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Thank HN: You helped me get a new job
2425 points by atum47 on Jan 15, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 193 comments
I remember like it was yesterday: I applied to a job overseas through a job platform and didn't get hired. People from the platform contacted me telling me one of the possible reasons was that I didn't have any code on GitHub. After that I started uploading all my code as open source projects and began to search places to tell people about it.

Soon I learned about Hackernews and made a post that got 1 vote. I then decided to contact HN to ask how can I get more traction to my projects and they told me about the Show HN, a tag design to share small and even unfinished projects. Soon I was posting every idea I ever had made into a project. After InvaderZ - a space invaders clone that uses genetic algorithm (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21577659) - people started liking my projects and I started to gain some attention. That was very important cause I was being approached by some companies.

I don't do projects to gather attention, I do cause I have fun doing them. I already had a lot of things done when I decided to upload them to GitHub. Well, in one of those times when my post was in top 10, a cool company from São Paulo saw me and called me for an interview. They liked my project so much they offer me a job.

I'm living in São Paulo now, it's a huge city full of things to do and places to visit. It's been really cool so far and I have a huge appreciation for Hackernews and the good people that work here. They provide a cool platform where people can share relevant news. They provide tools for people to start their own startup. They share job openings. They share companies that are hiring. It's a neat place for programmers, hackers and tech enthusiasts in general. I wrote this cause you never know when your story will inspire others and maybe there's someone on the struggle right now looking for a job. This was my experience. HN help me a lot and I think it might help you too. Thank you all and have a wonderful year.




There is undeniably a positive energy around HN. It has enriched my life in many ways and opened my mind to many different fields, niche communities and many historical facts.

The world is truly filled with good people.

I'm not surprised and very glad to read about this story.


Sure HN crowd is far better than rest of platforms but we can't undermine OPs efforts as well. Dude has like 70 Show HNs on his profile!


yeap it's all his doing :) HN just helped make that work visible which isn't that easy (even within the HN community)


Thank you for posting!

I’m grateful to hear your story. These days, it seems all too easy to see only the bad sides of the internet.

It feels like news breaks every day about yet another way that the advertising industrial complex robs us of agency, another insensitive corporate gaffe goes uncorrected, or a CEO ousted for their malignant influence on a company lands on their feet with no repercussions — sometimes at the same company.

I grew attached to my computer at a young age — It felt like a chance to make real all of the possibilities that felt so out of reach in the rest of my life. It’s been a really hard road to face the current state of the net, like one of my childhood dreams has turned sour.

So, when I see a story like yours, I’m grateful to be reminded of the ways that the promise of a more connected world is not yet lost, we can still do some good. I hope you enjoy your new job and São Paolo and that this is the beginning of an exciting next chapter!


well, you'll be glad to know that I'm working on a project that helps children eat healthier food and exercise. I'm using machine learning to provide a custom experience for parents and children alike (not all children have access to the same type of food - strawberries, for example, are expensive and hard to find on some parts of Brazil so the app must not indicate that kind of food to people from that area)


I wish everyone could a chance to spend their time and effort to make a difference like that. Congratulations.


This sounds like a great project. I've found you on LinkedIn and Github but is there somewhere where I can follow this project?


look for NesPLAY on the app store. But I just joined the project, haven't done much yet


I am indeed glad to hear that! You are a very prolific programmer. I’m hope you’re proud of your work and that you keep it up!


What a positive post.

For what it's worth -- this industry and community, unlike any other is one in which I've most seen people willing to give world-class advice, thoughts and help for free. Maybe it's the communal roots of open source culture, not sure... but it's rare and amazing. So I am also thankful.


It's an aspect to HN that I've found to be very consistent over the decade or so I've been reading comments here. People are overwhelmingly willing to offer up their contact info, give advice (often expert advice), help, beta test, and so on. I think it's a critical part of the foundation that holds HN together after all this time, helping to keep it inviting to new users.


I was thinking the same: "What a positive post!"

Keep it going! A lot of times we keep positive feedback for ourselves, or close friends, but we don't share it back online.

It means a lot about you as a person that you think of posting this back to HN. You must be a pleasure to work with! I'm sure you will enjoy your time in São Paulo!


I've always thought that part of that culture is remuneration. People in IT sector are more likely to earn well nowadays than most jobs. When one doesn't have to worry about money it's easier to be kind, helpful and open-minded.


>Maybe it's the communal roots of open source culture

To be sure, this sentiment is being pushed out of the industry by people with little interest in those communal roots.


I have noticed that the people who contact you for positions via HN also connect with you on a personal level and treat you like an actual human.

Although nothing has worked out for me yet, this is a welcome change from the run of the mill recruiters. You just know that you will be a cog in the wheel if you are hired in those companies.

