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Tell HN: The ratio of wants-to-be-hired to is-hiring is at a record high 0.94
363 points by jstx1 on April 4, 2023 | hide | past | favorite | 185 comments
Counting the comments in the who wants to be hired thread and dividing by the number of comments in who is hiring = 0.94.

A year ago it was 0.23. Here's a plot with the data from the past couple of years - https://pasteboard.co/tjZd0PgTI8GK.png

(posting this about a day after the April thread opened)




There’s an odd dynamic in the market right now. In addition to layoffs, people who are subject to RTO are trying to find jobs at remote employers, so there’s an abnormally high number of already-employed folks on the job hunt right now. Not to mention all the juniors having trouble finding work at the moment.

Meanwhile remote employers are seeing less employee turnover, so don’t need to do much hiring, especially since many grew headcount considerably in 2021/2022. Which means many of those people looking for remote jobs aren’t finding a lot of success. (We’re remote and hiring for backfills only right now, not that there are many of those - and I suspect a lot of other companies are in the same spot.)

Remote roles are likely over-represented on HN, so if there are a lot of candidates chasing those roles, you’d expect a lot of growth in “who wants to be hired” posts.

I’d expect this dynamic to shift in the back half of the year. People are finding out about promotions and comp changes around this time and many will be disappointed. This will likely cause a lot of people sitting tight at remote companies to get back on the market. Some will find roles elsewhere, creating more backfills and more hiring.

Not to mention that there’s a glut of late-stage companies seeking to IPO when the IPO market reopens, likely later this year or early next. When companies IPO they usually hire a lot beforehand to tighten up processes, then do even more hiring a few months later as existing employees get their exits and decide to move on or take a break.

So the medium/long term outlook is still positive, at least.


I'm afraid it's not the only explanation (economy), but it's still a very good reason. Looking at myself, I've been working remotely for the last 7 years and there is just no way back, even if another company would pay me 2x or 3x more. Remote working is a massive perk and thanks (due) to Covid, a lot of people became aware of this.


Yes. Additionally I'm not moving across the country to live in a strange and expensive city to work on your CRUD app.

There is no way back, even at 2X or 3x more.


I agree with trivializing the prospect, but for me personally it's less about the nature of the work or the city, but the ludicrous instability that a company would hope you don't think about. It's fine if where you're coming from is a desolate market and you're wanting to seriously improve either your income or location for personal reasons, that's a sensible risk. But doing it for a more lateral move, or for marginal gains, I'd be asking myself how committed this employer is to having me; the answer is usually zero. So I go and get my expensive apartment in a scarce market and start working away on whatever inane problem company x is paying me for, and 2 months in it turns out, "oops, we overhired and have to refocus our energy on digitizing, solutioning, and don't forget problemization and alignment".

One case where this would be worthwhile though would be one where you wanted to move there anyway, and the company is arbitrary


I'm not sure I could go back to in-office work, but also moving cross country isn't even feasible for me at this stage in my life, even if I wanted to.


The salary I get now (working remotely) allows me to work for 3 months and relax for 9, should I desire to do so. I guess if someone offered me 9X more for working in the office, I would agree - but I'd quit after 3 months to enjoy my freedom for the next 3 years. (Or, what is more probable, take a less paid but remote job as I enjoy doing what I do and want to stay competitive in the market.)

Less than that - sorry, I'm not interested.


Amazing. Are you in a low col area?


I've been working in tech for several years so my salary is quite decent. My main cost is rent, around €800. I cook myself most of the time. My second half is working full time which gives us another layer of security.

Until recently, the other major cost was the education of my kids, but fortunately that expense is now gone.


It also seems like the market has strongly skewed to the senior side of things (8+ yrs exp).


Our entry level guy is GPT-4.


Yeah it's like having a junior you can hand small bits of code off too.


Yep, I'm currently on the market and I'm seeing a lot of requests for impossibly high years of experience if you're a junior.


From my perspective few of the projects asking for this level of experience require it. I have no idea why people aren't recruiting curious randos off the street at $60k a pop, but I'd imagine that onboarding looks complicated if you can't tell the difference between infrastructure jank and your actual job.


thats why i am seeing. And it was mostly young people that YOLO relocated to hawaii and breckenridge that are now looking for remote jobs so its double whammy for them


I still see plenty of remote jobs to apply for on LinkedIn, but I have noticed that there are a lot more applicants now. A few months back it would often be single digit numbers of applicants. Now it will often be well into the double digits of applicants.


Those numbers mean nothing. They are borderline rand() sometimes, in most cases when there's an external application form it will count you as an applicant right after clicking. Whether you actually applied doesn't matter.


Here is a chart going back to 2014: https://slight.run/graphs/colman/ratio_of_seekers_to_hirers_...

Not quite as drastic as yours, but still not ideal.

The underlying query and data source: https://slight.run/apps/colman/job_seekers_vs_job_hiring_hac...

I'm restricting to top-level comments here, because those seem like a better proxy than all comments (excluding some discussion on a given post for example).


If anybody is interested, maybe this should be considered along with the core inflation rates - which is high in the US (peaked at 7% within the last 12 months and currently at 5.5%) and possibly still rising in the EU (12-month peak [now] at 5.7%).

If the central banks are going to stick to their declared purpose of keeping this around 2% we're still in for further rate hikes, I would imagine.

