise world exists that HN people apparently never heard of (see your
'oddball' statement). The real problem here is the WFH requirement. That's
just a no-no. That doesn't mean we don't offer WFH (in fact, I'm working from
home 3 out of 5 days a week), but remote only is not an option. I think the
maximum WFH days per week for other people is around 2.

So I guess I'll say this (to anyone here): If you have experience with AD, C#
and SQL Server optimization (nice to have) get in touch. I don't care if you
have a formal education or you're 15 or 55. In Berlin with German skills, I
can get you an interview almost immediately, for other languages and regions
I'll redirect you to the appropriate contact.

I don't post in the we're hiring threads because we'd drown in the ML/ad etc
company profiles. We don't save the world. We don't stop climate change. We
don't use AI to be the next Uber of X. We need somewhat skilled devs working
on (what HN would consider) boring problems, to help tens of thousands of
companies/IT people get other boring shit done quickly.

minxomat[at]gmail.com

~~~
iKevinShah
While I am not applying / not eligible for the post but this is so refreshing
to see:

> We don't save the world. We don't stop climate change. We don't use AI to be
> the next Uber of X. We need somewhat skilled devs working on (what HN would
> consider) boring problems, to help tens of thousands of companies/IT people
> get other boring shit done quickly.

~~~
moveq_0_d0
Nice summary. From my experience in the corporate world there is a huge amount
of legacy software to work on, to migrate to more modern platforms (read: the
web) and to replace with better software. All while people depend on it to get
their work done every single day. Working brownfield and bespoke custom
software, often on Windows in VB6 or Access, is not giving you elegance cred
but it's definitively giving you street cred on the market for not requiring
shiny toys to get work done.

------
rocelot
I decided to put myself back out there after a few years of freelancing and,
among other avenues, posted in a "Who wants to be hired". I had
psychologically prepared myself for a long and frustrating search as I wasn't
in a particular hurry and promised myself to be selective about where I
landed, making sure it was a genuinely good fit.

I got three responses through HN, one from a company in the city I live in,
one from a fully distributed team, and one from a holy s__t SV company I had
fantasized about in years past.

All three were amazing opportunities and the people I spoke with were so
awesome--genuine, authentic, enthusiastic, and of an altogether different
caliber than what I had been anticipating.

I interviewed for a few weeks with all three and was honestly agonizing about
what I'd do if I got an offer from more than one. I don't know what exactly I
was expecting, but what I was _not_ expecting was to feel so much like I was
in the driver's seat of my job search experience. It was almost like I was
interviewing them for the job, or more accurately, it was as if we were on an
equal footing (I don't delude myself that that was actually the case, but it's
how it _felt_ dealing with such awesome point's of contact).

I wound up accepting a completely different offer from a co. in my city that I
connected with through a different channel and that really ticked all the
boxes for me--I mean--I feel really lucky, I truly love my job. It would have
been an insane opportunity to take the role at the SV unicorn (had they
extended me an offer, I'll never know) but at the end of the day I just wasn't
ready to pick up my whole life and move cross country in my 30's.

Wow did I ever get derailed. The moral of the story is, while I didn't
technically get hired through a "Who wants to be hired" thread, I did have an
altogether highly positive experience, and I imagine, if anyone else's
experience is like mine, that lot's of people get hooked up with awesome
opportunities through that channel.

------
Uptrenda
I tried out the last thread not expecting much to come from it and some
surprisingly well-matched opportunities came my way. In fact, someone
contacted me just yesterday from the same thread and that was over a month ago
now!

What seems to happen with hiring is good companies very quickly get
overwhelmed by bad applicants. Consequently, they have to instate barriers to
try filter out the hundreds of unqualified people who apply. Unfortunately,
the same filters also affect the people you want to hire and make it less
likely you'll be introduced to a good engineer.

If you've already been in the industry a while you'll probably suffer from the
same problem: A hell of a lot of low quality recruiter spam; Bad companies
wasting your time with sub-minimum wage offers, and so on. Sometimes you just
need 10 minutes to speak to a real person and you can both tell straight away
if it's a good fit or not.

Good luck to people looking for their next opportunity. There are some great
companies out there.

