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Ask HN: Who's Hiring?
163 points by LukeG on Nov 24, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 208 comments
We're in a recession. Many great, talented people are out of work (including plenty of folks here at HN, I'm guessing). We know, though, that many companies are also still hiring - so let's put these companies and job seekers in touch.

Are you hiring? Does your company (or your friend's) have openings? Let HN know!!! Let's get some good people good jobs.

(We've got 900+ startup jobs at Startuply right now, and we'd love to get you all involved - it's easy and completely free for everyone. That being said, post any openings you know of here, too, to get some love from the best hacker community evar.)




Awhile ago I posted my site, http://www.happyjobsearch.com here for feedback. I hope no one minds my mentioning it here again, but it seems relevant.

I wrote the site over a weekend after I got laid off for the second time in 3 months. The first time I was laid off, I took a very haphazard approach to looking for jobs and it caused me a lot of stress. I made Happy Job Search to help get organized. It's like a GTD app just for job hunting. It's optimized for quickly adding jobs to your "inbox", then going through and investigating each job, adding notes, and filing the job under a next action (send email, make call, etc). Finally, it's made to be useful for quickly reviewing a job opportunity before you interview.

It takes a little time to actually go through and enter job information, but it really helped me. It's also free. Hopefully others will find it useful as well and won't go through what I did the first time I was laid off :)

(ps, LukeG I'd like to email you but your address isn't listed. Mine is daniel@flyingmachinestudios.com. Thanks!)


I was doing some work this past summer trying to extract good feature sets from job ads so users could train a neural network to help filter through ads.

I see there are a lot of sites that to do something for employers but its good to see someone else thinking of job seekers. Not much out there for us and I think an opportunity exists for someone that can optimize and organize the process with us in mind.


I have(/had) a project in this area as well, and I kept stumbling over the monetization problem-- job seekers are a population that has a strong disincentive to parting with their money.

NotchUp has an interesting play on this problem, though hard to say if they're getting any traction.

Obviously the employers and recruiters are the ones holding the money, so most solutions tend to cater to their dealflow needs.

Any other stakeholders with money that are part of this ecosystem? Or other monetization ideas?

Are there any affliate players in the job space? E.g. capitalizing on bounties/etc for successful hires/interviews?


Stay tuned for http://www.jobsyndicate.com


There are several Job Alchemy above being one of them.

There's one in the UK (who's name I can't remember right now) which specializes in "referal" hiring, taking advantage of the fact many large employers give employee's significant bonuses for referred hires to essentially create a secondary market for recruitment based upon referal bonus payments.


It would be interesting to hear about what features you identified as good indicators (I'm working in a similarish area).


luke at startuply dot com, i'd love to get in touch.


Here's a related question: I'll posit that there is a higher density of "very desirable" top-notch hackers being thrown into the job market than at any other time in my 15-year career. You know the people: the ones that rarely hit the normal job market because with one or two emails, they can line up their next gig in an afternoon throught their network or friends-of-friends.

For those of us who are hiring, what strategies can we use to ensure that we in-person interview more of those candidates (with whom we can generally sell them) and spend less time on the "perma job seekers" that seem to form the bulk of the job applicant population. I don't mean to sound overly elitist, but if I've only got 1 spot open, I want to take a shot at selling the very best candidates, and spend as little time interviewing the also-rans as possible. (This is in regards to professional hires; our college-level recruiting program is in good shape, and there's less change from last year there than in the landscape for professional hires)


Show some respect during the interview process. Possibly make their point of contact an engineer rather than an HR person. I interviewed with a company that had a technical recruiter who knew technology and I was very impressed by them for that.

Also keep in mind, how you run the interview process says volumes about what its like to work in your company. Taking > 2 weeks between responses shows lack of interest. Making a person have to "ask" for a plane ticket to come to the interview is a big turn off too. The interview process is a great time to show that you take care of your people and make it easy for them to do their jobs. Take care of us as candidates and we'll assume you'll take care of us as employees.

These are pet peeves. One other thing... communicate the type of position you're looking at putting the person in before lining up their in-person interviewers. I've had situations where I interviewed with people who did stuff I found interesting and I felt rapport with them. Likewise I had one company thought about putting me in a position completely wrong for my skills and the people I interviewed with had nothing in common. They later offered a position after the interview that was more in the right direction but this would have been good to figure out in a phone interview.

Thats my $.02.


Show some respect during the interview process. Possibly make their point of contact an engineer rather than an HR person.

I absolutely agree here. There's nothing which turns good people off more than feeling unappreciated, and HR people simply don't know what to appreciate.

communicate the type of position you're looking at putting the person in before lining up their in-person interviewers

I'd go a step further than that. If you're interviewing someone really good, don't put them through the standard interview process. Invite them to your office and talk to them about what you do. Show them around; have them talk to people in a variety of areas (if you're a large enough organization for that to make sense).

At the end of the day, ask the candidate where he/she thinks they could help you most, and ask your people where they think the candidate could help you most. If there's consensus between the candidate and your people, that tells you what to do. If there isn't consensus... well, then that person wasn't actually the great candidate you thought he was.


I also feel the need to comment about respect. I'm working now, for a great start-up in Palo Alto. Before starting here, though, I turned down an offer with a company that's actually profitable, because they were not just rude, but incredibly arrogant as well.

Insulting your candidates, and then calling them back begging them to come in for another interview, and then ignoring their availability... this is not a way to encourage people to work for you.


I have to echo your point about the response time. I recently interviewed with a large well-known software company, and I told them about some of my schedule limitations (due date on an existing offer), and the HR person seemed dodgy about it at best. My interviewer loved me, but told me that the company generally was unable to respond in less than 4 weeks.

If you want your potential hires to feel valued, move through the recruitment process at a good pace. There is absolutely no reason there should be a 4-week gap between first and second interviews. I've seen plenty of companies that have gone from first interview to offer in the space of a single week - that includes flying the candidate in.

The worst part is that I emailed the HR contact reminding them that this deadline existed, and to this date (a week and change now...) I have not yet even received an acknowledgment on their part.

Oh well, I'd been warned against that company to begin with.


And speak of the devil - they got back to me and were gracious enough to tell me that they were unable to meet our deadline, despite their interest.

Oh well, I guess I'm going with the other offer :)


Possibly make their point of contact an engineer rather than an HR person.