* https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/core-inflation-ra...

* https://tradingeconomics.com/euro-area/core-inflation-rate

I know it's not within the desired behaviour on HN to simply write "thank you!", and I hope I did provide a bit more than just that. That being said: Thank you! Also to ed_balls and madcaptenor for collecting data in the other thread.


Hopefully they are not quite that stupid. Inflation is a lagging indicator, so expect it to start dropping fairly quickly as the -12 months price delta normalises, against the M2 injection 2 years ago.

M2 continues to drop (this is a bad thing for stability, but will feed into prices dropping over time):

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL


To answer what you were probably going to look for in the link: peak was March 2020 (1.19), when Covid got real, bottom was April 2018 (0.067), don't know any particular significance of that month.


April 2018 sounds about right for the tech bubble peak - iirc softbank was still in full swing, everyone was "blitzscaling", it was peak exuberance. Not that the music stopped right after that, but even into 2019 things were starting to decline and the VC industry was getting slightly more conservative.


FED started raising interest rates in 2017[1]. The market didn't really start reacting until 2018, and by 2019 the FED got cold feet and was lowering rates again.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFEDTARU


Is cold-feet a euphemism for "harassed by an orange toad"?


Looks like your chart only goes up to 2022 October? Whereas OP's goes up to today.


It includes the Nov 1 post, you can see the data here: https://slight.run/apps/colman/job_seekers_vs_job_hiring_hac... (Vega reads 2022-11-01 into your local timezone, hence why you're possibly seeing 2022-10-31).

They claim they update it daily (https://console.cloud.google.com/marketplace/details/y-combi...) but they only update it every few months it would appear.

Of course you can manually get this data from the HN API and create a query built on https://slight.run/apps/colman/job_seekers_vs_job_hiring_hac... by adding the extra few rows manually (but unlike OP, I recommend you exclude non-top level comments).


Ok so either way though, it's not really comparable to OP because it doesn't include 2023 data (i.e. all of the current recession).


If instead I had supplied a time series for eight years ending just prior to all of OP's data, you wouldn't discuss "comparing" the charts (I assume!), so it's a little unclear what the concern is with comparison.

If you just need the last few data points, of course you can either just look at OP's chart, or if you don't trust that data, then quickly get the data yourself. Again you can even create an account on slight.run and recreate the full graph if you prefer.

We are also not currently in a recession. If instead you're referring to market conditions that affected tech heavily, that was in place by Q3 2022 (e.g. https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/20/remembering-the-startups-w...), and this also lines up more closely with how the Fed has been raising rates (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFEDTARU).


I'd like to see data go all the way back to 2020, which was when some people said had the worst job market, because of the global lockdowns. But thanks for the data anyway.

It does amuse me that we're still at more people hiring than looking for jobs. It's a stark contrast to other industries, where the power is normally in the hands of employers.

Another thing to consider is that we've had layoffs recently, i.e. people without jobs encouraged to find new jobs. In the past, wants-to-be-hired may be a little low because usually people don't want to be seen looking for a job while employed.


> It does amuse me that we're still at more people hiring than looking for jobs

I would definitely not read that from the data. I don’t know what percentage of current seekers post in the wants-to-be-hired thread, but as a potentially-outlying anecdote, I didn’t until I had already been looking for three months.

I would hypothesize that there’s a psychological barrier to posting in WWTBH, even if you’ve been laid off and have no current employer you wouldn’t want seeing it – there’s a certain vulnerability in putting yourself out there versus privately applying to jobs. For me, it took a certain level of desperation with my search to make the jump from browsing the hiring thread to finally posting in the other thread this month.


That's basically my outlook, I wouldn't post in the WWTBH thread. In addition to the reasons you listed, I'd also add that while my identity certainly isn't hidden and I'm not out here being controversial, my HN posts are decidedly more of the "my thoughts are my own" variety and not something I'd link a hiring manager to otherwise.


This is my first month looking. I thought about posting yesterday, but I am very shy about putting my name on the internet. That insecurity won the day. I hope you get good results from your post.


I've definitely resisted posting in the past. The primary reason was I simply didn't want to post while I had a job. The second is that you can't delete old HN comments, and I don't feel like having an "I need a job" comment on my permanent record. I'm not opposed to posting, but I haven't felt the desire to post.


You can actually delete the WWTBH comments several weeks later, I believe. I've done it before though I'm not 100% sure.

But you're only deleting them on HN. Both the major job threads are heavily scraped and your profile goes all over the internet.


FYI, you can get old posts deleted by contacting the moderators via email.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23623557


I’ve always been able to delete my comments on that post without having to email anybody


Can confirm. My WWTBH comment from yesterday shows me a delete link, as well as a non-expiring edit link.


The delete button is time-limited. I think it's about 24~36 hours. After that, you can't delete without emailing the mods.


For regular threads it's two hours but on who wants to be hired threads you can delete your comment whenever you want, no need to contact a moderator.


I just deleted my comment on the last thread from a month ago with the button.


Good to know, thanks.


Also, I believe that, like official job postings, a lot of "Who's Hiring" posts are just kinda-serious fishing expeditions. A lot of companies say they're hiring but in reality it's because they always have their bait in the water, waiting for some outlier good deal on a top talent, but otherwise not really hiring.

