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.

"Engineer" shows up over 500 times in the March thread.

"Architect" shows up 23 times.

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?

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[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)

[Lorenz-Kraft]

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

[scottndecker → Lorenz-Kraft]

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

[anewguy9000]

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

[scottndecker → anewguy9000]

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.