There are definitely benefits to this, as you mention, but taken to the extreme (all recruiting is done by engineers), it's a pretty high cost to the company's productivity.

Think about it from the other perspective: would you, as an engineer, want to work at a company where a significant portion of your job is recruiting? If you were the CEO, would you rather your engineers focus on recruiting or on engineering?


Get out and meet them (and their friends) in person. Nothing beats networking. I personally only work through my network when I'm searching for a job.

The other key is to move fast. If you want one of these people, don't waste their time with phone interviews and things like that, just get them scheduled to come in as soon as possible.

At my last two companies we would bring people in for an afternoon of interviews and have an offer ready for them at the end of the day if things worked out. That's the kind of process you need to have to snag people like this.

As a simple case study, the last time I decided to get a job I had 3 offers within two weeks. All through my network.

Currently, I left my last startup in the middle of last week. I haven't started actively looking for something else to do yet, and I've already had one offer through my network.


If you want one of these people, don't waste their time with phone interviews and things like that, just get them scheduled to come in as soon as possible.

I wouldn't worry about skipping the phone screen. But if your phone screener comes away saying "wow, this guy is amazing", bring them in for face-to-face meetings as soon as you can.

It's far more important to make sure that when you bring someone on-site, you make good use of that time. I'll forgive an hour spent on a phone screen far more easily than a day wasted because I flew down to San Francisco for a day of interviews with the wrong people.


Followup question: How do I know I have "one of these people" such that I can not waste their time with phone interviews, etc? Letting in a lot of chaff in hopes of not turning away wheat is not scalable, and if I already knew who the good ones were without phone screening them, I could probably cut down on the interviewing as well.

I'll grant you that true networked hires may have earned a skip-the-phone stage, though I'd still rather answer THEIR questions on the phone than find a no-fit after 3 hours in-office.

Be able to move fast is always good advice though!


Personally I like phone interviews. I don't like to in-person until we are serious and chance of hire is relatively high.

I've been fortunate thus far and always looked for a new job when I want to try something new, not when I'm out of work and hungry. Taking time off of work to interview for a bunch of low-chance jobs is not something I'll do unless I'm extremely excited about the company.

Maybe this isn't a bad thing (you want excited people), but how many employers work at companies people wake up knowing they have to work there.


That's an interesting question that I don't really know the answer to, short of falling back on the generic "trust your network" sort of answer.

Also, I'm not suggesting that you cut out the phone interview all-together, just keep it short and be ready to schedule an in-person interview them as soon as possible, preferably while you have them on the line.

When I'm looking at a company, I'm trying to determine if they're a good fit for me just as much as they're trying to determine if I'm a good fit for them. A big part of this is showing me that you have the ability as a company to recognize talent and execute accordingly.


Start with simple and fast screens, then progress to more fine-grained tests.

A simple programming question will filter out a huge chunk of the candidates (i.e., those not smart enough to code or to cheat), then email screen, phone screen, and then an in-person interview.

You should also figure out _exactly_ what qualities are most important in a candidate, and which ones you're willing to overlook.

Generally, I test for: (1) can they think? (2) can they code? and (3) can they learn?

You'd be amazed how much chaff you have to sift through to get even that much grain.


We'd love to talk to companies that use coding tests in the hiring process. Do they work? How well? Any insight into the design of good filters screens?


10 years ago and for a different company (in the computer game industry), we used a two question test (in C): 1. Write hex2int (without using any stdlib functions, such as strtoul(s,null, 16) for example. :) ) 2. Delete a node from a singly-linked list.

Personally, I found a VERY strong correlation between what we wanted in a game developer and their answer to #1. #2 I didn't find all that valuable, other than to weed out people who'd never taken any algorithm/data structure coursework.

For that company, and those roles, it worked very well, because there's a correlation between bit twiddling, pointer operations, and knowing whether someone "gets" pointers and their job performance. That's not the case in most jobs, nor in most modern languages. (Who cares if you "get" pointers if your language doesn't have them?)

My current company asks on from a set of some fairly basic questions on the phone screen, and we pretty much grade the whole phone screen "pass/fail" (interview/thank you for your time). I can't say they work quite as well, but we're also looking significantly "up market" from what the game company needed.

My idealized criteria: For professional hires: keep it short, but not so basic as to be insulting. For college hires: keep it short, and probably basic. For all in-person/whiteboard exercises: ignore error checking, exceptional conditions, etc. It's just too much effort to go through in that format.

Best coding test I ever took was for Accolade, who sent a zip file of source code for a very simple game (fly an airplane across a 2D map with mountains) and asked you to write "AI" (in the game sense, not the compsci sense) for the player. You had an evening and mailed them back a zip file with your code included. That was fun to do, and I suspect gave them fairly fine-grained insight into how good a coder you were, as there's "working", "optimal" and "elegant" dimensions into which various solutions bucket themselves.


Thoughtworks uses a (very simple) coding problem as the first step of the interview process. When I interviewed there, I found the problem too simple and was doubtful as to its value till I saw how it worked from the inside (after joining Thoughtworks).

Vast hordes of candidates with err "augmented" resumes get filtered out, as do "experienced" programmers (sometimes calling themselves "architects" and such) who haven't coded in (literally) years.

I would have thought more people would look up the solution online , but apparently even that effort is too much.

So, overall I would say a coding problem is an excellent idea. I am not sure how valid is the "tell me your program letter by letter over the phone" approach yahoo, google etc seem to take in their phone screens.


We use some simple coding problems during interviews. Subjectively they seem to work, but I have no objective way to quantify how well they work.

My favorite question to ask involves walking through a tree structure and summing up a particular property of all the leaf nodes. It can be done recursively or (preferably) iteratively. About half the candidates can't really do it. I often see answers that only process two levels of the tree, or aren't thread safe, or include lots of duplicate code, or simply don't work at all.

Joel Spolsky has some good suggestions on the subject. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing...


Yes, they work wonderfully. Start with simple, quick-to-solve and quick-to-check problems, since the vast majority of applicants can't actually code.


from all of the tech companies that we've talked to, hiring preference curves seem pretty consistent:

> immediate personal + professional networks > existing customers/users > extended network > recruiters & job boards

From our perspective, that means we can create value by helping people leverage their networks (http://startuply.com/Apps/Overview.aspx), gain access to existing high-quality networks (http://jobsyndicate.com, coming soon), and by making job sites that are focused on the communities and companies themselves (e.g. http://www.startuply.com


I'm not presuming I am one of the candidates you are looking for, but as someone who has been able to afford a bit of choosiness here are some of my thoughts.