EDIT: The same is probably true for job seekers, too, now that I think about it. As another commenter noted, a lot of people are being frog-marched back to physical offices at gunpoint, and are probably low-key fishing for a sweet remote-only gig.


Did you get anything from your "who wants to be hired" post? It's not been clear to me that it's a useful thing to do.


Not so far. It would be interesting to attempt to quantify how much the thread does or doesn't help job seekers.


I posted last month and didn't hear anything from it. I'm hoping this month is more fruitful.


I just got a lot of spam email until I asked the mods to delete my post and the spam vanished


I have received a referral bonus that traced directly back to a "who is hiring" post. Haven't posted on "who wants to be hired" though.


I wouldn't call it a psychological barrier so much as a game-theoretical one. If an employer knows that an employee is looking for jobs, their continued employment would be at risk, they could be silently passed over for promotion, etc. I suspect that most people posting in WWTBH are currently unemployed.


I think a lot of people don't post on who wants to be hired and instead just browse who's hiring.


I did both but had much better responses on WWTBH. A lot of the companies that approached were really good, paid well, respectful, etc. Funny enough, I had actually applied for one of those companies elsewhere and they didn't process the application until they realized I was on HN.


> they didn't process the application until they realized I was on HN

I have been on the other side of that. I hired guy I found on HN (one of the best guys I've ever worked with) and later discovered he had applied earlier through another source but I overlooked it (some sources for candidates can be an absolute fire hose).


Thanks for sharing this, I always figured the contacts in WWTBH would be mostly low quality (similar to recruiter spam) so never bothered before. But now that I actually think about it some of the best jobs I've ever had were companies that approached me.


Similar, last time I was looking (2020) I posted in both and had good responses from quality companies. Basically any HN thread has yielded vastly better opportunities than anywhere else (direct apply, linkedin, etc).


Thats also balanced by the fact that many postings are for multiple positions (though I would probably still tip it towards more job seekers)


It had the worst job market -- if you weren't able to work from home. Most of the world ain't in STEM.

Many of us, myself included, already did that. I had to wear a mask to do my "morning commute" to get coffee, but otherwise my 9-5 was mostly the same.


Most of STEM isn't at home, either.


>people don't want to be seen looking for a job while employed

IMO this is the biggest factor causing the slowdown in tech hiring. Right now people just want to stay put wherever they are. In the past when someone jumps to another company, it opens a headcount where they were, which gets filled with someone who also jumped another company, which caused a headcount to be created there, ad infinitum causing a constant cacophony of job postings, like a "velocity" of jobs akin to velocity of money.

The combination of slack in the system (unemployed people being hired), low attrition, and some backfills not being done creates a giant dampener on the velocity.


1/2 the companies posting jobs are not really hiring. There may be positions available if someone wows them or if they can find talent for cheap.

The languages in demand change is probably more interesting. Less react positions, rails holding strong, python over taking, first time no php jobs offered.


I suspect this is the case as well. I've been applying for senior software engineer positions since mid January and I have way more auto-declines the next day after applying than I do initial phone calls with the company recruiter. I have a decent mix of experience and results in Python, C++ embedded, NodeJS, NoSQL dbs and CI/CD and I typically match 80% of the requirements+bonus requirements. One company even said last week that they liked my background because of the scope of work/results compared to faang resumes (I only have 2nd tier tech company experience).


Also consider that HN isn’t exactly indicative of any typical job market. This is a pretty niche forum even in the context of software and tech. It’s still interesting, and there’s insight to be gained. (For example, I expect a lot the the high-powered developers who were affected by recent layoffs in big tech are over-represented here.)


To post in the WWTBH thread, you need to share your contact info, and probably some information about yourself, so it can't be an anon account.

Which means, if you're employed and looking elsewhere, you have to be comfortable with your employer potentially discovering your eye is wandering. Which I for one, definitely wouldn't want to do right now.

So I imagine the WWTBH posts are really just the tip of the iceberg (there may be more than one employed person looking for every unemployed one that feels comfortable posting there)

Compared to the Who is Hiring posts which companies have no reason to be concerned about posting (well, maybe if they're simultaneously laying off and pretending that they need to reduce headcount when it's really about reducing the average wage)


A few months into the pandemic was one of the best job markets for tech as more people were online than ever. A lot of my coworkers jumped to different companies or startups with huge salary bumps.


I benefited from that too, but The Great Resignation happened in 2021 I believe. Which was followed by layoffs from the overhiring, lol

But there was some data on HN about how the start of the pandemic was terrible, worse than last year, at least. And there were some sales graphs that reflected this too.


> It does amuse me that we're still at more people hiring than looking for jobs. It's a stark contrast to other industries, where the power is normally in the hands of employers.

I am sure that there is a huge margin of error. I have been looking a job for 5 months. Granted, I have not used Who's hiring threads religiously and I am sure that there are positions that I applied where something with better qualifications was chosen.


I've compiles a list from 2015 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1350A5KGgmGI3Ed-tC7MP...


> It does amuse me that we're still at more people hiring than looking for jobs. It's a stark contrast to other industries, where the power is normally in the hands of employers.

Is it? Unemployment is still incredibly low and labour shortages continue to be reported.


