
Ask HN: Why does Hiring thread always top out at developer? - scottndecker
Who is Hiring each month seems to almost entirely be filled with positions for stack specific developers.  Python dev here, React dev there.<p>&quot;Engineer&quot; shows up over 500 times in the March thread.<p>&quot;Architect&quot; shows up 23 times.<p>I know VPs that read HN.  Where are the more senior level jobs for folks who have climbed the ladder out of writing code and are now architecting, managing teams, managing managers, directing divisions, etc?
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mdorazio
Probably a combination of reasons.

\- A large portion of the posts are for startups/small companies where senior
positions are too expensive or not really needed yet

\- A lot of companies prefer to fill senior positions via internal
promotions/network hires rather than external postings

\- There tend to be relatively few _open_ senior positions to start with at a
lot of companies. Competition for these roles is ridiculously intense, so they
fill really quickly compared to lower level dev/engineer roles

\- There's a (justified in my opinion) perception that most of the HN crowd is
more suited to dev/engineer hiring than it is to more senior hiring, so the
postings are going to naturally reflect that skew

In a similar vein, you could ask why Who's Hiring has so few posted positions
for non-dev technical roles beyond entry-level product managers. The reasons
are pretty similar to the above.

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PragmaticPulp
The higher title, the more selective the recruiting process.

The Hiring threads cast a wide net. In my direct experience, the average
respondent to a hiring thread post is already a reach. For example, the
majority of responses to my company's last Hiring thread post were recent
graduates and bootcamp grads looking for their first job.

If you're higher up in the org chart, you need to work hard on building a
solid network for yourself. The best job opportunities won't appear in the
comment section of highly trafficked websites.

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Justsignedup
I will respond as the most Sr. Engineer at my company:

Architecting - you do that while coding. And have your team follow by example
and code reviews (with good debates and team buy-in).

Managing Teams - Teams? Team. One team.

Managing managers - Again, a eng manager? We don't have the resources for
that.

Directing Divisions - Divisions? We have founders to do that, we don't have
enough people to fill 1 division.

Hence the problem.

The most valuable person to us is a Sr. Full-Stack engineer. They won't scale
you to 100m users daily, but they need to know how to build a functional and
flexible product where the only guarantee is change.

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hbcondo714
From what I've seen, the _Who is Hiring_ thread consists of companies that
already have CTOs / VPs that post their dev roles.

I instead used the _Who Wants to be Hired_ thread to find a VP / CTO role (but
no luck yet):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19800051](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19800051)

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decentralised
In my own experience, hiring for VP and senior management roles tends to
happen within the (closed) circuits of the current business leads / board
members specially for small and medium sized companies.

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jiveturkey
> I know VPs that read HN.

This is akin to confirmation bias. Most VPs don't have time to read HN. (OTOH,
people that are _looking_ for a VP job probably do have time lol)

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Lorenz-Kraft
Where exactly do you get your stats from? Maybe you are just looking the wrong
places ...

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scottndecker
Ctrl + f on the page
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22465476](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22465476).
Seems pretty trustworthy to do a word count.

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anewguy9000
for every developer there are 10 VPs.. or wait, is it the other way around?

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scottndecker
Agreed, but then there should be about 10 VP positions on the Hiring thread
(since there are a hundred dev positions). Not sure I've ever seen even one.

