Ask HN: Who's been hired through Hacker News?

I was working for a big bank, facing moral harassment almost every day from a shitty manager. The thing with moral harassment is it don't happen out of nothing, it is gradual. The manager was testing the waters, every day making the insult a bit harder than the day before. One day he actually cursed me in a meeting with 14 other people and I decided I had enough. Reported him to HR and quit. After that I was working on a game, that I was going to try to make a living out of. I was decided not to go back to work for a while. Then, on HN I saw those to topics - who wants to be hired and who is hiring. I selected 6 openings that seems interesting to me and send an email. 4 wrote me back. 3 gave me a coding challenge. 1 Hired me. Been working with them for almost 3 years now. Great company. Really nice people.

got contacted by a trading firm when one of the founders saw one of my Show HN posts. Was my breakthrough into the quant / hft industry and I now run my own trading firm: that one event massively changed the trajectory of my entire life.

I've had 3 jobs in last 7 years, 2 were through HN. The first one through here was alright, the pay was shit but the work itself was very interesting. Stayed there for 3 years and learned a lot, though the working conditions were terrible. I was constantly working 12-13 hour days and barely making anything.

I posted here again in late 2019 and a recruiter asked me if I wanted to move to Europe for work. Not seeing any future back home, I gambled and said yes. Interviewed with the company for a few months and eventually moved to EU in late 2020 and been here since then. I never got to thank the recruiter in person as he had already left by the time I started at the new job. His one email in Oct 2019 was something that dramatically changed the trajectory of my life. Hi J, if you're reading this! :)

I've been posting on Who is Hiring threads again in the last few months but the situation has changed drastically now. I need a work permit to stay here and not many companies (at least on HN) are offering that. I guess it's time to pack my bags and move again to places unknown.

I've been on both ends of successful hiring via "Who's Hiring?" more than once. It seemed like CraigsList was really useful back in the mid-aughts, then HN lists started to dominate the "interesting jobs without BS job board" category.

You're going to get an overwhelming number of "yup, worked for me in 2XXX" responses. I'm not sure what the point of the question is, though.

The job market for us is very different now than even a handful of years ago, so any results won't be representative of now. And asking only for survivors won't tell you how successful the postings really were to either side, just that eventually the job was filled from here and not another source.

Me! When I was in highschool I started emailing companies from the whoishiring thread, managed to find an apprenticeship in SF. My thinking was that before I went to college to study computer science I should check to see if I liked writing code.

Turns out I love writing code and don't care much for computer science. I've been a software engineer (NOT a computer scientist) ever since.

Thank you to Mek, Stephen, and Matt for taking a chance on me.

I got my current job by posting on a "who wants to be hired?" thread. I was contacted by the person who ended up being my manager and got fast tracked through the interviewing process. It's at a company that I probably never would have heard of otherwise (Fullstory), but I like it enough that I'm still there ~4.5 years later.

On the flip side, I can think of three people who were hired via "who's hiring?" posts I put up.

More times than I can readily remember. A number of contracts, a number of full time jobs. Have attempted to hire on here a couple times as well though I don't recall it working out. I've been on here since 2007 though, so recent experience is substantially different. It's as bad as the dotcom bust in 2001 the last year or two.

I generally prefer YC companies and early stage startups, so it's generally been good for me.

I am currently on my third client in last 4 years from HN who wants to be hired thread. One very good client, stayed 18 months with them, significant equity appreciation until now; a very bad “deadbeat” client who still owes me $8K in back wages (6 months overdue); and my current client of 4 months, so far so good.

One thing I learnt is to request HN username and review their post history, and consider suspicious the ones who claim not having one or not participating in HN discussions.

A longer comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39311784

Ages ago, I found a player on here who was looking to move to where my team was (Seattle).

They had a good "vibe" from their I want to get hired post.

Got them their first gig in the tech space. Now with me at another tech play.

This place is great for connecting, the signal is way above noise.

It's been a larger sequence of events until I got hired, but it all started by having shared a little side project[1] here that hit the front page in 2016.

Back then, Zach[2] from Timber.io reached out to me since they had just recently launched a startup in the logging space. We had a good exchange, but didn't get to work together. (I was burned out from my job and wanted to go back to university to study computer science, and felt that accepting "yet another job" wouldn't give me the perspective and foundational knowledge I was looking for. So I proposed a ridiculous rate that they understandably declined.)

However, we kept in touch over the years and I had good memories from our conversations.