Edit: I find it amusing hacker news works so well for this compared to
traditional career websites. It probably works so well precisely _because_ it
doesn't market itself as such, and on a dice roll the signal to noise ratio is
far higher. Hopefully this doesn't change any time soon as having a high-
quality service like this is very, very useful for people!

~~~
duxup
>If you've already been in the industry a while you'll probably suffer from
the same problem: A hell of a lot of low quality recruiter spam; Bad companies
wasting your time with sub-minimum wage offers, and so on. Sometimes you just
need 10 minutes to speak to a real person and you can both tell straight away
if it's a good fit or not.

As a noob I would just like to say...it isn't limited to experienced
professionals.

As soon as I landed my first job my email and linkedin caught fire. Non stop
spam, bad matches, and etc.

"I was looking at your resume..."

No way you were looking at my resume and came up with this job... kinda stuff.

~~~
ldoughty
We get TONS of people that apply to our jobs with shotgun strategy... Really
annoying looking for an experienced Linux admin and we have to review a fresh
college grad with no Linux or Mac experience and one year of java programming.
HR policies require us to be fair to all applicants, so our panel had to spend
15 minutes recovering the application and highlighting why they do not meet 9
of the 10 required qualifications.

This is mostly because it system makes it easy to apply to multiple listings,
so people upload their information then click 2-3 times to apply to each job.

So, compared to getting a whole lot of those, or "I can find someone for you"
responses, I can see why people have more luck reaching out to a community of
people with the rough skill set

~~~
linuxftw
> Really annoying looking for an experienced Linux admin and we have to review
> a fresh college grad with no Linux or Mac experience and one year of java
> programming.

It's not your fault, but the industry has relatively few entry-level
positions, especially for the bottom 75% of graduates.

~~~
ldoughty
I personally support 3 entry level Linux admins / clouds engineers under me (1
well paid intern, 2 full time)

One was in college, one fresh grad 2-year degree, one with degree and 1 year
experience.

But I need someone who's actually better than me to help with weird issues
that you simply don't get in school... Like adjusting the DNS resolver
process.. or dining out why gnome won't start in a virtual infrastructure
(which most people don't even know where to start looking in logs)

So I'm very open to entry level people, but I need another experience person
to help

~~~
geekbird
I've found that you seldom get any deep level Linux admin training in schools.
They all teach fundamentals, the seven layer cake^W OSI model, how http works,
stuff like that. If you're lucky, they cover /var/log/messages, a few basic
commands, then dive deep into stack traces or something else programmer-
centric. Then again, I'm mostly self taught and have 10+ years experience.
BTW, debugging Docker just sucks. I'm looking for better tools for that.

------
pzo
I just gave it a go yesterday but I don't have high expectations. Even in "Who
is hiring" thread I noticed most offer are onsite USA - at least for me (iOS
developer) and for many this is out of reach or they don't want to go through
lengthy VISA process.

"Remote" tag is often confusing since in many cases it means: 1) Remote but
USA only 2) Remote but only 1-2 days a week 3) We put remote just to grab your
attention and to get more candidates but we actually prefer onsite

Personally this often discourage me to apply even if otherwise I could be a
good fit. Also if you put REMOTE I guess for many companies you are no-go
candidate since you haven't gained trust yet.

As for me I wouldn't mind relocating somewhere for the first few months for
higher bandwidth communication and to gain some trust but that rarely works if
company doesn't have remote culture.

------
karmakaze
I find these threads a good way to be aware of interesting tech stacks being
used and companies I might not otherwise have read about.

I once talked to a CTO of a local company without the primary intention of
working there purely out of curiosity. I did end up working there as the other
company I was accepted at had a hiring freeze for a month or more. I turned
out to be a great place to be. New (to me) Rails stack, Go microservices when
it wasn't so common and scaling challenges.

------
mtmail
Similar a couple of months ago with 4 positive responses: "Ask HN: Has anyone
got any offers via “Who wants to be hired” thread?"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19062296](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19062296)

------
jcsnv
I got my first professional contract on a "Who wants to be hired?" over 5
years ago! I didn't have any professional experience and was a junior dev at
the time. I met my current employer because of/during that contract as well.

------
csdreamer7
I had a company that wanted me to put in several hours of using their DevOps
simulator before they would even talk about salary or the position.

They just wanted to get people to test a product from an unrelated company.

------
xtracto
My 2c: I like the idea, but if I were searching I would not post because I
know people in my current job browse hacker news and my profile is quite
specific.