It isn't about engineers vs. non-engineers. It's about helpful, courteous, and respectful, vs uninformed, detached, and unconcerned. A lot of HR people don't seem very invested in the position whereas the direct manager might be, so maybe that's where the stereotype comes from, but I've had many, many, many contacts from engineers (usually at smaller companies) who weren't so hot on the people skills.

On one occasion I worked with HR people. They were sharp and had their stuff together. In meeting them before interviewing with the engineering team, they were well dressed and very professional. They were courteous.

At all points I was aware what expectations I should have for notification, what the timelines were, and what the next steps were. In salary negotiations they were very respectful and it didn't feel like they were trying to find my lowest spot (though presumably they were).

This was extremely impressive to me. I've worked in plenty of situations where the engineers are good but the organization is poorly led or otherwise dysfunctional. I can talk to the engineers and tell if they know their stuff. That'll come in due time. It's harder to tell, does payroll go out in time? Is this an environment that will treat me like an adult?

When I ask for time off, am I going to have to e-mail ten different people for all the projects I'm in (I'm someone that can be useful in multiple areas), or will there be some structure there?

These things are harder to tell. Some people might like to be more seat of your pants. I personally expect competence at all levels of an organization, and not knowing these fundamentals is a red flag, and demonstrating them, conversely, is a good sign.


Always e-mail a candidate first to set up a phone call.

Don't cold call at 8.15AM because it's business hours somewhere. Every. Single. Day. Didn't need an alarm clock that week.


Justin.tv is hiring the best and the brightest to hack on our awesome live video site. In fact, we have almost as many graduate degrees as we do college drop outs!

If you're a sysadmin, network engineer, or programmer, you can find work here: http://www.justin.tv/jobs


"In fact, we have almost as many graduate degrees as we do college drop outs!"

Hmm... This post is difficult for me. On one hand, I don't want to negatively impact Justin.tv. On the other hand, I feel obligated to let everyone know that if you don't have a college degree or other qualifying credentials, you probably won't get hired there.

I went in for an interview, and as far as I could tell, I passed. But afterwards, Justin took me to a bookstore across the street and told me that their investors felt they needed to hire "more qualified" developers. So I wasn't brought on board.

My credentials: I dropped out of high school when I got hired in the gamedev industry. When I went in for the interview, I had been in the industry for about three years, and had been programming in general for 8. So if you have credentials similar to mine, it would probably be better to not waste the time in the interview. But if you have credentials that would convince an investor that you should be hired (college degree, etc), then go for it.

Sorry, JTV. I wasn't going to say anything until I saw "we have almost as many graduate degrees as we do college drop outs" ... this gives people a false sense of hope, from my point of view.


One of our co-founders doesn't have a college degree, so that's clearly not a barrier to joining the team. I'm sorry to say I don't remember the details of your interview, but I can guarantee it wasn't the degree. That just doesn't come up in discussions or thought behind the interview.

What do I consider? Basically I use three things to try to decide if someone is going to work out at JTV:

1. Codes fluently and happily. I don't care what syntax or language you use, or if you use pseudo-code, but you should be able to do basic things without much thought and you shouldn't be offended or unhappy to spend time coding in an interview.

2. Grasps algorithms. Recursion, trees, lists, big-o notation, etc. I don't care if you can recite the Master Theorem, but you should be able to estimate runtime for a recursive algorithm. I don't care if you know Dijkstra's algorithm, but you should be able to find a shortest path in a graph.

3. Excited to work on the kinds of problems we have at JTV. This is the hardest to judge, obviously. If you don't have any ideas, before or during or after the interview, about something you'd like to do or change at JTV, that's a bad sign. If you don't have any interest in working on our website or on video or on chat, that's a bad sign. If it just doesn't seem like you genuinely want to work at JTV, that's a bad sign. None of these are disqualifying, but they lose a few points. I try not to weight this too highly because it's so easy to read too much into someone's surface personality, but this is the thing I think we've made the most mistakes on in the past.

That's what I go by in hiring, and that's the kind of thing I see discussed when we email about the candidate. So I'm reasonably sure that's what everyone else goes by as well.


What is your point? That your single case of not getting the job means that it is not true that they hire college drop outs?

I mean there is plenty of other things than just experience related to hiring someone. "More qualified" may well be a nice way to say "you don't seem to fit in" or whatever their reason not to hire you.


Would you rather be told:

"Listen bud, you're talented, but not quite right for us due to X, Y, and Z."

... or ...

"Sorry, we want to hire you, but our investors won't let us."

If that was the case (and I don't think it was), then the latter is a cop-out. You don't make up reasons not to hire someone, no matter how much you want to. You'd be doing a disservice both to the candidate and to yourself.

My single case is just that: a data point. Weigh it along with all your other data points before making your interview/no interview decision.


Fair enough, I guess you were given a straight answer.

Anyway for some reason you original reply sounded to me pretty much like: "these guys did not give me a job, they suxxors! Don't go near them!"

Often you do not know the reason for not hiring. "Just does not feel right" or "gut feeling" may be the real reason, and then you try to rationalize it somehow. Hiring is not an exact science.


"these guys did not give me a job, they suxxors! Don't go near them!"

No sir, that wasn't my intention at all. :) JTV's interview was extremely rigorous, and they all seem like great hackers. In that regard, they r0x0rz. Unfortunately, their investors may have the final say as to whether you are hired or not, which is what I wanted to tell everyone.


No harm done. :) I guess what made me comment in the first place is that I have found your comments here very thoughtful and good.

I still this this statement is an unfair generalization based on your personal experience:

"...if you don't have a college degree or other qualifying credentials, you probably won't get hired there."


It really is a pity, too -- I have two college degrees, and wish they had been printed on toilet paper, because then they might be useful.


If you voluntarily left gamedev, could you please tell me.... why?

If you say "long hours, low pay, incompetent management" I'll know you're just a sell-out :)


What's your email? I don't want to go into salary details publicly.