I guess that the majority of people here want to work on something that adds value to the lives of others.


HN helped me too in a much less explicit way. I spent a lot of time on here during the ~9mo period of learning tech after dropping out of grad school. I count the exposure to technical conversations: links to diverse areas of the field, raw _takes_ on technologies, references and arguments, discussion on how tech fit into businesses - to be as valuable as the skills I was learning towards getting employeed and before that just towards feeling like I had any idea what I was doing. Now almost 3.5yrs in!


Well done.

You showed yourself that you were a worthy programmer when you decided to code a lot of cool projects for fun.

You showed the world once you put them online.

I find the #1 measurable determinant of great programmers is enough true joy from programming that they create many sub-projects just for fun. I'm so glad you found a venue to show it.

I hope you enjoy your new role and an amazing career to come. You earned them.


Very nice story, glad you've found some success. One thing I try to be mindful of, admittedly not as well as I'd like, is paying it forward. Remember the feeling, the struggle, the journey, the people who've helped you along the way, and try to be there for those in the future who will fill your past shoes. Best of luck.


Congrats on the new job in São Paulo! :)

I'd echo other commentators that it's heartening to hear these stories of real connection found via the web.

I had a similar experience some years ago; a blog post I wrote about a side project connected me the SF-based startup I still work for. I couldn't have predicted how that post, churned up by a fortuitous google ranking, would impact my life. I'd be remiss to not also credit the generosity of the blogger who shared it as a guest post.

If we're going to rediscover what the web should have been, then celebrating stories like yours seems a good place to start.

There are teams formed, love found, and minds changed for good -- all via the web. Perhaps it's in part by studying these connection stories that we'll find our way to a healthier, more human web for everyone.

Another great example of the positive web: https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/97588463553510195...


General question - Do companies look at candidate's github? I have never had any company even care to ask what I have on github. Isn't it all about whiteboard coding interview? If I don't do well on coding interview, it doesn't matter what I have on github. At least that's been my experience. I am curious to know others' experience in this regard.


I do, but only if you seemed like you mucked up part of the interview. I’ll go check Github, spend 2-3 minutes googling the source code to see if you copied/pasted or if it’s yours.

I’ve passed a few candidates who bombed technical interview via phone because Github showed they know what they’re doing & just had an off day.

Granted, I’m sure most do not do that but technical recruiting is so expensive so spending 5-10 mins on a candidate I already spent 30 mins with is a drop in the bucket if it gets me even 1-2 more hires who would’ve slipped through the cracks.


I have a similar practice. One of the best engineers I ever hired bombed the tech interview, and I went poking in his github. Found a project that seemed pretty neat and reached out the candidate with an email like:

"Hey, I realized we didn't get a chance the other day to go over something you wrote independent of the hiring pressure. Would you mind a call where we talk about $project?"

Since that candidate was much more comfortable talking about their own project, the interview went great. I learned a little rust, and we got a good engineer :)


Probably depends a lot on your location and size/value of the company you apply at.

In Europe, at the top big companies that pay good, GitHub profiles don't matter much. They get so many applications and hiring managers are so busy that they barely get enough time to read your resume thoroughly before the interview let alone have any time to look at your GitHub.

HR that makes the initial screening has no idea about code so candidate selection is mostly based on graduating from a prestigious University or work experience at other prestigious company so having a stellar GitHub profile won't do anything to get your foot in the door but it might sway the final decision in your favor later on in the process when managers have more time to decide.


For junior, particularly first job, candidates their GitHub (if they have one) is something I look at very closely.

They get points for knowing what a VCS is, points for creating an account, having anything on it, more if the stuff is any good, and they also get points for community activity like filing issues.

It really establishes whether the candidate has ever touched the technology and it shows initiative. There are other ways they can show this but GitHub is really easy. I find it generally more informative than whiteboards which I have rarely ever done.

For more senior candidates, I still look, still like to see at least a little activity (for instance, do you keep an eye on the repos of critical dependencies for your current project?), but generally there is less differentiation unless there is something truly impressive.

I haven't ever penalized a candidate for the low quantity or quality of what they put there. I think it would be stifling. For me I just collect the positives (unless there is anything truly alarming, which I've never encountered).


I have seen it being looked at out if interest when the candidate provides a link to their GitHub. The candidate would never even know.

The one thing seeing that happen taught me is to curate my public repos very carefully and leave the rest private.

Assume they are willing to click through to about 2 ~ 3 repos max and attempt to read the readme if there is one and find some samples of code if they can. That's how I've seen it play out.

To that end, if you have 30 repos and they just happen to click through to a React tutorial you did that contains barely any code and it's obviously not original the result is they just kinda wind up losing interest.

If, on the other hand, you have a reasonably well documented project with hundreds of commits against it that's original work it stands out.