~~~
eatbitseveryday
Why not make another account just for that if and when the time comes?

~~~
guessmyname
> _Why not make another account just for that if and when the time comes?_

That’s not how HackerNews works.

I have an alternate account from which I have posted a few times in different
_“Who wants to be hired?”_ threads, and every single time my post is marked
invisible _(aka. shadow banned)_. I only realized that some time ago when, by
chance, I checked my post with a private browser session both with and without
logging in with a different account to the one used to post the message.

I’ve resorted to contact companies instead, that way I can handle my options a
bit better. Most of the time when I get contacted to interview at a company is
recruiters trying to position me in a company that I have absolutely no
interest in, or startups that don’t even know what they are doing.

------
s3cur3
I hired someone from one of these threads a few months ago. I chose them over
other candidates based on a strong “portfolio” web site, showing me the person
understood their code existed to serve business values (not the other way
around).

~~~
cylentwolf
So the HN candidate had a website that a business was based on? Or the
candidate just had a good "fake" website that has a lot of good business code
in it?

~~~
s3cur3
No, rather they had a good “I’m a freelance developer” web site that showed
two things:

1) Some amount of professional experience in the technology we were looking
for a contractor in.

2) An attitude that boiled down to “I write software to fulfill business
objectives.” (The opposite attitude is what I characterize as the “hipster
coder,” who says “I couldn’t possibly work on your legacy system unless you
agree to rewrite it from scratch in $hot_new_stack.” Yes, I have literally had
a contractor tell me that before, about a webapp based on a 5 year old front-
end framework.)

~~~
bbulkow
It is a funny old world when the one fact that they are willing to be managed
as a technical contributor sets a candidate apart.

~~~
JamesBarney
There are developers that if you let them loose on your code base without
supervision for 6 months you'll find that your simple rails app turned into a
12 docker container microservices monster without ever so much as stumbling
near a business requirement.

------
bayesian_horse
Related: Does anybody have a job or job ideas for me? I finished my veterinary
degree in Germany (very late, but I finished) and I am a proficient coder,
mostly web development in Django, but I also have a passion for Data Science
(in Python and R) and Machine Learning. The veterinary degree here means I
have a broad understanding of biology, medicine and food safety. I also did a
bit of bioinformatics.

People often say that's a killer combination, but actually I have problems
finding concrete positions I would fit in. I fear I have to somehow create
that position myself, which is also not that easy. Ideas or hints would be
appreciated!

~~~
moveq_0_d0
We are hiring at the moment, have a look here:
[https://www.redheads.de/joomla/index.php/?option=com_jobs&vi...](https://www.redheads.de/joomla/index.php/?option=com_jobs&view=single&id=4)

~~~
bayesian_horse
Looks interesting...

~~~
moveq_0_d0
Feel free to send your CV anytime. Our HR staff are super approachable and
nice to work with.

------
meesles
I reached out to a company from a Who's Hiring post and got hired. Great job,
got to move with relocation.

~~~
Double_a_92
How does relocation actually work, especially if you are overseas?

I got like a ton of stuff in my home... I guess I could trash my furniture and
buy new one, but what about my other things?

Does relocation include transportation for that too?

~~~
guessmyname
> _How does relocation actually work, especially if you are overseas?_

It depends on the company, of course.

In my case, when I interviewed at Booking.com _—just to give an example—_ I
was offered a relocation package to move from New York to Amsterdam, this
package included transportation of some of my belongings, support for my
partner, and two months of rent. They also offered me some help to find an
apartment, and was told I would get a discount in my taxes for the first year,
which they also offered to take care of for the first year _(assigning one of
their accountants)_.

I know they offered a similar _—if not the same—_ package to other candidates.