On low pay: when I first arrived at The Corporation, I made nothing for the first nine months. I was an "intern", and they don't pay interns. I'm not complaining. It was excellent experience. After that, I was paid a very low salary. A year and a half after that, I was paid "slightly less than low, but still half of what an average developer makes" salary. So the pay wasn't especially good. I was there for the experience anyway, not the pay.

On incompetent management: We had a "daily report" to fill out each day. The idea was to list what we did, what we were "blocked" on, and what we will do soon. On Fridays, we had to fill out a weekly "time allocation sheet". We would assign percentages to various categories of what we spent time on. (e.g. "50% primary tasks, 30% debugging, 10% meetings, 10% other".) We also had many, many meetings. One day, a few months before I left, all developers spent over four hours in meetings. (The "Monday Morning Meeting", followed by the general "Developer's Meeting", followed by the "Version-one-point-something Product Meeting"... Over half the day spent in just meetings.) Our direct manager was very controlling. A few times, he walked by and asked people to implement a brand-new feature, claiming that "it would be easy". So he was apt to gloss over details, and the details are often the hardest part of software development.

The biggest reason why I left The Corporation is because I wasn't learning anything anymore. The three years I worked there were filled with nonstop learning... up to about six months before I left. At that point, it became hard to be passionate about the job, because I wasn't doing much that allowed me to grow as an engineer.

Are the conditions at your gamedev job pretty good? I heard from a friend that The Corporation was an outlier, and that every one of the five other gamedev companies my friend had worked at were a lot better, so I'm still holding out hope for the gamedev industry in general.


At Disqus, we're looking for a front-end hero* . The candidate should be good at everything from visual and UI design to Javascript optimization. Email jobs@disqus.com.

*hero is the new rockstar


Just for the record, if I were looking for a job, and you used hero (or ninja, or rockstar) in the title, I wouldn't take you guys seriously. This seems to be a common sentiment.


Hence the footnote. It's a little in-joke that it seems you didn't find funny. I encourage anyone who's turned off by that part of the job post to please apply anyways. My above post was made as an individual, not as a representative of the company, and cannot be taken as a representative sample of Disqus's mean level of seriousness.


Don't worry, there's no permanent damage, and Disqus does seem like an interesting company. :-)

I think I, and a lot of people, respond to ninja, etc., negatively not because They're Silly Words And This Is Serious Business, but just because they're tired and non-descriptive. I have about the same response to something like, "Senior Solutions Manager". It's not a logical reaction based on evaluating the company, more like just an automatic, "Ugh..."


"I think I, and a lot of people, respond to ninja, etc., negatively"

Unfortunately words like that have become a bit "buzzy" with HR and management (non-techie) types: "Oh, so all we have to do is say 'ninja' or 'rockstar' and we're instantly cool and really talented people will want to work here. Can I be a rockstar too, pls?"


While that might be true, my reaction comes from seeing it overused by techie folks that can't manage to state what they want, and the closest they've been able to figure out is a euphemism for a workaholic with more enthusiasm than expertise.


"a workaholic with more enthusiasm than expertise"

I've spent the last twenty years becoming a slacker with more expertise than enthusiasm, so I'm with you there ;)


It's true -- all serious business here. Smiles are to be left at the door.


Damn. If I weren't deliriously happy with where I am, I'd consider applying just because you said "mean level of seriousness"


Where are you?


I'm telling you, the proper nomenclature now is code barista


Isn't the term "hero" used in _The Mythical Man Month_ to refer to the one talented individual that ends up saving the project? Thus, a "hero" is indicative of immature development process.


As someone who's seen approx. 73,801 job postings, I prefer just about anything to "software engineer." Just for flavor.


In the common case, if you've looked at thousands of job listings, you're probably not a programming hero.


It sounds like you didn't live through the dotcom boom, when you couldn't go to the movies without seeing several ads begging for developers.

If the bust hadn't come along, sooner or later they'd have made a deal to print the help wanted ads on individual cans of Mountain Dew.


print the help wanted ads on individual cans of Mountain Dew.

Sounds like a startup idea. Built-in revenue model!


I disagree. Words like 'hero', 'rockstar', 'ninja' convey a certain attitude. They also imply that the applicant (if qualified and hired) can take the technology in a new direction.

Basically, these words often mean a senior position, at a (relatively) small company, for low pay.

If you don't mind the pay-cut, you can probably leverage your work there and make a name for yourself.


If you don't mind the pay-cut, you can probably leverage your work there

Ooooh. Give up something concrete for weasel-word rewards? How can I lose?


dude, relax a bit.

first, disqus has shown very impressive growth in the past year for a company of their size (not to mention they've raised money from fred wilson et al).

second, judging a post by one word is a bit pretentious.


focus is saying no. depending on your level of desperation, your tolerance for red flags varies.


If I were making such a post to this crowd I would use "uber-hacker".


we're hiring a couple badass engineers at dropbox (python/c++; client/desktop app dev experience preferred).

we're backed by yc and sequoia... shoot me an email at drew AT getdropbox.com


"we're backed by yc and sequoia..."

... hmmmm.... I can't say being backed by sequoia is a great thing anymore. Being backed by Sequia means you probably will get fired as soon as the main product is built, to save on "runway" money. Disposable engineer, maybe lucky if you made it through a year and got some of of the stocks vested.

Sequoia backing might be great for founders, but with the recent happenings, definitely not for employee engineers.


Agreed, but not for the same reason. A better response would have been "we have great revenue and broke even X months ago" not "we're funded by VC money and consequently could go under at just about anytime".

Also, why are there 170 comments in this thread with many job openings but the 'jobs' section of HN is ... quiet?


That depends on what you're looking for. If you're just looking for a stable job, you're right. If you're looking for a position where you'll have a better chance of being in a leadership position, you're better getting in early. If the company's already profitable, your chance of eventually being, say, VP of engineering, isn't great.


How timely, we're looking for 3 fulltime quality software developers right now!

Some requirements: 4+ years experience doing fulltime development, proven UI/UX skills, experience with SaaS oriented development, and desire to continuously improve your skills. And at least 10 points of karama at Hacker News :)

You'll be working on projects from conception to launch, contributing to the success of the business in a big way.

Preferred: Experience with Perl and Scrum.


4+ years, wow. Lenny I see you guys have upgraded since last I worked there. ;)


finally taking your advice eh :)


What company?