I hear that companies do. I'm a hiring manager, and I may sometimes click if there's a link in the resume. With me, it can give you bonus points, but not really points against you. Since I believe that there's many developers who do awesome at work, stuff I'll never be able to see on GitHub either, so it'd not be fair. I consider myself a decent hire, yet my own GitHub is quite sparse. (Though, on the other hand, then why include it on your resume. If instead I have to google or duckduckgo for it, well, that's on me then.)


As someone who was involved with hiring for a small company (a dozen employees): I've looked at candidate's github accounts. It lets me have an idea of where they're at, what interests they have. If they're doing something weird like not properly handling passwords then I can bring that up & see if they take it personally or not


I always look at their github to see if it has interesting things.

I want to see how they write code and (hopefully) how they release software. That's either going to come from released code, a coding interview, or some kind of coding assignment. I'd much rather see their work on something they're passionate about and have had time to polish to their own satisfaction, so github is the best case scenario.

It's also nice to talk with them about their github projects during the interview. It puts them more at ease and on familiar ground so that we can really dig deep into their software development and design philosophies. The less pressured and anxious they feel, the better.

Ideally, I hope to find that they've arranged their profile page to show their best work first so that I don't have to go digging through it, but that's not something I'd hold against them; it just means that I might miss their best work.


I'm fairly prolific on gitlab/github and have both clearly marked on my resume, but I've never had an instance of my portfolio being an important factor in a job application process. Based on my personal experience I have never once found Github to be worth it in terms of career advancement, it's more for personal fulfilment and interest. My guess is that unless you are a leading star in your field it's pretty irrelevant. That said, when screening/interviewing candidates I've often looked at their Github if they have one and that's definitely been a deciding factor for me, but I can't say that's something I've encountered from others in the industry.


I definitely do, but only in preparing for the first interview. Your top bet through my front door is a tidy 1-2 page CV, fronted by a two paragraph intro that shows me your motivation and fit for the position, preferably in a very personal way.


I definitely have when interviewing candidates.

One curious guy had repos with seemingly auto generated daily commits. Just text files, no code. It may have been class notes I guess, but it looked suspicious I reccommended not hiring. Company hired him. He was awful and had to be let go after a few months.

I seem to get a lot of recruiters who use databases that scraped GitHub and find me.


When my company was a startup and we had very high hiring expectations we certainly looked for some high quality work on github.


Congrats! I remember seeing one of your projects, finding it cool, and checking your profile and site.

HN is indeed a good platform for a kind of disperse networking. I got approached by a friend whose boss saw my posts/comments on HN, somehow talked about it to my friend, who recognized my username (which is both memorable for Brazilians and my actual nickname) and asked him to recruit me.

And I don't even ever got a hit post.


I kinda have a mental map of brazilian people here. Everytime I see some nick which resembles anything in portuguese, I check if the person is brazilian. From time to time, I'm here scrolling and then... Oh, the soneca guy again. Same with the atum one, and some others.


Yeah, me too!


soneca is a funny nickname, uhauhauha


I gained it when I was 15yo and it followed me everywhere since (I am 40yo now), including work environments


Perhaps I'm missing something, why is it funny? :)


"soneca" it's a Portuguese word that means "sleep for a short time". Is something people usually do after lunch.


The literal translation is "nap"; but nickname origin is actually because it is how we call one of the Snow White's seven dwarves, Sleepy.

I used to sleep a lot during classes on high school. It's kind of a classic nickname


yeah, I remember soneca from the 7 dwarfs but I failed to mention it


As another Brazilian that owes a lot of my career development to news, discussions and people I've got in contact from HN for the past 7 years or so I'd like to give you big congrats on landing the new job.

Given your English and programming skills level be sure that in no time you'll be able to apply for jobs overseas if that is what you are looking for, I did the move out of Brazil some years ago so shoot me a message if you are unsure about it or have questions :)

Best of luck and have a blast with the new job.


Thanks to HN "who is hiring" thread earlier this month I was able to find a 100% remote contract. With it in hand I expressed to my job I wanted to quit and they countered with letting me work 100% remotely (all I really wanted)! Thank you HN!


Congrats on the job! It’s always awesome to hear how a community helps one of its members!

Edit: looking at your submissions, you’ve been a machine, good work. I’m moderately curious what hiring platform came back with feedback for you, it seems in retrospect to have been helpful :)


honeypot, they were all over Reddit some time ago

edit: I think the lady who was dealing with my profile felt bad cause I had zero offers, lol.


This is an awesome post. Thank you for sharing your story with the HN community.

I was browsing your GitHub and played around a little with IsoCity [0]. I really like it! Small projects like these are great and you can learn so much from them. You said it very well:

> I don't do projects to gather attention, I do cause I have fun doing them.