For other companies, no matter how big or small they are, the relocation
package depends on how important your position is going to be. For a regular
software developer, you may get the plane tickets which may or may not include
a budget to bring a some luggage, but you’ll probably have to bring the rest
on your own. For more relevant positions like managers and specially a CEO,
CTO and the like, they may offer you to pay for your accommodation for certain
period of time, will assign you a budget to move your belongings, and similar
benefits to what I got offered to move to Amsterdam.

If you are Apple’s Tim Cook, they will move absolutely everything you need no
matter how expensive, troublesome, or delicate.

------
waits
I posted here and was contacted by the founder of a startup the same day. Got
invited for an interview and received an offer a week later. I don’t recall
getting much spam from that post.

------
thom
I've hired people from here, and have been consistently impressed with the
quality of CVs I've received whenever advertising roles. The only recruitment
agency I've worked with that has been able offer candidates of the same
level/niche would charge me $1500 a month or more.

------
mikorym
I think another thing to take into account is geography. My impression is that
there are many international readers that would not consider jobs inside the
US. I know there are international job postings as well, but (and I may be
wrong) I don't see people moving jobs across countries unless they were
approached more personally (or vice versa: they would not necessarily approach
a country switching job posting based on a HN thread).

------
0kl
I’ve had several great connections and solid job interviews, as well as my
current role at the USDS.

I am currently* a “Senior/Lead SWE” that’s flirted a lot with SRE.

Earlier in my career it was a lot harder to get responses, but still managed
to get an interview or three out of it.

------
valtism
About to start in 2 weeks! This was the first job I contacted through HN, and
they were very responsive. No recruiter, no spam.

------
simonebrunozzi
I posted twice in the past. Only received one email from a recruiter at
Cryptokitties. The message was a complete mismatch with my profile. Stopped
posting.

------
dver
I had a couple of phone conversations based on posting in the "Who wants to be
hired". Nothing led to work but enjoyed speaking to people who reached out.
I'm in a less popular niche with manufacturing applications so I think it's
good for spreading a wide net.

------
Jach
I received some messages when I last posted in a 2014 thread, including one
from who would eventually become my first manager trying to grow her team. It
wasn't even a good pitch (relative to what I wrote) but I needed a job so
talked to pretty much everyone, and as I learned more I convinced myself to
continue and readily accepted the offer. Though I thought I might only spend a
year in bigco, here we are just about 5 years later...

My last job before that was found by getting contacted after uploading my
resume to craigslist in 2010, so I consider myself 2/2 on the post-and-wait
strategy.

I get lots of recruiter spam (mostly via linkedin) but I don't really want to
ever think of it in complaint. It's kind of nice to know if I need a new job
fast I have a lot of contact entry points to try before playing the submit-
application-here lottery or post-and-wait game. And occasionally I've been
very tempted to reply to some anyway. It's "spam" in the sense that I've
listed not being interested in jumping ship except for having a few rare
details that would at least make me consider, but we all know most everyone's
technically on the market regardless given the right offer even if it lacks
certain 'requirements'. Recruiters just have a job that depends on believing
they always have the right offer.

------
digitalsushi
I got interviewed by two large linux os vendors that make roughly identical
products, and both interviews were identical - they seemed to go extremely
well, they spoke of having me fly in for team interviews, and how training
would happen, but then they completely ghosted on me. With both companies I
followed up a week later with a thank-you probe, but absolutely no follow up.
Since it happened from both I was able to move on by convincing myself it was
just procedural and not personal.

------
PascLeRasc
Have any recent grads/<2 years of experience folks gotten interviews or an
offer from these threads? It seems like it's mostly for senior engineering
roles.

------
chc4
Yes. I made a post 3 months ago with my resume, and was contacted if I was
interested in a position. I just started at the job last week.

------
gabrielblack
I don't like the fact that if you post a thread there, it'll last forever :
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=who%20whant%20be%20hired&sort=...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=who%20whant%20be%20hired&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

------
northisup
Yes! Last time I was interviewing I got multiple offers from my post. I did
get some recruiter spam but it was mostly founders or early engineers that did
the reaching out.

------
rco8786
I have. About 6 years ago. Turned out to be a career defining role for me.