Incredibly low unemployment doesn't necessarily mean all good news for all workers. You can cut or reduce unemployment benefits, and with the massive increase in CoL, energy and food in the last couple of years, people will desperate enough to accept any job or even several jobs in parallel, no matter how bad they are, and boom, you have almost no unemployment.

Sure, there isn't a shortage of jobs, but they also don't pay terribly great either considering the CoL increases.

So, IMHO, some unemployment is good. It means people have options and are not desperate enough to quickly jump to places with bad pay or poor working conditions, as those will always exit, even when the economy is doing good.


> It does amuse me that we're still at more people hiring than looking for jobs. It's a stark contrast to other industries, where the power is normally in the hands of employers.

In my area, many businesses outside of the tech sector is actively hiring and can't find enough people. I think Covid triggered a demographic shift with many Boomers retiring (or dying) and that gap has not been filled.


This is an interesting contrast with another comment that said it should be possible to find another tech job if (among other factors) the candidate was not too old.


Given that Boomers are around 80, I suspect most of them were already retired.


1946-1964 (the US Census definition of boomers) is "around 80" at the high end.

My dad's a boomer, he's still working.


Yeah, I don't really subscribe to this seemingly ever-expanding definition of "Baby Boomers." It was supposed to be babies born in the euphoria right after WWII, but now extends for 20 years.

The ever-expanding "millennials" label is even more absurd. It originally meant people graduating college around 2000: a very specific group. Now, again, it has blown up to include decades of people.

After Boomers, all the labels are just idiotic. Let's all just refer to age groups using [gasp] numbers.


> It originally meant people graduating college around 2000:

This is not how generational cohorts work. AFAIK, what counts as a generation can refer to people born over from 10, and up to 33 year period depending on who you ask.

"Millennial" is not precise term, it simply refers to people younger than Gen X and older than Gen Z.


Eh, I remember when this was coined, and it was specifically about people graduating college at the millennium. Granted, I thought then (and still think) this was a weird benchmark to use. But the whole thing is dumb.


You may be misremembering, or perhaps you meant graduating high school? People who graduatedcollege in 2000 are not considered to be millennials as they were been born in 1978 or 1979.


Hmm, I'm pretty sure it was college, because the topic of conversation at the time was the job market facing these new graduates and how they were the first cohort that could not necessarily expect to "do better" than their parents.


Boomer generation is born 1946 - 1964 so most are probably around 70ish, with many younger and older.


>It does amuse me that we're still at more people hiring than looking for jobs. It's a stark contrast to other industries, where the power is normally in the hands of employers.

No 0.94 is a sample that comes with a huge margin or error.

It very well could be that the actual ratio is that there are more programmers then jobs.


Jobs and salaries are also not interchangeable. One can believe (rightly or wrongly) that many developers who have mainstream skills/experience, a good resume & network, aren't too old, etc. can land a new job in a reasonable length of time--while acknowledging that it may be at a total compensation dip if they were with a high-paying company.


Very interesting chart, thanks! One comment, is that it is probably more a measure of "which way is the balance of power tilting" than it is "what is the actual ratio". Many employers who could not find anyone would post the job everywhere they could think of, while people looking just read the "who is hiring" posts and then applied to the employer rather than post in the "who wants to be hired". Now the shoe is on the other foot, but that doesn't mean the ratio has shifted all that much in reality. It is a definite sign as to which side has the surplus, however.


Can a once trendy tech company like Birds scooter (stock at 22 cents down -98%) really be considered to have the upper hand?

I think if you're a FAANG employer that is considered "safe" definitely yes, but there's a pile of zombie companies that have been wrecked by end of ZIRP and have a hard time understanding how they retain or hire anyone.


ZIRP?


Zero Interest Rate Policy


As an aside, I'm not currently looking for a job (knock on wood) but people close to me are and... the interview process seems harder than ever.

Now you get recorded, told you cannot alt-tab, take home assignments are very strict for companies that aren't even close to a FAANG (I mean, if you're applying to Google it comes with the territory, but why is your random startup so strict?), you are automatically graded on your command of English, etc.

There are still the garbage job offers where they'll hire anyone with a pulse, but unless your situation is dire you don't want those.

It all feels vaguely dystopic and depressing. The only consolation is that only now we realize what it felt for people outside our industry. We had it easy!


I’m approaching 30 years in software development, and I don’t remember having a “technical” interview until this week…. in which I had two.

Both were with large, well-known companies. But the nature and outcome of the two were quite different. In one, the interviewer just dumped some code on the screen that had been clumsily obfuscated, and its intent and strategy rendered indecipherable.

In the second, I was asked to provide code that did something, and then add an additional feature to it on demand. This is much more in line with what I expected, and to me more valid. And the whole interview was far more satisfying and invigorating.

The first interview was so disappointingly “douchey Leetcode” that I dreaded all that would follow. It created conflicting feelings of, “I’m kind of over this type of work anyway; this may be a beneficial tipping point” vs. “I don’t want to wuss out and run away from uncomfortable experiences.”

Now that I’ve had two opposing experiences in technical interviews, I feel more confident in judging their validity and my role in their outcomes… and calling out ones that are disrespectful.


Agreed that the second seems more reasonable!

It matters a lot if the interviewer is not quizzing you on trivia or waiting for you to trip and fall.

> I feel more confident in judging their validity and my role in their outcomes… and calling out ones that are disrespectful.