Thanks again for sharing and all the best :)

[0] - https://github.com/victorqribeiro/isocity


yeah, I was surprised with all the attention that project got. Made sure to link to the artist portfolio so people would give him some love too


Same here. HN has changed my life. From getting exposure on open source projects to geting various contracts around the world. I'm incredibly grateful. Thank you Hacker News.


I shared a project on Show HN (at a bad time of day: 3:30pm PST on a weekday), and all I got out of it was a barrage of accounts created by spambots using breached Yahoo and Hotmail email addresses! They didn't stop for weeks, until we put in a recaptcha.

Pretty funny - I'm definitely not complaining about HN. And it's nice to hear your story!


Congrats! :)

And thank you for writing this. I have used HN for more than 10 years and I've learned so much about my profession from it. Some of it is that you simply can't keep up with all the technology. But some of it is just inspirational. A lot of it is just purely educational.

Clearly it has that affect for thousands (if not millions...) in our world.


Wow great story! Congrats on the new position. I didn't know about the Show HN tag. Sounds like a great opportunity for startups. Thanks for sharing!


yes, indeed. I've seen a lot of cool apps here. I think one even got bought after being featured on top.


> I didn't know about the Show HN tag

Not sure why but that made me laugh and think that either says a lot about how HN has changed over the years or you just don’t spend much time here


I'm guessing the latter, there's two on the front page right now; there must rarely not be at least one.


Probably and that’s kind of my point. Not meant as an insult or anything but just thought it was funny since it seemed like the main purpose of HN back in the day


LOL Not bad that my comment made you laugh. I'll be honest that it's the latter reason because I am new to the community. :) Glad to meet you here.


Congrats!!!

HN is a place I check all the time. There’s so many smart people here and the conversations are often very civil and super informative.


Related question: is Github (specifically) considered a must, or is it just considered a need to have code online? I primarily use Gitlab--is that seen as a kind of demerit?


No, Gitlab is not seen as inferior. I must admit though that I have been guilty of checking whether a candidate had a Github page and forgetting that they might have one elsewhere.


Most of the time an interviewer will just be clicking on a link in your resume, so it can be whatever you want.

Also, you don't need either. It's nice for interviewers to be able to see some of your code and talk about it with you, but it's absolutely not required and it's not hard to get a job without any public code at all.


Congratulations! Don't stop now! Stick around and provide inspiration to others coming along behind us.


Wow! Congratulations! This is a great story. Best of luck with your new position. São Paulo sounds great.


Thank you. São Paulo is a great city. Every food you want to try, from every nation. you can rent a eletric scooter from the street with just your phone. I'm really having fun here


   you can rent a eletric scooter from the street with just your phone
For now, at least


And is it really the best part about a city ?


Wow this is such an accomplishment and a testament to a healthy culture of encouragement. Congratulations to you and best of luck on your future endeavors!!


Apart from a few niche-specific closed forums, I've had consistently high quality discussions on HN. Somehow the HN culture stops the proliferation of low-effort comments and trolling so prominent everywhere else.


> Somehow

Ruthless but fair moderation, clear goals around what the community is for and hard working moderators.

Online communities are like gardens, they look best with constant maintenance and the odd pruning.


I'm pretty sure the poor design does not encourage people to come there if they do not expect to find something valuable. The overall quality of shared news is really good, the comments are not imediately accessible after reading the news, people express different points of view. A lot of hacker news reader arent english native speakers, and it's hard to troll efficiently with a language you do not master.


HN design is outstanding, both on desktop and especially on mobile. There's nothing "poor" about it.


> especially on mobile

Eh, I much prefer using an app on mobile. All the buttons (up-/downvote, collapse) are too small, and a lot of space to the right is often left on the table, which makes longer comments very hard to read.


I think it neither poor nor outstanding. Simple or oldschool would be both better terms to describe it. Yes, it certainly has some outstanding attributes (e.g. color composition), but it is far from perfect. Small voting buttons and long lines are just the two things that immediately come to my mind.


It's really functionnal. I've nothing to complain about. But for people used to go on facebook & co there is a huge gap. I'm pretty sure it does filter a part of trolls.


As a reddit user it is hard to resist throwing around the quick quips that one would expect to find but really just makes the content worse. There really is something about the HN environment that makes one take that extra moment to think things through and write a constructive argument instead of mindless jokes.


I have the same urge to make quick quips. I just make sure to add them only to lower level comments so that they don't derail the rest of the discussion.


It's definitely in the site moderation and culture. You really have to contribute to discussion meaningfully else be banished to transparency. The moderator(s?) do a fantastic job too. It feels a lot more like a structured forum format than a feed/voted site.