I also just reached out to someone from the “Who wants to be hired?” thread
about an open role on my current team.

------
0xDEFC0DE
I have applied to companies and posted my contact info a few times on
different usernames: Usually no response.

Compared to some of the other people in those threads, my resume is not
stellar, so it's not surprising that they can wait or find someone else that's
better.

------
andrew_
Several interviews with very few solid (or high quality) experiences. It's
becoming a bit of a dumping ground for recruiters running out of ideas.
Especially frustrating are the folks that don't seem to understand what
"remote" means.

~~~
bitwize
"Remote" means the job is 100 mi away, and you will be given the opportunity
to work from home 1 day a week after a year on the job. Oh yes, and we will
pressure you to interview with this client because we really need the
commission money.

~~~
toyg
Remote also means you need a US visa, of course.

------
souprock
I've tried to find people that way, but usually there is nobody. Let's see,
searching for "assembly" and "assembler" and "embedded"...

1\. I already asked. He wants Rust and probably won't leave Albuquerque.
Bummer. He'd be perfect.

2\. Argentina... nope.

3\. Barcelona... nope.

4\. One might work. I probably already asked, but don't remember.

5\. Remote only... nope.

6\. Lisbon... nope.

7\. Paris... nope.

8\. I already asked. He won't leave southwest Florida, even for Tampa or
Melbourne. Bummer.

9\. Bay Area and won't relocate... nope.

10\. He's hesitant to relocate. Hmmm, I could try.

11\. Paris... nope.

So that is the situation as of now, with 155 comments 7 hours after the post.
I can email a couple of them.

~~~
sam0x17
It's funny, because people who code assembly and embedded systems are exactly
the type of people well-suited for remote work.

~~~
scarejunba
Huh, why do you say that? I’d assume not because of the hardware constraint,
etc. I’d imagine web devs are best suited to remote. Usually low sensitivity
to the code or data and no hardware and the product itself is accessible
everywhere.

~~~
sam0x17
Compilers/assembly/embedded systems/demo scene people have been coordinating
on mailing lists since the 90's, sending patch files to each other on their
slow clunky machines on their slow clunky 56k internet connections. This
demographic imo is going to be way better at remote work than some brogrammer,
which is what the OP is looking for perhaps inadvertently. And I say that as
someone not at all of the noble compilers/assembly/embedded systems
demographic. With these people, you don't need to worry about the ops and
management impact of low face-to-face time, because they need zero of it.
Could be a stereotype, but it definitely tracks with the people I know.

------
philipkiely
I found my current job on the "Who is Hiring" thread, and I have had two gigs
plus a couple of near misses from the "Seeking Freelancer" thread. All of this
occurred in 2019.

------
neilv
I tried it last month, since I'm averse to LinkedIn and similar resume sites.
One of the responses was spam from a startup that scraped&NLP'd from the
montly HN post, to generate resumes for people on their own resume site. Their
spam seemed to imply that I already had a generated resume presence on their
site, and I should create an account so that I can edit/correct it. (Which is
some of the sketchy resume site behavior I was trying to avoid by trying HN
instead.)

------
ahuth
Sure did. If I recall correctly (this was about 5 years ago), I probably had
3-4 phone interviews / tech screens out of it, and got hired at a really great
place (Mavenlink).

------
triceratops
> Were you hired after someone contacted you?

I got 2 interviews + 1 follow-up not leading to an interview out of emails
sent to 6 companies. Didn't convert either of the interviews but I think I was
very close with one of them. I think talks broke down over salary expectations
when speaking with the VP of Eng.

> Did you receive responses that weren't recruiter-spam from your posts there?

Yes. 3-4, of which about half were promising, in response to 1 post. They
didn't work out for other reasons.

------
ronilan
I’ve been posting in the "Who wants to be hired" threads occasionally since
they started (somewhere in 2014 if I recall correctly) and have been doing so
monthly recently. I'm also including a basic Q&A in my posts. I've varied the
tone and content a bit over time. It's not an A/B test, just an attempt to
keep things entertaining.

You can find my recent post here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20326583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20326583)

What each month brings is very diverse. Companies are of all shapes and sizes,
from different locations and different lines of businesses. It's fairly
interesting by itself. I've gone through multiple interview hoops through the
years and those tend to also be very diverse. I've done HR chats and tech
chats, phone screens with code and phone screens without. I've done take-homes
and I was twice flown to on-sites. There is also a fair amount of spam, canned
recruiting emails and the automated "CTO bait-n-switch", but the overall
positive far outweighs the negative in my mind. If you are considering to post
- just do it.

I've learnt a lot from those postings. Reaching out is not easy and I'm
thankful to whoever does. My main take-a-way is this: by reaching out, a
person shows that they are the proactive kind who cares for their organization
and tasks. That fact by itself is a very positive signal to me. I'm thus
always trying to put best effort into whatever organizational recruiting
process follows.

I have yet to be hired as a result of those posts.

P.S - ... but that one from last month that is still in process would be
perfect for me. Especially if it goes south... ;)

------
wayoutthere
Nope; my big problem is that people are looking for senior positions with 10+
years experience, yet are paying entry level salaries...