My bad. http://www.webmetrics.com/


Few more details: - 10% self directed R&D time - work at home friday's - macbook pro's/dual displays - office wii


Okay you guys have REALLY upgraded. This is a sweeter deal than my company. Where can I send my resume?


The benefits of getting acquired by a big company (www.neustar.com)


I had to look it up: UX is User Experience. I'm embarrassed I didn't know -- but I am all the wiser now.


and contact info?


lenny.rachitsky at webmetrics.com

Also, our office is in San Diego. Details, details :)


San Diego would almost be enough for me to forget that I've really, really come to hate Perl. ;p

Too bad I'm already working...


I work at Rentrak Corporation, and we're rapidly growing. We're a stable, 20+ year-old company, and we're working on sexy, technically challenging problems. In particular, the group I work in is building a database that's expected to grow by more than eight terabytes per year.

More info here: http://rentrak.com/section/corporate/careers/software_develo...


If I were looking for a job in the enterprise space (I am not), I'd take a serious look at Rentrak. Once of their ARchitects made a presentation at Google titled "Is your rdbms letting you down? Application on TV Viewing Behaviour" (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4681632964554085715) which I found very interesting - terabytes of data, their own frontend data extraction language ...


We are hiring PHP developers at Connected Ventures (College Humor and Bustedtees). If you are in the New York area (or willing to relocate), send your resume to techjobs [@] connectedventures.com.

I will post more details at Startuply next week.


How's the New York scene for tech jobs? I'm going to try for a job in New York at some point (more in direction C++), but New York is not particularly know for being a tech hub in this sense. What's your personal impression about the availability of non-web related programming jobs?


I have a friend who works for pMDsoft in NYC. He says its got a great startup-like environment.

http://www.pmdsoft.com/ChargeCapture/about_us/developer.html

If you want to talk to him directly, email me at ben at devver.net and I'll put you two in touch.


This city does has non web related businesses. New York is known for finance and stocks. I have a friend who writes financial modeling software for a hedge fund. The scene does exist, but you have to go look for it. If you expect to go into a cafe and be surrounded by developers and tech folks, you will be vastly disappointed.

The more events and meetups I attend the more I realize that this city is full of great talent, interesting companies and even some reputable VC's. The biggest "problem" for me personally has been weeding through all the non tech people to find others who are doing things that interest me.


http://www.nextny.org/ and http://www.meetup.com/ny-tech/ are pretty established, but I can't speak for their quality myself.

(um or http://startuply.com/#/in%20new%20york/1)


I found my job through nextNY (Bug Labs) and my girlfriend found hers through new-tech, and the connection from that job led to the one she is currently at.

Anecdotes != conclusions, but for us it worked very well.


Probably should plug my own place huh?

In NYC

http://buglabs.net/jobs

We're often putting up new jobs. At the moment we are looking for a QA engineer and a business intern (that one is probably San Fransisco but I'm not sure).

I'm not very in tune with our hiring but for a while we were looking for development engineers too. I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to drop a resume if you have experience with embedded Linux development (OpenEmbedded especially), JavaME/PhoneME, Eclipse plug-in development, and a passion for open source.


Seems like your business intern position is aimed at finding people from MBA programs. Is that correct?


bug labs is doing awesome stuff, people should go work here. I would (try) if I wasn't caught up with this whole YC thing.


tough time to be in finance...it looks like there's a net job outflow from Wall St, including for engineering positions.


To be more clear, that is my overall take on New York. I cant really speak for the current NY job market as I haven't been searching. But I do have a few friends who have been laid off (interestingly none of the very qualified folks).

The job market isn't all that wonderful anywhere else either. What I think will happen is some the people laid off from the various wall street positions will go start boutique shops... Long term they will be bought out and merged together to create larger groups...


well how else would ibankers make their money?


If you're talented it's still not a major issue to get a job in finance, lots of people are getting let go, but the good people are finding new jobs pretty quickly.

Plenty of banks are using this period to ramp up hiring to get the best talent for a bargin. C++ talent is always hard to hire regardless of the market.


I just finished a job-search for NYC.

Some hedge funds are hiring, and aggressively.

I get the idea that those hiring are suddenly flush with plenty of good applicants.

I went with Bloomberg, who's still hiring aggressively.

But, I got good leads on openings @ the Ars technica job board.


You guys are awesome and it looks like you have a lot of fun.

http://www.vimeo.com/173714


We are hiring excellent Objective-C / Cocoa devs at Kodu (http://www.kodu.co.uk), to work on some upcoming iPhone applications. Don't let the uk domain throw you, it's a per-project position and we are fully open to remote working.

See http://jobs.37signals.com/jobs/4634 for more info.


We are (Ning): http://about.ning.com/jobs.php

Software developers (front end PHP focused and backend distrubuted Java focused) and QA engineers are especially needed.


Probably an offline question, but how is Ning to work for?


I can give you the summary online: "pretty darn cool". For the complete dish, feel free to contact me.


My employer (Guidewire Software) is hiring: jobs@guidewire.com

As an employer, it's a total hidden gem. It's website screams "boring insurance industry vendor", but inside it's got a very very good developer environment, and it may very well reach its goal of dominating its chosen niche: core enterprise systems for insurance companies. The other devs are excellent, management is excellent and very decentralized/hands-off, very little politics and other nonsense, free snacks and drinks, tons of interesting work. We're a java shop, so we'd expect some java experience, but most importantly, we're looking for really good, really smart devs. A CS-related degree (masters preferred) from a top school helps.


"My employer (Guidewire Software) is hiring:"

Didn't Guidewire lay off some people a while ago? How is the funding at Guidewire? Did GW break even yet?


We're hiring a Rails Dev in Portland, OR.

We do 1000 req/minute. We have tables with 100+mil rows. 30" monitors, MBPs, and the office is on the 5th floor looking out at 7 (of 9) bridges, the river and downtown. There's a bar 1/2 a block away with 14 taps.

Agile, RSpec, Pairing, the works.

Our CEO is Ward Cunningham (the Ward in TDD by Example, inventor of the wiki and terms like "Stories").

It's pretty freaking awesome.

Email github username + resume to jon.farr -at- aboutus (dot) org


i can haz yer bebbes?


