
Ask HN: Can we do a "Who's looking for work?" - jader201
I was wondering if HN has considered running a monthly &quot;Who&#x27;s looking for work&quot;, similar to the &quot;Who&#x27;s hiring&quot; posts that are run every month.<p>Seems like this would be handy for small startups and talent to find each other, or maybe even would allow fellow HNers to help each other find a good fit via networking.<p>Or maybe this was already attempted with bad results?
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dang
You're welcome to try posting the thread. I think it would be interesting. For
best results, it should probably be a separate post from the current
discussion.

Having it recur monthly, though, is another matter. Since there have been a
lot of proposals for recurring threads lately, maybe I should share our
thinking on this.

The bar for recurring threads on HN is high. People often suggest new ones,
but I'm doubtful that most would improve the quality of the site. When in
doubt, we will err on the side of not promoting discussions (even vibrant and
interesting discussions) to regular features, because once ensconced, they
will be hard to remove—and because predictable things inevitably get less
interesting.

Tho whoishiring threads are a special case, because they compensate for the
injunction against general job posts on HN.

I understand the feeling of "wouldn't it be cool if..." and the danger of
being a party-pooper, so I'm not shutting the door on these ideas. But it's
helpful to remember what HN is: a site for intellectual curiosity, i.e.
interesting articles and discussions. Optimizing for that is pretty much our
sole concern. From that you can derive a lot about what to say "yes" and "no"
to.

People have always used HN for unofficial and informal purposes—that's
wonderful! I'm not talking about any of that here—only about the core. For
example, many of us have friends whom we somehow met because of HN—but that
doesn't make HN a friend-matching service. (I originally wrote "friend-
finder". We're not that either.)

So the default answer to "can we make a regular thread for ‘foo’" is "no",
because a regular thread is a feature, and the default answer to new features
is "no" unless ‘foo’ serves the core.

Edit: I'm going to demote this thread now since it isn't really on topic.

~~~
tspike
Perhaps we should just adapt the Who's Hiring thread to the format of the
"Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?" thread and encourage folks to post replies
if they're looking for employment.

~~~
dang
That's the sort of clever generalization I would be delighted by if this were
code. But those threads are already top-heavy, so I don't think a flood of new
comments is what we want there.

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Sir_Cmpwn
I've been hoping to see a "Open source projects looking for help?" monthly
post.

~~~
_p6xs
I think almost all open source projects are looking for help.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Perhaps "looking for help and has a gameplan for new contributors"?

~~~
webmaven
Isn't that basically OpenHatch?:
[http://openhatch.org/](http://openhatch.org/)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
I think an Ask HN is better suited to this purpose than a dedicated website.

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diego
Ok, I'll put myself out there.

Since I sold my company to LinkedIn (2011), I've been looking for something
interesting to do. I found it with cryptocurrencies. I've been playing with
Bitcoin and Dogecoin for a while, and written a few little utilities in
Clojure and Java. See:

[https://github.com/dbasch?tab=repositories](https://github.com/dbasch?tab=repositories)

I hacked [https://cointipping.com/](https://cointipping.com/) a few weeks ago,
but I don't want to work on it by myself. I'd be open to joining a
cryptocurrency startup as a cofounder, or to brainstorm with others who want
to start a cryptocurrency business.

------
potatolicious
It'd be cool, but would of course exclude the (IMO large) set of people who
aren't trying to keep their job search below the radar.

~~~
diego
People use throwaway accounts all the time. All you need to do is describe
your skills and what you're looking for, as well as a way to contact you.

~~~
jtheory
But that loses the whole point of doing it on HN.

This idea is somewhat cool in that if there were a few people who interested
me, I could scan their comment history (or might recognize the username) to
get a sense of their style of interaction, thinking, passions, etc..

A throwaway account means there's none of that; and unfortunately, it also
means there's no way to distinguish you from someone who read an article and
is posting their inflated self-description on HN along with 219 other places.

I'd be curious to see a trial run, but I don't have very high hopes.

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phantom_oracle
Just thought I'd pitch in here.

Most of you forgot to mention the most important part, which would be the size
of the thread.

If we're getting like 50-100 posts for who is hiring, a thread like this will
get at least over 200 (likely a lot more).

The data won't be valuable to anyone except recruiters who want to spam people
(somebody mentioned that already).

The thing I can't seem to understand is the "monthly" part of
hiring/freelancing. Why does everyone wait an entire month just to post these
things?

I also can't imagine company hiring managers trying to filter through the data
(there are no filters on HN firstly).