~~~
geekbird
... and will dump you as "not a fit" if you are over 30.

------
nonbirithm
Yes. I was hired by a university on a temporary position from HN after I
finished college. It was my first job post-graduation.

------
misiti3780
I have hired multiple people using that thread.

------
sabman83
I have hired an excellent junior engineer from one of those threads.

~~~
ThirdFoundation
Would you mind giving some information about what makes a junior engineer
stick out in those threads? I'm currently looking for that type of work and
any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

------
RedStarComrade
I landed a job interview for tech startup in LA, but I blew the interview. I
didn't know my linux terminal commands.

------
kstenerud
Yup, I posted for the first time a month ago, and got hired by someone looking
for exactly my skills. I liked them enough that I took a chance, dropping
other opportunities that were in the pipeline.

Meanwhile, I'm STILL getting rejection notices from companies where my
application has been sitting in their queue for over a month.

------
mkhorton
My co-worker found his current job from a HN post a number of years ago. Also
we're currently hiring so check us out :)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20327435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20327435)

------
detroitcoder1
I was in the middle of a harsh bout of unemployment after the startup that
hired me out of school folded unexpectedly (literally in a week's time). I was
going from contracting gig to contracting gig but got tired of chasing people
for money.

On a whim, I responded to just one such thread on HN. I got no recruiter spam,
but rather an email from a company (I won't say which for privacy reasons)
that totally changed my life. Great recruiting process, interesting and
challenging interview gamut, and they made me an excellent offer contingent
upon relocation, which I was hoping to do anyway.

So, the answer to the question is YES those threads work IF you work them.
Stay on top of your emails, follow up, be diligent, study hard. It's so so
worth it.

------
janbernhart
I have hired about 12 developers from these threads over the past 5 years.

------
rheffern
> Did you receive responses that weren't recruiter-spam from your posts there?

Maybe I've obfuscated my email address well enough, but I don't get any
recruiter spam from the listing. Now that I look back on that, it's something
of a miracle.

That said, I've only been contacted once per the thread. After one email I was
ghosted by the company. Not uncommon really.

I'm not really the niche for HN, I'm mostly a bio/medtech and engineering
person. I love the discussions here, but my expertise is on the edges of the
Gaussian that is HN.

~~~
ardaozkal
My experiences do not really match: Some CV compiler website has been emailing
me ever since I posted on the thread, and the opt out is "If you don't want to
hear from me anymore, just let me know".

Except there's no MX record for the website (Image:
[https://elixi.re/i/oamrerwz.png](https://elixi.re/i/oamrerwz.png) ), so I
can't reply to them asking them to remove my email from their list.

If the person behind those emails is reading this: Please stop, it's annoying
and I will not give you my money, even with a discount.

~~~
rheffern
In taking a look at your postings on the 'Who want to be Hired' thread you
list your email outright: hnjobs@ave.zone

I've written mine out as : robert.heffern (at) gmail

I suppose that the way that I wrote out my email address is just a bit more
difficult for a computer to parse and scrape, hence my lack of spam. However,
it may also be screening out people that want to talk to me, and I would never
know.

That said, you have a very impressive gitlab resume! Great work!

------
zerr
`Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking Freelancer?` is also interesting.