We're hiring at Ning, more or less all roles: front and back end engineering, operations, product mgmt, UX, QA, various management roles. On the eng side we have java, ruby (not rails (okay, there is one rails app)), c, php, and whatever-or-not, the focus is on getting the job done with the right tool for the job not the language or framework.

http://about.ning.com/jobs.php

Email me if I can answer any questions -- my HN username @ning.com


Just saw Alan's post -- hi Alan!


Hi Brian. We should chat more in this comment section, because going down the hall to converse in meatspace is so time consuming.


http://jobs.joelonsoftware.com/


Related question: I recently left my previous job and am now looking for consulting work. I have never done consulting before. I have RoR / Ruby / machine learning / startup experience. How should I go about finding clients?


Tectonic, I was an RoR freelancer for 2 years. Here are sites where I've found jobs:

http://jobs.rubynow.com http://jobs.37signals.com http://bostonrb.org/jobs

If you also just google "rails jobs" you'll find the other useful rails job sites out there.

The best way to find work, however, is to build your network. One of the best clients I had was referred to me by a fellow I happened to have lunch with when I was in NYC for a couple weeks. Another of my best clients was referred to me by a friend. Where are you located, btw?

Another way to find work is to find other web development companies and just email them asking if they need help. I've found work this way as well, and have had more success contacting local companies.

edit: One thing that helped a lot was I developed a rails tool (Palmist, http://www.flyingmachinestudios.com/projects/) , then I gave a presentation on it at the Boston ruby group. Since then, many interviewers have perked up when I mentioned it because they had either seen it or used it.

Hope this helps!


On the rails job front, over at Rails Forum we also run a job board for rails positions @ http://www.railswork.com/

I've actually seen a fairly steady number of job postings the past couple of months (it's always been a somewhat low volume jobs board -- 3-5 new posts per week, I'd guess -- but the volume hasn't dropped off).


Mark Granovetter's Weak Tie in action! :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Granovetter


Go to conferences and shake lots of hands. You don't need 150 clients, you need 1 or 2 great clients. Like dating, it's a numbers game.

I don't think you have to push your RoR experience, since many business owners won't get it.

Find out what problems business owners are having and offers suggestions to solve it, even if it's doesn't include your services.


Like dating, it's a numbers game.

Exactly, business and dating have more parallels than people like to admit, it all comes down to forming relationships.

Numbers are good, first impressions are better, and solid performance are best. Once you have a track record it is a lot easier, because woman .. err .. businesses always want the guy everyone else has.


I would strongly suggest having a handful of clients. Currently the two things likely to kill an early consulting / freelancing career are: the client you're working for going out of business, or the client you're working for cutting budgets back to the point where they can't afford you any more.

Being spread across a few clients lessens your risk a great deal, but it shouldn't become unmanageable to keep in touch with all of them.

[Edit] I should have said - couldn't agree more about the conferences. Whether full on conferences or more community driven events like BarCamps, they're a great place to meet very good contacts.


I second this.

I currently have a F/T job at a bay-area startup (which I don't want to leave), but am extremely interested in supplementing my income with some consulting/contract gigs.


http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=162884

Craigslist used to work wonders for me.


In the Wash. DC area, the local Board of Trade had a lot of small companies that wanted to network for each other's services & business. Web devs should do pretty well there, or in similar orgs wherever you are.

I did a bit of consulting years ago, for another software shop --- I think the general rule is network in the area that your customers are going to be.


Tell me more.


Thanks for the suggestions, everyone!

If you need a Rails consultant, contact me. :) http://andrewcantino.com


We're hiring! Looking for exceptional, detail-oriented engineers and product managers to help us take over the social world. We're profitable, too.

Jobs page here: http://www.lolapps.com/jobs.html (sorry for the lame-ish job descriptions). Drop me a line if interested (email in my profile).


Profitable in stealth mode? How did you manage that trick?


We've been generating revenue since we launched our first product. It's a lot easier to make money when it's been a part of the thought process all along.


Also, posting any internship opportunities would be greatly appreciated as well.


We're generally always interested in interns in Chicago and NYC; internships are paid positions, and the work involves application penetration testing, reverse engineering, and security tool development. Prefer but don't require students, willing to discuss part-time arrangements. careers@matasano.com.


Sure, who want's an internship (unpaid, see my profile)?


If you don't pay interns they the only interns you'll get are upper-class kids who can afford to work for free. That's fine if all you want is short-term cheap labor, but if you're using internships as part of the recruiting process for full-time positions then you'll miss many of the best candidates.


don't be cheap. either pay some, or give some equity. I know the job market sucks, but great students have jobs for sure.


I've always run my startups very cheaply. Then again, I haven't had many interns either :). So point taken.


we're hiring interns! it helps if your name is darren


from bjornelasse (below): http://supercoolschool.typepad.com/blog/


My employer isn't a start-up anymore (still privately funded though) and we're hiring in the Pittsburgh area.

http://www.invivodata.com/aboutus/careers/clinical-systems-s...

We also have a small development center in Scotts Valley, CA that isn't actively hiring, but is often looking for good engineers, especially those with Windows Mobile experience.

bjanaszek AT invivodata.com


Facebook is always looking for good engineers: PHP/Frontend stuff; Python/C/C++/Java for backend stuff; data science and machine learning. Start on their jobs page, do a couple of puzzles, demonstrate exceptional ability.


It's advised solving a puzzle first isn't it. i'd love to apply otherwise.


Solving a puzzle is a good way of getting attention for your resume. It allows engineers to evaluate your coding skills much better than they would in a phone interview, it demonstrates interest and ability and geek cred. You can definitely apply without a puzzle, but there's obviously a large number of applicants that do so (and a corresponding signal-to-noise problem).


OpenRain out in Mesa, AZ (Phoenix East Valley) is also hiring like crazy too.

Generally speaking, we're always on the look out for software engineers who write solid code with Ruby and JavaScript. If you're looking for a challenging position in software, I'd be happy to hear from you. We also have open PM and sales positions.

http://openrain.com/about/jobs


We're looking for a Ruby rock star here at Devver.net (http://devver.net). We're a small venture-funded startup that focuses on cloud-based developer tools. We're based in Boulder, CO, but we're comfortable working with a distributed team. If you are interested, contact us at contact@devver.net for more details.


I'd love to talk to someone who could do some flash work on a freelance basis in the NYC area. Not for a startup, but fun stuff.. Imagination a big plus!

gavin at gavinbrown.com. Include a link to some work.