The karma thresholds and losing karma on downvotes also helps a lot to sustain the culture. Having to gain at least a bit of karma before being allowed to upvote yourself is hard, if unthoughtful comments are downvoted by the community. And gaining these first (i think it was) 500 karma to downvote yourself can take a long time and makes you instill HN culture.

The discussion culture is what makes me read HN nearly every day. The comments are often more interesting than the articles themselves.


> The discussion culture is what makes me read HN nearly every day. The comments are often more interesting than the articles themselves.

This. I often find myself going to the comments first, and then open the article.


Congratulations!

I've always wanted to publish interesting projects on Github, but I find it hard to get inspiration. Do you have any tips?


I always liked computers even when I was a child. So when I decided to go to college for the second time to study software engineering I was very eager to understand how things work inside a computer. I remember not knowing how numbers can represent an image. So I took digital image processing. I like to get to the basics so I can try stuff later on. I also especially like to solve problems. Even if a problem is well solved by a genius of the past, I think: how would I solve this if I didn't have Google to provide me with the algorithm? Many projects came from this two things. The third thing o really like is games. So I'm always trying to come up with interesting mechanics, concepts, ways of making the computer plays against humans... I also watch a lot of good people on YouTube, read a lot of what people post here... all those things poke my curiosity one way or another and I end up writing code.


You can check https://github.com/open-source-ideas/open-source-ideas


Gratz

I'll echo this sentiment as someone who's been hired through a lead on "Who's hiring?"


It's good to know the classic method of getting hired as an engineer still works! Congrats!!


thank you


I remember going through your GitHub and LinkedIn profile in detail. It has inspired me to develop something based on genetic algorithms myself! Keep it up! You are awesome!


thank you


I definitely have to thank this awesome site as well. Had been stuck in a position where I didn't feel like I had a way out, due to a combination of a non-compete on myself and restrictive no-poach agreements between my (now former) employer and a majority of large tech-oriented businesses in my city. Tried everything I could to get out from under both, short of leaving town, and just couldn't find a job that fit my career goals that I was actually able to take. Early last year, I started checking the who's hiring posts monthly, on the off-chance that something would stick out and catch my attention. I was scrolling through pretty quickly one day, just looking for keywords, and blasted through like half the page, and then realized I had missed reading a comment that had some of my target words in it. Scrolled back up, saw a post from an engineering manager at a company whose product I actually use, and on a whim I just applied. Now, over half a year later, I'm happily and gainfully employed, working remote, for a company that I really enjoy working for and on a product that I can dogfood. Feels really great. Thanks for keeping this community alive, everybody. It's awesome to be a part of this.


Congrats and I hope you'll keep contributing to this HN community in the future as well.


Thanks, I hope I do too.


I deleted all my other social media accounts (except for strava and youtube), I stay here for a while. Much healthier community.


as another developer from são paulo that got jobs from HN postings, cheers!

if you ever need tips, help or even someone to have a beer, feel free to contact me (keybase/email is on my profile).


Congrats! If anyone is looking for opportunities in São Paulo, feel free to contact me (contact is in my profile). At CIAL Dun&Bradstreet https://www.cialdnb.com/pt-br/ we’re on a lookout for python and js devs.


Saving it for later


I have favorite your post in order to remember that I have to add more of my projects to Github and shown HN


I highly recommend that you do that. It's awesome when people send pull requests improving your work.


But how did you find the time to do all this stuff, didn't you have to work? are you single?


Yes, I'm single right now. And when I was on college I had a lot of free time, cause I was working part time. Several projects that are now on GitHub came from sketches I did while bored in class or on my free time - http://jsfiddle.net/user/victorqribeiro - I'm not young, I'm 35 now. I went back to college at 30 because I went broke (after the last company I worked for screwed me). It's kinda hard to date when you're a broke going bald 35 years old with no steady income. I'm getting back on my feet now. But as you can see, I used my free time to thinker with things like code and electronics.


It's all good I' happy for you, life is a sinus wave, there was a time that I felt that it will only get better from now on, and few years after that I was broke and screwed by the company I gave my all for


I am also a developer from São Paulo and because of this community I just got a new remote job in a German company.

Your Show HN pots are really inspiring. They really show your enthusiasm about software development, which I think it is fundamental for mastering the craft.


Congrats! Glad to hear! HN also helped get me my dream job -- this community is amazing!


Thank you so much for sharing! It's the best thing I've seen so far today!!!

I live in Shanghai and yeah struggling with getting a job or I should say, a job I like, a boss I admired or a company I'm willing to support;


This right here is why Software matters.


This is what differentiates the comp sci & (some) engineering crowd from anyone else. If you ask anyone a question on here, everyone will jump in to help you out and it's like this in real life too. Throughout my degree I noticed how eager my fellow classmates would be to help others solve difficult questions, problems etc and generally be nice.