~~~
stephenr
The freelancer thread has delivered me a few new clients. I wouldn't want to
rely on it alone, I've probably had as much work from network contacts as I
have from that thread but it's not nothing.

My current "steady" (albeit less than 100% of my time) client found me through
that thread several years ago.

------
dminor
My previous job came from a "who wants to be hired" thread (and by extension
my current job, which came about through people I worked with).

An engineering manager noticed my post and passed it to their internal
recruiters. I was interviewing with multiple companies and they came out on
top.

It turned out to be a great experience. After 4 years they were acquired and
most of us have moved on, and several of us formed the engineering team at a
seed stage startup.

------
speeder
I got a few offers that were aborded midway for one reason or another, for
example a few ones were cancelled after they realized I didn't had a EU
citizenship (I made clear I was brazillian and lived in Brazil, but they
assumed I had some kind of EU passport anyway... although legally I should
have one, bureaucratic issues made me not have one)

Also some companies asked me to do some puzzle style tests, that at the time I
didn't pass.

------
nathanvanfleet
I have definitely gotten interviews over this. I am not sure if my job was
through who's hiring but I do know I did at least 2 onsites from it.

------
mneubrand
Yes. Had a hiring manager reach out to me from a company I already blindly
applied to but was in limbo with.

Went directly to on-site interview stage after a quick call and am still
happily employed here 5 years later.

Definitely the most important post I ever made in my life :)

I don't think I got any additional recruiter spam around the time of that
post. Maybe back then recruiters didn't watch those threads yet?

------
iKevinShah
Also to provide a bit of a tangent to your question, the "who's hiring" thread
is predominantly developers and some project manager openings. People with a
narrow set of specialised / a bit old skillset like Windows AD / Enterprise
Setup administration, VMware / Citrix Administration and related profiles find
it difficult to get suitable opportunities here.

------
jefe78
I posted once from an old account but never received any responses. Most of
the jobs at the time were for web developers in the US. I'm a devops/systems
engineer (AWS/Security/Scaling so whatever the new title is for that) so my
skills don't seem to be in very much demand.

It would be nice if we could maybe break up the threads into different types
of roles perhaps?

------
tibbon
Yea, I've gotten at least two jobs that way - one fulltime, and another part
time consulting. And a few interviews, which went well.

When I'm looking it, I just normally search for Ruby or Rails and see what
pops up. I almost never get turned down for an interview if they are using one
of those, which is likely due to having ~10+ years experience with them now.

------
svavs
For the people that are hiring / have hired people from these posts, what do
you look for? What makes a post stand out?

------
renoir42
Yes. Was a lot simpler/faster than the usual process. Instead of stereotypical
questions, just start to actually _do_ something (analyse, code) so a lot less
stress and more the the point.

"If you were to meet a very rich man ____*? " "-Does not matter: you are not
rich anyway and once we are married...."

------
iKevinShah
Absolutely. I have applied multiple times and contacted once. While I did not
get hired, I can assure you (based on the series of interviews and a coding
challenge) , yes , people do get hired and the interviewers are genuine people
looking to hire talented people for the role they advertised. No recruiter
spam yet.

------
badpun
I have, for three fulltime remote jobs so far. Also got an offer for another
FT position, but that was from a comment somebody left in some other thread,
not in Who's Hiring.

I'm from Europe and these jobs were all in the US. It's doable, you just have
to be a reasonably strong candidate.

------
sahgilbert
Interestingly I'd been wondering the exact same thing, having only recently
decided to respond to the latest "who wants to be hired" thread.

This is me - [https://www.simongilbert.net](https://www.simongilbert.net)

------
barbs
Yep, am currently working remotely for a company that found me in one of those
threads :)

------
vevoe
Somewhat related, I reached out to a few people on the "Freelancer? Seeking
freelancer?" threads and had several responses, one of which I just started
on.

I wouldn't be surprised if people had similar luck on all such threads.