I wish we could all do that! One overlooked aspect of this humiliating process is that it saps your confidence. I've seen it happen. After a bunch of failed interviews, the person starts feeling it's their fault and that they cannot possibly be good, and this informs their attitude for the next challenge, which they fail, and so on.


> One overlooked aspect of this humiliating process is that it saps your confidence.

This has been me on occasion during the last couple months of searching. I've been worried that my work history was too disjointed to tell a coherent story. Or that I'm not actually as skilled as I thought. Or that some skills have atrophied. Or they just aren't in demand anymore.

I brought it up to a career coach (part of my severance package) and she seemed to think I was overqualified for a couple of them. I'm not sure that's true, and suspect she doesn't grok tech enough to make that assessment. But even if she's right, hell, something straightforward where I'm "overqualified" sounds kind of nice.


Exactly. And then you wonder if you're just making excuses and trying to blame the test.

But in the end you have to consider your past work, things you've built, and the value you've added to things. And, most of all, positive feedback you've received from colleagues or customers. I reflect on the fact that my colleagues have worked in my code, built entire new features of their own on top of it, and then vouched for me in job referrals that have their name on them. That's the most valuable confidence pill in your arsenal.


The interview is a two-way interview. You can also identify crappy companies you don't want to work for by crappy interview processes.


Haven't done any interviews but did talk to a recruiter who was asking upfront if I was okay with a 6 day work week. Just a single data point, but I would assume employers are also trying to leverage the situation to get more out of their employees.


Which professions hire like this? I can’t think of any.


Pretty much none that I'm aware of.

My brother is an actual engineer. They get hired on past relevant experience and simple interview. Of course he also needs the relevant credentials and professional membership so there is that... you can't keep those if you mess up and you won't get recommendations if you are an ahole.

A lot of my friends are doctors. If you are qualified and want the position it's yours. Demand > supply very much so.

Hospitality is as cut-throat as always, everyone is welcome to try - it's up to you to survive. Though I guess the first few trial shifts are the most similar to programming in that way but it's still very much "can you do the job" not "can you remember this esoteric thing you might have done once in college but otherwise not touched in a decade".

So yeah. Programming stands alone in this sort of gauntlet hiring system in my experience. Other fields are happy to take past experience and recommendations as they are instead of devising some sort of "test".

I would say outside of programming there is a bit more of the personality test sort of things though - especially big corporates, you could probably screw one up badly enough for HR to block you.


> A lot of my friends are doctors. If you are qualified and want the position it's yours. Demand > supply very much so.

Isn’t supply artificial constrained for doctors?


Yeah genuinely that reeks of someone who has never worked outside of tech. Job hiring sucks in a lot of fields but I would say the trades as a whole have this completely figured out and the process is nowhere near as obtuse as in tech.


Oh, I meant that we had it easy, not that the hiring process for other jobs looks similar.


Sorry, I worded it badly: I didn't mean other professions hire like this, only that we in software development lived in a microclimate where finding a decent job was easy. Now it's getting harder, I guess.


So too thorough is dystopic and depressing, not thorough enough is a garbage offer.


Yes, but if you are interpreting my comment in the best possible light it makes sense, right?

- On one extreme, you have employers who are abusive during interviews. They record you, treat you like a cheater, forbid you from alt-tabbing or anything that you would normally do while on the actual job, ask for trivia knowledge you'd normally google, and when reviewing take home challenges they are very strict. I assume this is because they have droves of candidates and can mistreat candidates till they find the perfect one?

- On the other extreme, you have garbage consultancy/software factory work. Low quality, outdated tech, low pay, and they'll hire anybody who can demonstrate minimal expertise since they aren't interested in quality work but in selling billable hours.

I expect what reasonable people want is a decent job which pays well, is not mind-numbingly boring and that challenges you, but also they don't want to be subjected to the humiliation of abusive interview processes that quiz on trivia and treat them like cheaters?

I'm seeing more and more of the first kind of process, sadly.


> ...forbid you from alt-tabbing or anything that you would normally do while on the actual job, ask for trivia knowledge you'd normally google...

I had to fill out a literal IQ test the other day. 15 minutes, for 50 questions, and a note that you probably won't finish them, and not to use calculator. I'm out of practice for arithmetic tricks _because I've been out of school for 20+ years_. What exactly is that supposed to test, especially under such time pressure? This was followed by a personality test (no time limit).

This is all before they even decide whether they even want to interview me.

> - On the other extreme, you have garbage consultancy/software factory work. Low quality, outdated tech, low pay, and they'll hire anybody who can demonstrate minimal expertise since they aren't interested in quality work but in selling billable hours.

I just had to pass on one of these. Not quite desperate enough to take it just yet. Time tracking software was already iffy. Having to interview again for each project was iffy. Basically, glorified contract work, but less stability. Oh, and they wanted me to screen record my tech assessment assignment.

What cinched it for me, though, was the Glassdoor reviews: they boast about their star rating on Glassdoor, but the CEO would passive-aggressively rip into negative reviews, including one that told a former employee they were wrong for having a bad experience.


That seems like a good signal to track.

Btw does anyone ever get hired from the who wants to be hired thread?


I’ve been contacted through who’s hiring a lot, though ultimately I was hired at a company where I knew the team well and was aligned with their goals/methodology/comp/etc.