We aren't a start up but if you'd to do more low level programming work there is a Toshiba run shop in Nashville TN working on HDTV software (firmware up through GUI) and we are hiring. C and C++ - Real time programming experience a plus. Unix development - multi threaded - synchronization - blah blah blah, you get the idea.


It just so happens that I live in Nashville, and I've done a lot of multithreaded network programming. You haven't provided any contact info, though, and there's nothing in your profile I can see.


salesforce.com is hiring. let me know if you are interested and i will get your resume in.

while there are some exceptions for some really exceptional candidates, most of the jobs are in downtown San Francisco.

mostly java. looking for enthusiastic, hardworking and talented individuals.

is it soul sucking? honestly? not yet. its in the middle stages. ppl are enthusiastic, high quality and hard working still.

email me here w/ your resume if you're interested! (email expires 11/25/2008 11:10PM PST) b57cruj24Q47@meltmail.com


Fleaflicker. If you're passionate about sports and software development and you have a CS degree, contact me. We operate like a startup but you get all the cushy benefits of working for a large company.

http://www.fleaflicker.com/jobs.do


We are happy to take some angry laid off rails developers )))

http://supercoolschool.typepad.com/blog/


Not hiring exactly--looking for co-founders who are in the fortunate situation where they can work for no salary indefinitely (and get equity of course).


Same as you, except "a subsistence wage in the Bay Area" instead of "no salary" :) (see my profile)


I am looking for some machine learning guys for quant work. Email me at greggurevich at gmail.com


I've been reading this post throughout the day and I must say, what an amazing act by the community here. You guys are awesome, all of you.


Me: http://www.ingamenow.com developers, designers, business folks and content producers

http://quantcast.com/ingamenow.com


Us college kids are going to need jobs soon too! Anyone looking to add someone to their team come June?


I've found quite a few startups want people with 3, 5, or more years of experience, and not so many that are actively looking for grads. It's somewhat understandable, but those looking for soon-to-be grads (esp. in the NYC area :) should speak up.


How active is BR Ventures up in Ithaca for seeding new startups? I know they are connected with Cornell - maybe they could help you.

Anyway, I'm a recent grad and my partner is graduating in spring 09. We are starting something up in NYC. We may be looking to add one more guys on the technical side. Shoot me an email if you want to talk (address in profile). I was personally in a similar boat as yourself.


yes! send me a line - email is in my profile.


As a consulting firm (Viget Labs, http://www.viget.com/careers), we have a slightly different relationship with the economy (some companies are more likely to come to us, some are less so). As a result, it hasn't really affected our hiring priorities at all. We're looking most actively for a senior-level Ruby/Rails person, a front-end developer, and some marketing folks...


I'm looking for a marketing or business related internship with a tech startup for the summer. Check my profile for my blog and contact info


I put up a list of relevant job listing sites on my page a few months ago, mostly to point people to a starting page. They all still seem to be pretty active.

http://www.moondust.dds.nl/jobs.html

Disclaimer : I've posted it here before, there are no ads, it's not for-profit, only marginally relevant to this thread, yadayadayada, etc.


http://tipjoy.com/jobs


we're looking for a lead engineer at weardrobe (details at www.weardrobe.com/joinus) drop me a line at suzanne@weardrobe.com


We are always looking for top-notch developers in Chicago. We build trading systems on a variety of platforms, including C++, C#, Java, Ruby, and RoR on Windows and Linux. Full-time positions and internships doing agile, test-driven development. Send your resume to my HN username at connamara dot com.


Hello, HN!

If anyone is looking for programming work near Eugene, Oregon, they should definitely check us out:

http://eugene.craigslist.org/sof/898533379.html http://www.otsys.com

(I'm a HN lurker and happy On Systems Employee.)


Xobni is hiring developers - send resumes to jobs@xobni.com!


I nominate this for thread of the year.


We are looking for RoR hackers and/or software engineering generalists at EMI Music. Read more about our job descriptions here: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dg3h36zx_23c4ck9bc9


On a similar note, can you folks offer advice on how to "form" a team and apply for the summer round of YC if you are applying from overseas? I am from Sydney and am looking to form/join a team with those in the valley or otherwise (as long as they are willing to move to YC ofcourse).

I know it sounds silly and absurd. I have been desperate to apply to YC for ages. Only thing that has stopped me were my studies (which I am almost done with) and my mortgage (I can still take a few months for something as challenging and important as YC).

In case I wasnt clear, I am keen to jump across the ocean for YC.

Any advice? Any takers? Please contact me for more details if you would like to gauge my experience and skills.


have you ever applied for COMET funding from AusIndustry?


I have looked into it and found (along with other entrepreneurs here) that it caters for ventures that are in a slightly more developed stage than startups. It is more for companies with slightly more significant size (more than 5 or 10 i think) and patent portfolios (atleast 1). From memory I think revenues are must as well.

2/3 hackers from a garage (ok I am making it sound romantic now, apologies for that) are not catered by the comet grant. And also the environment is just not the same as YC!


Axolotl Corp is hiring two full-time developers in San Jose, CA to work on enterprise clinical data sharing applications for the healthcare industry. This involves both front-end web applications and back end data processing. Current major platforms include: Java/J2EE, IBM Lotus Domino, IBM DB2, HTML/CSS/JavaScript, SOAP, HL7. We care more about intelligence, problem-solving, and understanding of fundamental development concepts rather than skill with any particular programming language. The company is not a start-up any more but still fairly small.

http://www.axolotl.com/careers/index.htm


Ok, I was thinking whether to post this here or not for a couple of days, we are not a fancy startup (quite the opposite) and our requirements are far from common, but since it seems there are quite some people looking for jobs, there it goes

We are also hiring on Craigslist and actively looking for developers (aka rockstarts, pirates, ninjas, heroes, barbarians, wizards of oz) with knowledge and experience on perl/mysql/sphinx/javascript-jquery/css

we do what we do, our frontend is as unsexy as it looks (and I really hope this will change in a future) but we have a lot of interesting problems related to massive amounts of data and traffic/spam/scaling.

mail at pablo at craigslist.org


The 10-person startup I work for, SnapMyLife, is looking for a Rails developer outside of Boston (Needham). Check it out:

http://www.snapmylife.com/static/jobs#rre


"The ideal candidate is... posses a computer science degree"

That's unfortunate, since computer science has almost zero relevance to what you do.


haven't published this job yet but id like to be as helpful as possible to this community. need a java apps developer (familiarity with a framework like stripes is very helpful) in santa barbara california.

funded and still quite stealthy you could say littleBiggy is mcluhan meets the white pages. our interview process starts with a sample project you do on your own time and get paid for. we learn about each other through working together and take it from there. i can be reached at fredb.