------
dandigangi
I was just going to post a similar thread from the hiring manager's side.
Genuinely curious how many responses y'all receive. I'm in Chicago, not SF but
the responses almost never come.

~~~
souprock
I usually get several responses off of something like this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20328264](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20328264)

It's almost always at least 1 response. I don't think I've ever gotten more
than 10 responses. Something like 4 is typical.

On average I think I find one that is good and one that is minimally
acceptable. Several have been hired, but at least one of those was redundantly
discovered elsewhere.

~~~
dandigangi
Thank you! I felt like my description wasn't far off so I'm going to adjust a
little. I'm not opposed to juniors but that's all I have received thus far
after 6/7 months of using the thread.

------
quicksilver03
I've posted in the May 2019 thread and I've been contacted by 2 companies, no
recruiter-spam; I didn't get hired, but I've slightly adjusted my search
parameters since then.

------
bernardom
Yup. I joined a company in SF in November 2015 (thanks @jlisam13). Now neither
of us are there, but I met the people with whom I co-founded my current
company.

Definitely changed my life!

------
was_boring
I'm a hiring manager, but not a recruiter, I use it most months we have a
position open to do direct reach out as the pool of people is generally pretty
good.

------
3minus1
Yes, I got a job at an ad tech start up. It was a huge move up for me
(previously doing government contracting). Since then I got a job at a FAANG.

------
slowhadoken
I talked to some internal recruiters but all emails came to a dead end. I got
a better response than applying on LinkedIn or company websites.

------
techscruggs
I hired the best Engineering leader I have ever worked with early in his
career from posting on an HN "who's hiring thread".

------
dsr_
I wasn't hired, but I got an interview on the basis of one -- at a real
company that you have almost certainly heard of.

------
hobolord
I got my current job from there 3 years ago, started my freelancing career,
then moved to New Zealand to work full time

------
nmjohn
I was hired ~5 years ago from a post on one, and we have since hired a couple
other people as well from those posts.

------
pthreadses
Yes, multiple times, and with relatively high quality organizations compared
to the norm, I think.

------
conanbatt
Yup, I got hired through those threads for the first time in the US almost a
decade ago.

------
gigatexal
One day I hope to be a success story here. Glad the thread exists every month!

------
rofo1
Yes, I was hired of such a thread. Still working for the same employer.

------
pwujek
Yes I was, and am currently doing work for them remotely.

------
adreamingsoul
Yes, my current role was found from that thread.

------
aerovistae
I always have this overwhelming desire to comment on people's posts in those
threads. I wish they had a peanut gallery.

~~~
loblollyboy
I've actually done this (in who's hiring). There was a startup that was going
to rate people or something and I thought "wow that's super weird and not
good." A few years later, and I think they're pretty big. I generally feel
like a lot of the posts sound goofy and pointless.

------
eggie5
I have

------
mevile
Recruiter spam seems inevitable when responding to such posts, but the way I
avoid long term recruiter spam is by creating an email addresses for each time
I seek employment.

I own a domain so I create an email address such as career2019@example.com
where example.com takes place for my actual domain. I recommend this. I also
use this temporary email to sign up for linkedin for the duration of my
employment seeking.

After having secured employment, I delete the linkedin and then never use the
email again, nor look at whatever may arrive into its inbox.

~~~
lzzzfelipe
You can always just do yourname+career2019@gmail.com

~~~
mevile
This approach doesn't prevent your email address from being clogged with
recruiter spam, unless you want to maintain filters forever, and as another
says, the real email is still there. I don't even use the same domain as my
real email. Jumping in exposes one to a subset of misbehaving recruiters,
those making a bad name for the rest, an experience comparable to taking a
bath in shit and I don't want to taint my daily life with its rank smell once
I'm done prospecting.

~~~
quickthrower2
A throwaway GMAIL address and using +XYZ would be a reasonable solution. You
could set up a rule to forward everything to your main email, but then as you
get spam on certain addresses, adapt the rule to not forward email sent to
those.

~~~
mevile
Yes this would also work.

------
mmoc
This is a pretty famous story along these lines. Ryan graves (now billionaire)
at Uber: [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/uber-billionaire-employee-
no...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/10/uber-billionaire-employee-no-1-ryan-
graves-got-job-thanks-to-a-tweet.html)

