It has yielded many of our best candidates, but not yet any hires. We judge job boards mainly on the quality of candidates that it connects us with, since what happens from that point on is more a function of us and the individual candidate. So, yes, we consider it to have worked out well for us.
That said, I have my doubts about the mechanism. It seems to me that it would be more efficient to have a job board, since even a primitive one would allow candidates to better search for the jobs they are interested in. A basic job board doesn't seem very hard to set up, and we'd be definitely be willing to pay a monthly fee, because the quality of developers here is so high.
Would a job board decrease the quality of candidates on average? I would guess part of the reason the quality of candidates is so high is because it's active readers/participants of HN that respond/post to the threads. Having a job board would invite many other people as it is easier to access (non-active participants may miss the 'Who's Hiring' thread but a job board would be harder to miss).
There are potential solutions to this, for example only allowing users with a certain reputation point threshold to access it (I believe StackOverflow's job board employs a similar system). Just something to think about...
That's a good point, and I like your proposal, but we post on other job boards and don't currently lose much time sifting through obviously bad candidates. So, even without any such mechanism, I think that the benefits of improved interactions with HN members would outweigh the extra costs.
I second the job board idea. I know pg isn't interested in making money from this directly, but I would love the ability to post job openings here...
I guess for now this is reserved for YC startups, which is fair enough. HN job postings is one of the minor "unfair advantages" (that every startup needs to succeed), available to YC startups only.
That said, I have my doubts about the mechanism. It seems to me that it would be more efficient to have a job board, since even a primitive one would allow candidates to better search for the jobs they are interested in. A basic job board doesn't seem very hard to set up, and we'd be definitely be willing to pay a monthly fee, because the quality of developers here is so high.