During my studies, I fell in love with Rust. When I finished my bachelor's degree in 2020, I was looking for jobs in Rust that were specifically not in the blockchain/crypto currency industry (disqualifying at least 90% of the postings I had seen). Then Vector[3] caught my eye – a project by Timber.io. So I reached out to Zach again, and even though I had been fairly inexperienced in Rust, they took a shot on me. Eventually, Timber.io got bought by Datadog in 2021, and I sticked around until the end of 2022. After that, I was fully focused on finishing my master's degree.

To close the circle, I ended up founding a new company with Zach at the beginning of this year. We're still in stealth, but working on open source real-time video communication. If you're interested in tackling hard challenges in infrastructure/networking/native UI with Rust, please feel free to reach out – we have some open positions and I would love to reach for the same community that has once so openly accepted me.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12830763

[2] https://zach.sh

[3] https://vector.dev

Not directly, but someone on HN reached out to me in 2014 to ask if I had time to review their new app. Turned out it was a job board (can’t remember what the USP was) and among the scraped initial data was a GOV.UK job ad that ended up being the single most influential position to my career that I’ve ever had.

Related: I hired over 25 people through HN (across the world) before CompilerWorks was bought by Google in Oct 2022!

I'd applied to maybe 20 positions that were applicable in the past year. I got either no response or a boilerplate rejection from most of them. 2-3 I did get a reply from. Got to final round on one of them.

I've gotten about 3 responses when posting to the who is looking post.

It can really vary, and depends on what you are looking for, what tools/tech you have experience in and experience.

My whole career in technology is because of a "Who's Hiring?" thread back in 2012 or so.

Emailed the hiring email address in the thread for a company that seemed to suit my interests and abilities at the time and was off to the races. I moved from a rural area to a Midwestern state for the gig. Every job I've had since that job has been with companies comprised of permutations of those same coworkers from the first gig.

I'd probably still be doing roofing or something if I hadn't been an HN reader at that time.

I was extended a good opportunity to do entry level web dev but left the interview because I felt the coding puzzle was too hard for the role, even tho I could’ve solved it. Computer Science/math heavy and easy if already familiar. I still feel bad and entitled about that but I acted on the signal I felt and told the truth.

Aside, I am all for suitably difficult challenges, and I distinguish engineer from developer. Dev shouldn’t get CS stuff, Eng should. Mention it to benefit other hiring managers who may be reading, if it rings fair.

I've been hired through HN twice.

Once at Singly, in 2010-ish. Was a contractor for about 4 months, they brought me on full time, and I spent about a year there, left to go to one of the big 4 consulting companies, spent 7 years there.

The second was at Greenhouse (the ATS) in 2021 -- was there until Jan of this year.

I found my first full-time remote W2 through HN back in 2013/2014. It wasn't a Who's Hiring post (were we running those back then?), but rather an HN discussion that linked out to a blog post at an organization that felt like an excellent cultural and technical match, despite being a couple timezones away. That kicked off an email thread with their tech leadership, and I had a job within about a month. Stayed there for four pretty good years!

I was hired at Twitter through HN a loonnng time ago, pre-IPO, when Twitter and Facebook were still "competing".

I've also now hired several excellent engineers through the same means (not at Twitter).

"Who's Hiring" threads are amazing.

I was hired after interacting in a comment thread with a founder that was building the same thing I was NIH-ing at my current job. Easy fit to come on since I was currently doing it, but not ultimately a great fit. It pulled me out of my first five year gig at a huge corporation and helped me see the extreme opposite of that, and paid hugely better. I don't think it was a huge resume pad, as it wasn't a well known FAANG, but I appreciated the perspective it gave me and the redirection of my career.

I’ve found more jobs through HN than any other channel.

Not the ads, but the Who’s hiring posts.

No regrets. I just found a new job, same way.

The opposite, I hired someone through HN. Although i didn't realize for a while.

I talked my company into posting a HN post. All messages that recruiting didn't filter went to me. There was an obvious difference between those responses and other posts. Not necessarily better, just different.

One woman I hired reminded me a while later that she had originally "applied" via the who's hiring thread. I missed it at first but it made sense.

Not specifically the HN who's hiring etc threads, but through YCombinator's job board I was approached, interviewed, and hired. Loved the company, work was fun (even if not my favorite language), but I upset the CTO by questioning his Golden Boy, the CTO stole an idea wholesale from me after telling me it was a bad idea, and then fired me with no specific reasons.