Compared to business or even some engineering classes it was pure cut-throat. So, it's always refreshing to see stories like this, restores my faith in humanity.


Thank you for sharing your story. I am what one would call a lurker but have recently decided to start participating directly too. Your post also gives me a lot of motivation to do that.

I think one of the reasons of the positive energy in this community is because it's strict rules on trolling. If one doesn't get to see low effort replies, sarcastic comments etc, then it reduces the chances of them having a bad experience. Hence, resulting in an net positive vibe in the whole forum. Just my two cents!


Same here ... this is actually my first comment. Planning on being more active if I have something worthwhile to contribute with.


Congratulations. The hacking can truly open doors it seems. :)


I see what your did there


Thank you too! This reminds me that I should probably thank people more often (both in private and public). It sure does help to support and spread some positive vibes.

I read HN daily and learn so much more from discussions. Every time I meet someone who could be interested and contribute to this community I suggest them to take a look, and often people get hooked, just like I was.

So, thank you and best wishes to the mods and the whole HN community! Happy 2020!


Congrats and Where were you living before?

Im here in Washington DC but might be getting a similar job opportunity(similar circumstances) in San Paolo too.

How is it there?


I graduated in Rio Grande do Sul (federal universities are free in Brazil and with one test you can apply to any of them), then I went to Minas Gerais (Where I'm originally from) to write my final thesis and to take an internship. São Paulo is huge, there's an app for everything, especially for ordering food with discount. The "Ibirapuera park" is great and so is the "centro cultural", there's a lot of other things to see here but I'm kinda busy finish renting an apartment and stating my new job (today was my second day). I think you'll like here. if you need anything you can contact me. victorqribeiro on LinkedIn


Ok great, thanks and congratulations!

I'll connect with you on LinkedIn and reach out if this opportunity pans out.


That’s so awesome, congratulations on your success


thank you


Thanks for sharing your experience! One of the things that keep drawing me to HN is the fresh news and the friendly community.


This is honestly so amazing to see. Congratulations, and also good work on all the Show HN posts you've made!


Congrats,

Even I dont work directly in programming, its still benefit a lot for me, HN is my second search engine.


Well, this is refreshing. Congrats and keep your attitude of gratitude, it will serve you well.


Well done and thanks for sharing your story! I miss São Paulo a lot, the North where I grew up, and the Augusta/Paulista place where there were always interesting geeks in coffees, lots of meetups, companies, conferences. Hope you will enjoy it too!


I'm learning my way around here. I'm working on Lapa and renting an apartment here to.


What a wholesome story. Well done.


Many many congratulations.

What kind of projects can we show at HN? I have an open source project that I made to download movie torrents using YTS API. I made it to learn react. I am really not sure if its alright to share torrent site here.


I don't recommend that one. Trust me, I've made a similar app two months ago but after learning that a guy from UK got sent to jail just for having links to pirate content, I took the app down and deleted the post.


Great story and glad to see you gained so much from this wonderful community.


>People from the platform contacted me telling me one of the possible reasons was that I didn't have any code on GitHub.

Do places really require a github account with lots of code now to be considered?


A few places have thought that was a good idea even since Github became a thing. I don't think it's a terribly good strategy myself.


This is awesome! Thank you for sharing your story and congratulations!


Congratulations! What a good story to read first thing in the morning


Congratulations!! Hope you keep making things and posting them here!


yes, I have three projects that people will love. Each one of them is half done (I do the programming first, then I do the graphics/UI then write some sort of documentation and release)


Congratulations, and have a wonderful time in Sao Paulo! You rock!


thank you and thank you also for the referral, I was kinda committed to this company I'm now, but maybe we can be co-workers in the future


Congratulations, man! Your story is super positive I love it.


Don't thank anyone. If you like it, you enjoy it, you can do it... The job is for you!

Also I will argue: Any company who 'requires' github code can suck my next job.


And that's how you create your own lucky. Congrats!


Not a full fledged and philosophical comment here, just my honestest congratulations fellow Paulista, you serve as the perfect inspiration to me!


This is the most awesome thing ever.

This is what inspires innovation.


Excellent job and best of luck,the platform is great but undeniably you did your best with the platform, leveraging it and finding success!


And thank you, atum47, for sharing this story! You'll encourage more people to develop and share their ideas in a virtuous cycle.


Well, now your story made it to TOP 1, grats :)


I was a lurker, but your post has inspired me to create an account. Thank you for reminding us that people can be good.


Thanks for sharing this, I'm glad that things have worked out well for you here. All the best for the future!


Congratulations dude, What a great story!


Thank you man! Who ever you are. Wish you all the best in life! Be sure you inspired at least one person!