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melvinmt
What about: "Who's looking for a co-founder?"

I think a lot of YC applicants (myself included) are having problems with
finding co-founders and HN is a great place to find one.

~~~
primitivesuave
Word of advice here: only work with people you know really well, or look up
to. The success of your startup will depend on that person, and a random
person will most likely not share your motivation and can have any number of
quirks that you will only find out over the course of many months/years.

It's completely possible to pick up a brilliant hacker or business genius out
of the blue, but the people who are brilliant hackers/business geniuses
probably have friends who they'd start a company with rather than a stranger.

Personal anecdote - I picked a cofounder who I had worked with in the past,
but didn't really completely know. Incredibly bright guy, but no ability to
get things done. He was delighted to blow money when we had it, but when
things got rough he brought the whole atmosphere of the startup down with him
and eventually left. Now I only work with people I've known for many years,
and the success of my ventures with them speaks for itself.

~~~
fivedogit
It's a triple-edged sword: You give a huge chunk of your company away, take on
a huge wild-card risk and to top it off, investors will now be wary of you...
because they know co-founding is like a marriage and can go wrong in a
multitude of ways.

You wouldn't marry someone you just met, would you?

~~~
xiaoma
In many times and places such marriages have been common and carried lower
divorce rates than modern western societies.

------
leorocky
Concerns:

Putting yourself out there publicly on HN while your current coworkers are
reading HN and see your name is a liability.

Hundreds of recruiters are going to see that list spam everyone of these
people for the next few years now.

If you're on that list every month, that's not going to look great for you. It
also reveals a great deal of personal information about you.

You can't delete your post after an hour or whatever.

It doesn't add to HN at all. Look at that list. Going through the who's hiring
list is kind of interesting, but going through the list of people looking for
jobs isn't.

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minimaxir
A potential problem with this approach would be competition: posters who are
desperately looking for a job will keep trying to one-up each other with their
accomplishments, and it could get ugly.

~~~
highace
I wouldn't think so. Just stick your skill set and history down, along with
what sort of company or area you're looking for and a way to be contacted.

Although recruiters will probably go wild all over it and nobody really wants
that, do they?

~~~
jader201
_> Although recruiters will probably go wild all over it and nobody really
wants that, do they?_

Surely if you include "No recruiters please." they will respect that? Or am I
naive?

~~~
untog
Hopelessly so.

I put "No recruiters" on every single section of my LinkedIn profile, yet they
still e-mailed. Eventually I removed every single detail from it. Even now I
get the odd message.

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stronglikedan
Like this, but for employment instead of freelance?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7679422)

~~~
jader201
Exactly. Except for the "Seeking freelancer?" part. That's covered by "Who is
hiring?". I'm basically looking for the inverse of "Who is hiring?".

"Who wants to be hired?" maybe?

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smoyer
Well ... I'm fortunate enough to not have to constantly battle for a paycheck
and so I'm not interested in a full-time job, but I'm always looking for
"interesting things to work on". I've made a couple promises to two open-
source projects (for low-level networking support) but I'd be interested in
seeing what other consider interesting!

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msoad
Yesterday I went to a meetup and today my inbox was full of recruiter spam.
Imagine if I post my name and email here..

~~~
speeder
Yet some people (hint hint, person not living in a first world country!) would
be very happy to get recruiter spam...

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workhere-io
I'm working on a website for that: [http://workhere.io](http://workhere.io).

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cottonseed
Not completely dissimilar, recently there was a Help Me Out/Help You Out
thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7573172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7573172)

It sparked several interesting conversations, so the results were good for me,
at least.

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lpolovets
This sounds like a great idea. Is there any reason not to try it out?

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endianswap
As someone who is always looking to interview strong developers (but have
often-weird criteria), I'd love to be able to browse through a thread full of
folks looking for work.

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massappeal
Might give companies who post in the 'Who's hiring' a better idea of the
talent they are reaching that month

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philh
There was one of these a couple of years back, I got an interview out of it.
Make another and see how it goes.

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BadassFractal
This is a good idea, supported.

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iterationx
Only if you use alliteration, "Work Wednesdays"

~~~
_p6xs
This was proposed during New-recurring-thread-proposal November

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fredgrott
Its easier just to get referrals from local VCs you know..that is how I got my
current startup job

~~~
dev1n
Contrary to popular belief a lot of people in this community do not know VC's.
Extending this to just using your network to feel out different companies is
definitely a good suggestion though. I for one am interested in seeing
something like a "Who's looking to help out open source" post once a month.

edit: added the word "though"