I have the impression that who’s hiring is an excellent place to put yourself out there, though. I had a lot of exciting leads (a few of which I still follow because I liked the people I interviewed with and what they were building).


Yes. I think of 5 people I contacted over 3 years, one got hired. (and it was a very successful hire)


I’ll balance it out because you’re getting selection bias with how you asked this question.

I never got contacted. For me, I assume it’s because every employer in SV is overloaded with candidates and doesn’t need to seek them out on HN. (I work in the bay)


I did. My first "real" job (as in not an internship). Two and a half years and counting.

Edit, found it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24038518#24042409


I got hired from that thread, for what it's worth. Love my job.


Adding one more voice to the chorus: I got my current job from posting in the who wants to be hired thread.

(It was about 3.5 years ago in my case, but presumably it still works today.)


I was contacted by several people (including 2 YCombinator startups) in the past. In the end we didn't close with any of them, but they were good "leads". And for one of them I made a friend/acquintance in the other side of the world (I'm in Mexico, he is in Australia) which I think is cool :).


The few times I posted, my email got scraped and I received some offers which were all not job offers..


This was my experience as well. Not a single real inquiry, just spam. I asked the mods to delete my posts on those threads and the spam email vanished


hiring posts can be edited without timelimit. also i would put the email in the profile, then you can removed it from there any time easily. i also 'obscure the address as name at domain. never got spam despite posting many times.


But you were awash in “hrony MILFs,” Vi@gra, and mortg@ges, right?


> That seems like a good signal to track.

It doesn't take into account who currently has a job.


Anec-data but I found this site via a friend who frequented here, and he had previously gotten a job with a start-up via one of those posts.

He rapidly left -- maybe 6-9 months? -- but got a job nonetheless.


I got my current job via a post on Who's Hiring. The company is wonderful, and it turns out the past 3-4 newest engineers were also hired this way!


It would also be interesting to know the reverse question: anyone ever got a job from who's hiring thread?


Yes, but it was 2019 and I think the thread I posted in maxed out around 100 total comments.


I've received several responses from Who Wants Hired posts.


+1 for current job being from that thread


I did.


I did.


The true ratio of would-be-hired to is-hired on HN is lower than 0.94. Many (most?) posts in the who's hiring thread mention multiple positions, e.g. the word "engineers", plural, occurs 91 times on the first page.


Sure but the same consideration applies to previous months too and the point of the post was about the trend (being so much higher than usual), not about the actual value of the ratio (which on its own seems irrelevant and hard to interpret).


Much like looking at an exchange rate between two currencies, what matters isn't the exact ratio at any one moment but how that ratio changes over time.


I think you’d have to go further back to have better context, April 2021 was pretty frothy.

But yes, the job market has cooled dramatically.


in 2019 it was about 0.32

First who wants to be hired https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7685170

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1350A5KGgmGI3Ed-tC7MP...


This JavaScript seems to work. You can run it from the browser console or from node.js.

  (async function () {
      // see https://hn.algolia.com/api
      console.clear();
      const posts = {};
      var page = 0;
      var oldDate;
      while (true) {
          console.log('fetching page', page);
          const r = await fetch(`https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search_by_date?tags=story,author_whoishiring&page=${page++}`);
          const res = await r.json();
          if (res.message) {
              console.log(res.message);
          } else {
              for (const h of res.hits) {
                  var match;
                  if (match = h.title.match(/Who wants to be hired\? \((.*)\)/i)) {
                      var date = match[1];
                      if (date != oldDate) {posts[date] = {}; oldDate = date;}
                      posts[date].wants = h.num_comments;
                      if (posts[date].hiring) posts[date].ratio = posts[date].wants / posts[date].hiring;
                  } else if (match = h.title.match(/Who is hiring\? \((.*)\)/i)) {
                      date = match[1];
                      if (date != oldDate) {posts[date] = {}; oldDate = date;}
                      posts[date].hiring = h.num_comments;
                      if (posts[date].wants) posts[date].ratio = posts[date].wants / posts[date].hiring;
                  }
              }
          }
          if (page == res.nbPages) break;
      }
      console.table(posts);
  })();


seems like it wouldn't be too hard, just tedious, to compile all the data.


Fine, I'll start. These threads are easily found in Google.

January 2020: 244 wants to be hired / 697 hiring = 35%

February 2020: 227 / 677 = 34%

March 2020: 349 / 776 = 45%

April 2020: 521 / 601 = 87%

May 2020: 329 / 686 = 48%

June 2020: 305 / 659 = 46%

July 2020: 280 / 680 = 41%

August 2020: 410 / 828 = 50%

September 2020: 346 / 698 = 50%

October 2020: 295 / 810 = 36%

November 2020: 259 / 807 = 32%

December 2020: 274 / 766 = 36%

January 2021: 286 / 846 = 34%

February 2021: 232 / 1052 = 22%

March 2021: 227 / 964 = 24%


https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Date | Who is hiring? | Who wants to be hired | ratio