I'm happy things turned out well for you. Let's make the world a better place for all of us =)


Congratulations! There are also several meetups here in São Paulo, which are great to grow your network!


yes, the company I'm working for also is very present on meetups and workshops. soon I'll be too


Awesome post! HN has also helped me a tremendous amount over the years. Good luck on your new job!


Thanks for sharing. Congratulations!


Congrats! That's amazing news!


Congrats! I can feel your enthusiasm. Try and keep this positivity as long as you can.


Thanks for sharing your story


Thanks for sharing and it is a really inspiring story, congrats and way to go!


Congrats!


Thanks for sharing! That's a delightful and encouraging story.


Congrats on the job! Seeing your commits on git are inspiring!!


Awesome, congratulations and thanks for sharing your story :)


This is so wholesome!


Hey mate,

Great to hear you've landed a job! I've enjoyed following a few of your projects.

But I must say your success is not surprising, as you're a Brazilian times better than your average coder! ;)


Congratulations :)


That's awesome, congrats on the new job!


Congratulations!


Superb! Congrats


Great post, thank you for sharing.


This is a moved story.


This is very cool!


Congratulations!


Congratulations!


Congrats dude!


"People from the platform contacted me telling me one of the possible reasons was that I didn't have any code on GitHub."

this is an absolutely disgusting trend

"So you say you want to work in our paper mill and you don't even make your own toilet paper to use at home? Get out, you casual."


The problem isn't that you don't make your own toilet paper. It's that an oddly high percentage of people you're competing against for the most desirable jobs do make their own toilet paper.

By contrast, you appear less appealing as a result. If all you want to do is show up to the mill and get paid, stop applying at all the most prestigious mills. There's thousands of more humble mills that could use your help outside the valley--and they don't mind if you buy your toilet paper at the store.


Right I guess I forgot that the same position at a fancy company is somehow worth more because the company name is part of the FAANG acronym.

You can't pretend that there aren't plenty of non "prestigious" companies that do this. Frankly the fact that any company would judge you based on "oh, you don't spend your unpaid time doing work that we consider important?" is absolute bullshit, no matter the "reputation" of the company.

These jobs are just another cog in the wheel job for christ sake, stop putting companies on a pedestal just because of their name.

Furthermore, if you're applying for a "desirable" role and you don't have any previous experience and NEED to use a github profile to show yourself off, it's clear that the only thing making this role "desirable" is the name on the fuckin company building which, again, is a bullshit reason to consider a job "desirable".

Otherwise, a "desirable" role would be one that could be a senior role in a field that you already have experience in, so your actual work experience should be plenty of evidence for your worthiness for the position and you shouldn't need any outside hobby code to show that you're qualified.


I mean, I kinda understand it. The proposal of the platform was to promote overseas hiring. The companies hiring would help with visa and relocation costs, so I thought that it was fair for them to bet they hiring money on a promising candidate. With just the information on my resume I don't think I would be able to prove that I could write clean maintainable code. All projects that I had on my resume at the time I couldn't share, because they were real products from real companies.


I feel like we're around a "golden age" of HN and dread the day when it all starts going downhill.


We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22051358. Just so as not to detract attention from the OP.


To be fair, I remember people posting this same thing in 2008... 2010... 2014... etc. So far it HN seems to be able to buck the trend, likely due to its simplicity, the great moderation team, and the community. It's not without fault but it's better than most.


I think three things keep HN great.

One is the moderation team. I don’t always agree with their decisions, but they are definitely on top of things and do what they think is best for the content.

Two is the comment sort algorithm. It’s far superior to Reddit, which I think is far superior to any other platform. On HN, if you make a comment on a post that’s a few hours old, your comment will still be seen. It will be at the top for at least a few minutes. On reddit it’ll just be buried.

And third, the lack of profit motive. Every decision they make is in the name of improved content. They have no concern for driving traffic.


All it takes is an influx of aggressive users. "community feel" is a delicate thing.


Not to be rude, but your account is just from last year? If you're like me you've been lurking for longer than the account shows, but if not, HN has been pretty solid. I think it's gone -slightly- downhill, but that could just be my mind changing with age. The moderation here seems really fair, and the community as a whole is still really solid. I wouldn't worry about it.


best site for tech enthusiastic and programmers


wow! recursive auto-shill! YC paid good money to make HN valuable so now let's strip-mine!


Nah, that's unfair. It's great for both YC and HN that the HN community gets a reflection of itself like this. I suggested to Victor that he make this post. He originally emailed us to say thanks, but I told him it was all of HN he should thank, and that the community might appreciate his story.

It happens pretty often that people tell us interesting things by email. I usually urge them to post it to HN so that more than just we can enjoy it.


That's not what my experience tells me.