Gilt Groupe in NYC is hiring both experienced candidates and recent grads.

http://www.gilt.com/company/job/1337

Email me at amanfredi@gilt.com


Habit Industries (YC 07) is :)

http://www.fuzzwich.com

http://www.habitindustries.com/jobs


The startup that I work for, Akaza Research, is hiring: http://akazaresearch.com/about_akaza/careers.html

Mostly Java/J2EE, based in Cambridge MA. We deliver an open-source product to the life sciences, OpenClinica (http://openclinica.org/). Contact me through my profile (Linkedin, blog, etc) if you have questions.


Clickable is hiring for Software Engineers in NYC. See the job description at http://www.clickable.com/corp/jobs/20080723softeng.aspx.

We're still a very small team, but our customer base has been expanding rapidly since we took our second round of funding this summer (Led by Founders' Fund, with additional investment from FirstMark and Union Square Ventures).


Me: http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/11/i-am-hiring-in-london.html


Atalasoft is hiring:

http://www.atalasoft.com/company/careers/#aspnetarchitect


We are hiring developers, php, js, ui, etc...: http://jobs.centraldesktop.com


Your UI opening requires a CS degree? http://jobs.centraldesktop.com/details?o=ui_designer


I'm not related to the parent poster, but I'm happy to see that. There's some good work done in HCI, and I'm glad to see appreciation for it.


I'm offended. Limiting the job to a CS major is the equivalent of limiting it to a design major. UI/UX specialists require skills/knowledge in BOTH design and computer concepts. You aren't going to find someone who is 100% qualified (according to their degree(s) alone) unless they have a BOTH degree in design AND CS, so why discriminate against one or the other?


We (http://www.codesynthesis.com) are looking for great C++ hackers in Cape Town, South Africa. For more information on what we offer and who we are looking for, see

http://lists.clug.org.za/pipermail/clug-work/2008-July/00062...


Senior Web-developer - San Francisco, Netherlands, Stockholm, Sweden or London, UK.

We are looking for a really experienced HTML / CSS programmer/designer preferably with a background in Python and Django. Some PHP experience is of course useful. Provable work on open source code is a merit.

http://www.akvo.org/web/jobs

This is a fulltime position.


Playlist.com is hiring developers. If your a talented PHP, Python or ActionScript programmer get in touch with me at gabe {at} playlist.com.

Take a look at our new website here: http://www.playlist.com/?home=a


Us: http://www.tableausoftware.com/jobs

I love the people and the product. Rails, C++, desktop, client/server. Interactive data visualization - analysis that's more fun than should be allowed. :)


woti.com Computer Scientist (all levels) - Crystal City, Virginia

Design and develop high-performance, data exploitation and web-database applications following a standard life cycle development model, including unit test development and quality assurance. Experience with Linux, Python, HTML, and SQL is required. Javascript or C++ language experience is a plus. Oracle database programming (and preferably performance tuning) experience is also a big plus. The ideal candidate will have strong written and verbal communications skills; ability to work effectively in a team environment, including a strong ability in troubleshooting production software. woti.com


Interesting that you describe the position as a "Computer Scientist". Unfortunately it sounds more like software engineering.


I understand what you mean. I don't know if this is the correct forum to convince you otherwise. This is the WOTI mission statement.

White Oak Technologies, Inc. (WOTI) seeks to be the premier organization providing the next generation of advanced algorithms and systems for large-scale data retrieval and exploitation to our commercial and government sector clients. Being the leader in advanced Computer Science demands the very best engineers and analysts, and our stringent recruiting process assures our customers that WOTI staff is truly the "best of the best" in the nation. We are committed to delivering exceptional value to both our clients and employees through innovation, solid business skills, and dedication to excellent service.


We have openings, in particular (as I keep posting!), Trovix is looking for a search hacker. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=355208


Ever thought of moving to India?

Directi ($300MM, Internet Products, DNS + Infrastructure) is looking for Tech Leads and Engineers.

See: http://careers.directi.com/


gosh, you really do need help! proxy error on click. :-/


BumpTop is hiring developers too, all the way up in Toronto, Canada! http://bumptop.com

C++, OpenGL or Flex. Email me if interested anand at bumptop.com


If you're in Sydney Australia we're looking for PHP developers at various skill levels. Send a mail to shawn at casid dot net if you're currently looking and we can setup a chat.


We're always hiring senior php developer talent at myYearbook. If you're up for relocating outside of Philadelphia or are in the area, drop me an email at gmr@myyearbook.com.


I have some clients who are hiring; if you like working on client sites and know event-processing systems, I can definitely help out. byrne@hunter-green.com


Is it a bad time to be looking for an internship?


I suspect not - interns are usually good for cheap labor.


Looking for a contract developer to work on a firefox extension. Interested? Email me at khang.toh _at_ gmail _dot_ com


What about if I am from the Philippines? :-/


And looking for a job? What's your profile?

I am from Finland originally, but working in Manila right now. We don't exactly have openings right now, but never know what we might need in the near future.


I am in Cebu. IT is also good here. I have been doing PHP (LAMP) for almost 3 years now. Right now, I am passively looking for a job since I am currently employed. If I like the job opportunity, then I'll leave the big corporate environment in a blink ;)


I'm QA & looking for a job any ideas?


http://casttv.com was looking for a QA, you might contact them.


http://startuply.com/#/QA%20type%3A%22Engineering%22/1


I am told by my friend Tristan that Apture.com is looking for top notch javascript hackers.


We are hiring! Flex & .NET developers, as well as designers. feedback@scrapblog.com


I have been looking for good jobs in the Houston area. I'd appreciate suggestions.


Long shot but does anyone have anything around Sacramento?


Google is still hiring, got an email from them today.


watchdog.net is looking for good people:

http://transparencyjobs.com/jobs/49/


our Manila, Philippines base is hiring people who know RoR and if you're a Merbist ... better :)


I'm an uneducated young adult with a very High IQ. FEED ME MONEY.




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