

Tech sector in hiring drive - adamhowell
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304628704575186362957042220.html

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davidu
There are different folks qualified for different size companies.

Some people do best at the 1-5 person company. Some people do best at the 5-25
person company. Some people do best at the 25-100 person company. And some
people do best at 100-250, and 250+.

The best people are the ones that grow with you as the company grows and take
on bigger leadership roles as needed, constantly working for what's best for
the company and it's people.

The people Google is hiring at 20,000 are generally not the people I want as
we go from 25 to 100. That's not universally true, but when we lose a
candidate (which is rare) it's because they go to another start-up and they
had to make a real tough choice, often resorting to commute and other lesser
factors to decide. It's not because they went to Google or LinkedIn.

~~~
strlen
I'd wager focus has more to do with it than size.

If you're an engineer, it's a bad idea to join a start-up if their focus
doesn't align with your interests. Even if there is significant equity and a
great salary (it's not uncommon for funded start-ups to pay more than big
companies), it's terrible to feel underused, unfulfilled and behind the
technology curve in the topics that interest you. If you're the _only_ person
knowledgeable about a certain topic in a start-up, there's nothing you can
learn about it from coworkers. If one is uncertain of their focus, there's
also no ability to switch groups and work on something else.

Your start-up (OpenDNS) is fairly unique in San Francisco, if not Bay Area as
a whole, in being focused on network infrastructure (and I applaud you for it,
it's a great service!)

Unfortunately, it (+ several other start-ups e.g., rethinkdb) is an exception,
not the rule. The focus of most other early stage start-ups is web
development. Engineers interested in solving other kinds of problems (e.g.,
algorithms and scalability challenges) but who like the flexibility of working
for an Internet (vs. shrink-wrap product) company typically consider the
medium (Facebook, LinkedIn) and big players (Google, Yahoo, Amazon).

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mahmud
You know it's getting hot when the vendor that came to sell to your company
slips you a card with "your current salary + 15" scribbled on the back.

~~~
patio11
He knows its getting hot when you give him the card back and tell him to get
serious. (That might almost qualify as _frothy_.)

~~~
ivorjawa
Light on the santorum, please.

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stuff4ben
I can echo this. I've had two Fortune 500 companies, several recruiters, and
even Google all contact me (unsolicited too) within the past month. It's the
oddest thing I've seen in the 13 years I've been a developer.

~~~
shadowsun7
I find this particularly interesting, especially as a CS student. Is this
hiring binge across the board, or primarily for developers who've been in the
market for awhile now?

Because if it's the latter, startups can continue to siphon off from
universities (through internships, and later job offers) and the like.

~~~
holdenk
Big tech companies already heavily use internships as a recruiting method for
new-grads. When I went through, I remember the big 3 all paid substantially
more than all of the local companies. A lot of the interns I know (including
my self), returned to one of their internships.

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xox
What I find remarkable about the chart is the volume of tech jobs in D.C.
relative to the population:

D.C. has a population of about 600 thousand versus about 8 million in NYC and
yet tech hiring seems to be roughly on a par in these two cities.

That's mind blowing (to me at least).

If that's correct, it must be virtually impossible to be an unemployed
programmer in D.C.

~~~
elblanco
There's over 5 million people in the D.C. area (D.C., Southern MD and Northern
Virginia). Coupled with a highly educated workforce, plentiful higher
education options, and a rapidly modernizing federal government, and you
actually see very very few unemployed developers. Most places I know in the
area get the vast vast majority of their resumes from incoming immigrants
looking for an H1-B sponsor or a Green Card sponsor.

D.C. proper by comparison has very little going on.

~~~
GFischer
Do you know if they eventually go for it? (H1-B sponsoring?). I'm a wannabe
immigrant, and I wouldn't mind an H1-B sponsor :)

~~~
elblanco
Some places are. It's difficult because the biggest employer in the area is
the U.S. Federal Government. So it's hard to hire non-citizens. But there is a
relatively healthy private sector as well. You just have to try and find those
smaller employers. Most of the resume's I've seen also seem to be coming in
through a recruiting agency if that helps.

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Simucal
We need to have another Hacker News "Who's Hiring?" thread.

I'm a senior CS student gearing up to graduate this May and starting my
employment search. I have worked two software engineering internships and I'm
proficient in the .Net stack (particularly ASP.NET MVC), Java, and Python.
I've also had a some amount of Android experience over the past two semesters.

~~~
agosnell
There was one last weekend, might want to check it out:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1255491>

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korch
I hope this is indeed true, as I've been having a helluva time finding Rails
dev work in West LA...