Jan 2015,334,98,0.29

Feb 2015,643,169,0.26

Mar 2015,680,177,0.26

Apr 2015,952,194,0.20

May 2015,891,199,0.22

Jun 2015,759,276,0.36

Jul 2015,1094,142,0.12

Aug 2015,974,176,0.18

Sep 2015,872,188,0.21

Oct 2015,1136,99,0.08

Nov 2015,896,99,0.11

Dec 2015,1000,95,0.09


Date | Who is hiring? | Who wants to be hired | ratio

Jan 2016,471,110,0.23

Feb 2016,781,127,0.15

Mar 2016,825,202,0.24

Apr 2016,719,280,0.38

May 2016,983,166,0.16

Jun 2016,1007,248,0.24

Jul 2016,898,209,0.23

Aug 2016,945,118,0.12

Sep 2016,911,162,0.17

Oct 2016,989,261,0.26

Nov 2016,1121,249,0.22

Dec 2016,840,120,0.14


Date | Who is hiring? | Who wants to be hired | ratio

Jan 2017,939,275,0.29

Feb 2017,1236,106,0.08

Mar 2017,1069,114,0.10

Apr 2017,956,163,0.17

May 2017,1096,236,0.21

Jun 2017,994,101,0.10

Jul 2017,982,105,0.10

Aug 2017,955,224,0.23

Sep 2017,957,113,0.11

Oct 2017,1136,126,0.11

Nov 2017,1199,145,0.12

Dec 2017,1000,69,0.06


Date | Who is hiring? | Who wants to be hired | ratio

Jan 2018,911,84,0.09

Feb 2018,1070,76,0.07

Mar 2018,1187,85,0.07

Apr 2018,1084,142,0.13

May 2018,1198,69,0.05

Jun 2018,911,90,0.09

Jul 2018,860,122,0.14

Aug 2018,1025,83,0.08

Sep 2018,922,73,0.07

Oct 2018,1110,113,0.10

Nov 2018,1057,162,0.15

Dec 2018,954,182,0.18


Added (blindly) the above data to a spreadsheet with a graph here[0].

If anyone wants to add the 2019 data in a comment, I'll update the sheet.

[0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bjPl3a0ciH6U9-OaLXGQ...


There's already a comment from ed_balls with the 2019 data.


added, but I see the bigquery script that's now the top comment makes it redundant.


Date | Who is hiring? | Who wants to be hired | ratio

Jan 2019,966,265,0.27

Feb 2019,847,197,0.23

Mar 2019,880,246,0.27

Apr 2019,881,324,0.36

May 2019,1020,286,0.28

Jun 2019,800,232,0.29

Jul 2019,907,479,0.52

Aug 2019,861,284,0.32

Sep 2019,724,180,0.24

Oct 2019,905,406,0.44

Nov 2019,760,270,0.35

Dec 2019,907,271,0.29


Is April 2020 due to Covid lockdowns?


There are quite a lot of people hiring which have multiple job postings though.

It doesn't invalidate that it is the highest but it doesn't mean that it's almost 1:1.

It also doesn't mean that those people are out of a job. My company is mandating RTO 3 days a week, that's a good reason to look for a new position, while still being employed.


I think it might invalidate it. At the very least it points out that this is really measuring the ratio of comments, not jobs and candidates.


That's what the post says.

> Counting the comments in the who wants to be hired thread and dividing by the number of comments in who is hiring.


Yep, saw that.


I think it doesn't invalidate it because this situation of having multiple job postings for a single comment is not new and I imagine is relatively the same every month.


Yep. Large corporate (non-tech) job boards have hundreds of listings open for tech jobs


Can you name some corporate job boards?


I have to say the amount of spam emails I'm getting from recruiters has decreased a lot - also I took a new job a few months ago so maybe I'm just being filtered out for now.


Similar experience. Since October of 22' the number of recruitment mail I'm getting has decreased from several a week to a few a month.


I quit to run my own businesses in the pandemic and the amount of LinkedIn messages have increased. I'm not even in tech anymore. I'm not getting a huge amount by any means, but during 2023 exactly one per week on average. If anyone in EU willing to relocate to Stockholm with background in backend python / full stack, I guess I can connect you to at least 10 recruiters. Many of them explicitly ask for referrals.


I am getting about the same number of offers, but the pay has dropped substantially.

It's depressing, as if I would be looking for a job now, I'd rather look for non-tech job that is paying less than selling my knowledge so cheap.

Alternatively I'd go off the market completely and use any safety nets I've been paying massive amounts of tax for years.


Idk if it my experience is abnormal, but I'm still getting a shit ton of recruiter inmail. When I look into the salary ranges, they are about what I was seeing in 2021.

Maybe I'm just lucky. But for anyone else looking - chin-up, I think there are more opportunities out there still.


I'm getting alot less and the ones I am getting are real low balls in comp often.


I'm getting none these days.


I'm a CRO/CGO – a suit. My biggest struggle with HN wants-to-be-hired threads is that I desperately want to work with small and midsize startups who are serious about growth – but most of the JDs are for technical jobs.

Besides the usual job boards, is anyone aware of a good place to connect with founders who want a healthy hockey stick and holistic, healthy growth?


One avenue is to go through the VCs.

1. Choose industries you like (fintech, hospitality, consumer, whatever) 2. There are ~5 or so VCs in each industry that are absolutely leaders 3. Often these VCs have roles for "Platform" or "Portfolio services" 4. Message that person (I like twitter for this over LinkedIn and even over email), sell yourself. 5. Usually this can result in an email that is sent to the entire portfolio telling them you're looking.


I feel like an idiot for not thinking of this sooner. Thank you, great advice.