There is a lot of negative energy, hidden under that thing we call downvotes

They should be punishing low value content or outright trolling, but it's instead a measure of how much the comment matches the general bay are technocrat sentiment

I followed a conversation the other day about the increase of alcohol related diseases and addictions in US and one of the most voted comments was about getting sober thanks to AA

There's value in getting sober, but it's not a solution to the problem presented, which is mostly a social problem, that the private health care in US won't solve no matter how much money you pour at it

And yet those criticising the US social system and the absence of a public welfare were downvoted.

So in the end nobody learns from their mistakes and those willing to collaborate bringing a different POV are discouraged to do so again.

It doesn't sound positive to me.


We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22051358.

By the way, only about 10% of the HN community is in the Bay Area and that segment is by no means all "technocrat". People's impressions of the community's politics are mostly the afterimage of what they saw that they disliked, because those are the things we tend to notice and that make the strongest impact. People who dislike the opposite things have the opposite afterimage. In reality, the community is divided and produces lots of examples either way.


> By the way, only about 10% of the HN community is in the Bay Area and that segment is by no means all "technocrat"

The original comment said "a measure of how much the comment matches the general bay are technocrat sentiment", it doesn't say that everyone on HN is from bay area or a technocrat.

From my understanding it means that if people believe "it's what people in Bay Are would think" it gets more traction.

There's a trend towards conformity that is helped by the style of moderation.

Not saying is bad, just saying that there's a consistent pattern.

Which is exactly what happened.


I'd say the opposite is more prevalent. People assume that HN is dominated by Bay Area thinking—which is to say, whatever caricature they regard as Bay Area thinking, since there's no single such thing—and then post what they imagine to be their minority/contrarian view against it. Usually they do so angrily or sarcastically, since people get defensive when they think they're going against a dominant view.

It's been many years since HN comments have been Bay Area-centric, if they ever were. HN now has far more users who identify against it than with it, at least among commenters. That's why I tell people that only 10% of the community is based there; it usually comes as a surprise.


> which is to say, whatever caricature they regard as Bay Area thinking, since there's no single such thing

Yes.

And it is exactly what I said

> if people _believe_ "it's what people in Bay Are would think"

That kind of "tension towards conformity" is still very present, at least it seems to me, even though they are conforming to an idealized and/or caricatural way of life.

And my understanding of the original comment is that it was mocking the "bay area billionaire wannabes".

> Usually they do so angrily or sarcastically, since people get defensive when they think they're going against a dominant view.

This wasn't the case though.

My point is that my last comment costed me some downvotes and a minus on the karma, but it wasn't angry or sarcastic or against a dominant view, it was only an analysis on someone else's comment.

No big deal, probably someone disagreed with it and downvoted the comment, but that's not what a downvote should be used for - AFAIK.


>Only about 10%...

That seems like a pretty big number to this user who lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.


It's all relative. I've met many people who assumed that HN was 90% or more in the Bay Area, and that they—being located elsewhere—were part of a tiny outlier minority. That kind of misperception skews one's view, and I think tends to make people more defensive. They feel like they're up against some supermajority that actually doesn't exist.


Upvoted because you provide a detailed and calm post (which ironically is being downvoted!).

The internet does do a lot of good, but I don't think that it has increased negativity.

Instead, it's made it easier to communicate and see negativity.

As in, previously people would communicate within actual, physical social circles and often these would be (or inevitably become) an echo chamber for people with similar opinions.

But now, it's so easy to _communicate_ negative things due to pseudonyms and anonymity, plus it's easier to _see_ negativity because hundreds of different opinions are available in each thread - not just one or two opinions in the pre-internet, echo-chamber days.


This is not reddit or livejournal.


It's true that meta posts on forums are like crack and it's important not to overdo them, but I had a feeling this story might resonate with the community particularly well, and suggested to Victor that he post it. So if you want to blame someone it'll have to be me. More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22053084.

This thread exceeded expectations, and reminds me of a thought I've often had: could we find some way to help HN users meet and support each other in the real world, to make more real connections? Hiring is an important special case of that, but not the whole story. It's also cool when people find friends, kindred spirits, collaborators, investors, and so on. Lots of this goes on and always has, but I wonder if we could catalyze more of it, without getting too formal or nannyistic. I think a lot of creative potential could be activated if more HN users connected with each other. Also, more interesting feedback loops happen when the loop passes between online and offline (as in the OP's case), so it would make HN better too.


HN doesn’t really create barriers to taking it offline, does it? If one wants to be contacted, one can leave info in their profile. I was emailed this way more than once!

Meanwhile, if IRL meetings become a big part of the community, could this create fragmented/exclusive feeling in threads, especially considering there are folks who have reasons to participate anonymously or are unable to attend for other reasons?

I somehow feel like connections made here may be limited, but in some ways more pure and to the point, lacking the distracting visuals and inconveniences of flesh so to speak.


I do worry about the possible downside of any new mechanism like that.




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