There are a number of job boards you could try including the ones run by DemandCurve and MKT1

https://jobs.demandcurve.com/

https://www.mkt1.co/marketers


Amazing, thanks a ton.


We’re hiring a Head of Growth, how can I get in touch or share more?


Thank you, that's very kind of you: 05-trivet.turner@icloud.com


I'd try the Acquired community, https://www.acquired.fm/


Thanks a ton, genuinely appreciate it.


For a few months now, whenever I looked at the "Who is hiring?" thread I couldn't help but think "truly, who is?"


Here is the data from 2015 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1350A5KGgmGI3Ed-tC7MP...

Ratio Who wants to be hired?/Who is hiring?

2015 0,20

2016 0,21

2017 0,14

2018 0,10

2019 0,32

2020 0,44

2021 0,26

2022 0,40

2023 0,83


Doesn't the whoshiring threads get filled out throughout the week. Shouldn't a better analysis be done this weekend?


This happened last month too, a data analysis of Who Is Hiring one or two days after it is published with a pessimistic conclusion.

Then, one week later, you realize the number of posts is back to an ok level (even improving)


I’ve always found the who’s hiring threads to be interesting. I don’t think all of those companies are actively hiring, but rather like to look like they are for some reason I don’t understand. My reasoning is two fold: I applied to some a couple years ago while job hunting and got worse response rate than most other sources. And some seem to be hiring for the same position for many months in a row. Though the second reason could be due to having extremely high set of requirements, but is usually a sign of a company to avoid in my experience.


a few reasons to list job ad when not seriously hiring:

1. collect resumes for when you are hiring

2. to look like a healthy, growing company even if you aren't

3. to find people who are desperate who you can underpay (smaller owner-run companies are more guilty of this)

4. to lure in people with a more interesting job ad than what the company really needs, then try to convince the candidate to fill a position for a less desirable or lower paying job


Many companies post jobs just for backlinks or to get more traffic to their site.


To placate overworked employees begging for relief.


I was curious and wanted to put that same data together -- so thanks.

That curve looks terrible and yet it confirms what I expected.


April was the lowest count for "Who is hiring" ever.


This post is not valid because most companies post jobs in Hackernews after several days. In addition, the is-hiring post opened on April 3, 2023--a little over 24 hours ago.

As other people have noticed, April appeared to be the lowest month in new jobs, but the true numbers won't be evident until the month is over. The ratio will likely fall lower with the reasonable assumption that a greater proportion of people seeking work post earlier in the month than of companies seeking employees.


I definitely regret not interviewing for jobs right away when I graduated a few months ago. At the moment I was thinking that in a few months the job market would still be hot.

A few months ago, recruiters were reaching out to me. I started applying last week and a single job posting would have more than 1k applicants which was not the case months ago.

On top of that, as a new grad, finding early career positions is difficult. Most of the opening are SR level.


Don’t be afraid to apply for jobs that are (slightly) outside your experience range. Often, these posts are “pie in the sky” wants, not hard requirements.


Good to know! Now I just got to keep grinding to be competitive against more experienced devs applying for the same position. Seems like its gonna be really difficult when theres gonna be at least a few hundreds of them applying for the same position.

Not sure what would motivate an employer to hire early career vs someone with 5 years of experience. Maybe paying new hires less than experienced ones?


How can I get hired when I am now tired of being competitive? The mass layoffs weren't even the tipping point for me. I've been applying to jobs non-stop since 2021 and interviewed at many places, and getting no offers. I faced the burnout sometime early last year.

Even in the more "chill" jobs you are expected to pass multiple rounds, be among the best among the candidates.

I just want to be average in the candidate standings, for an average dev job.


This is a real difficulty of being competitive in SWE. The general industry moves so fast that one must often hustle so much to remain competitive as to risk burnout. This is particularly bad for those with competing life priorities (e.g., families, health, etc.)

My suggestion would be to find some niche that allows to you not face that constant hustle. Look for the Venn diagram where you can add a lot of value, but the competition isn't as fierce. For example, if you are both good at coding and understand, say, physical systems like HVAC, you can focus on an industry like building automation that doesn't iterate as fast. Or maybe you really like aviation and can develop CFD models. Point being, it's much less competitive when your field requires two complementary, but distinct, knowledge bases.


You should be applying before you graduate, regardless of the status of the job market.


I was offered some jobs and a few internship. But a few months ago I was considering going to get my masters, mba, or law school. My parents algo got sick during that time and i had to take care of them. So it wasn't really a priority for me at that time to get a job vs other urgent matters.


I'd like to see a bit more data pre-covid, but this is a very insightful and concerning chart. Btw, to me it's not relevant whether we still see more comments into the is-hiring vs. wants-to-be-hired, this ratio doesn't mean much, there are other variables to consider. It's rather the uptrend which is meaningful.


It might even be >1 considering many postings in the Who's hiring have multiple comments (some 10+).


Who's hiring also has many positions in each listing though, if that is consistent across time it wouldn't seem to matter as much.


Still under parity, which is amazing


A sentiment analysis of threads like this vs. a year ago would also be interesting


matches the jobs available trend in NA: https://www.trueup.io/job-trend


Still below 1 though.


People are realizing that AI is changing everything and they don’t want to do BS work that can be automated.

They are getting inspired by the coming revolution.

Interesting times we are living in.




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