If it weren't for that CTO I'd likely still be working there.

I've not pursued any hiring opportunities - but I've certainly used HN insights to avoid some companies that would have been a clown car rodeo.

I’m thinking the who’s hiring works reasonably well but the other two: freelancers, and wants to be hired are pretty worthless (for job seekers)

Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Massively changed my life trajectory.

I was working on my first "startup" (if you want to call it that) and wasn't getting traction. The owner of a software consulting firm found me on Hacker News and brought me in as his first employee on a massive contract. We grew the team substantially, made great money and that lead to doing a real startup after. And then another. All from a post I made on a hiring thread.

Interestingly, two or three years ago I sent a few emails via Who is Hiring and I got probably 3/4 response rate, and an offer (which I refused in the end, staying in my current company). This year my current company is not in a good shape, and I sent perhaps 20 emails and got NOTHING nothing at all back.

My thinking is because this year I'm 40 years old and ATS software now marks me as a dinosaur.

I applied for a job from a December 2020 Who's Hiring post, started in early February 2021.

I'm still with the posted position: I really like the company and the people I work with. It's certainly one of the better jobs I've had in my career.

In my 2020 job search, I gravitated towards "Who's Hiring" for a few reasons: I interacted directly with hiring managers, and I prefer early-stage companies. The concise nature of posts makes it easy to flag the ones I want to pursue. The fact that it's once a month means I know that someone is actively hiring.

In contrast, I don't like working with non-technical "middlemen" recruiters, I don't like FAANG-style hiring, long job postings make it hard to narrow down which ones I want to pursue, and I'm always afraid that I'm applying to a job posting that's "for show" and I'm just wasting my time. (IE, some managers always try to keep a few open positions as a way of working large company politics without seriously intending on filling those positions.)

I was hired, just reached out to the contact on a "Who's Hiring" thread for a company doing work I had some experience with but was looking to expand on. So far so good.

For background the hire before that was through a colleague and the job I got before that was through a news list. I don't really ever get any success through more traditional job seeking services.

Happened to me once. I was only contacted by the company that hired me (and like 2-3 spam emails) so I wouldn't really count on HN as my main strategy.

By the way, here's a thread with the same question form last year (June 2023): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36160198

I have the best job in my career and I was hired from responding to a who's hiring thread. wish I could give more details, but any single data point about the firm yields who it is.

generally, the company was looking for a very unique form of talent driven by a certain attitude and experience. they developed tools for verifying and filtering for it. if you've read any william gibson novels the firm would fit right into something he would describe.

if I were to characterize it, I'd say someone who has been any one of a FOSS contributor, bootstrapped founder, hacker, competitor especially elite level or minor fame in anything, autodidact, amateurist, performing artist, among other high competence bars that demonstrate tacit knowledge, focus, clarity, humility, reflexive curiosity, and related qualities, then imagine a firm that had somehow managed to quietly collect scores of them.

HN seems to attract a cluster of those people.

I posted (about three years ago now) in a Who Wants to be Hired thread. Admittedly, it was kind of on a whim, since I’d just left a job in operations after feeling burnt out, and thought I might dip my toes in the water of software dev full-time. I was contacted by four or five companies, I interviewed with three, and landed a gig with the company I’m still with currently.

For what was a two sentence post I made thinking it wouldn’t really amount to anything, it turned out to be one of the best moves I’ve made. (For both parties, I’d say.)

I didn't get hired through HN personally, however I did publish a Whos Hiring? post for an opening on my team a few years ago and we found a great frontend engineer.

I'm super happy about the practice overall and I hope it continues!

Twice. Both worked out well for me.

Neither was a startup though.

In 2019 I posted for the first time in the “Who wants to be hired” thread. A few days later I got an email from a company and went through their hiring process. I’m still there today and over the last 3 months I hired 6 people I found through HN (combo of “Who wants to be hired” outreach and responses to our “Who’s hiring” comment).

In addition to that, I’ve received 3-4 requests via email to Interview for a position given things I’ve talked about on HN (various technologies/frameworks/libraries/etc).

I got my first job through Who Wants To Be Hired in 2019. An engineer at the company reached out to refer me based on my resume. It was very good for allowing me to break into the industry, and it was a great place.

Two years ago I was contacted for 2/3 interviews. One interview went not finalising as they were looking for a different position; another one was a very early startup that look for a part time employeer; the third one was really close to the offer. I decided to stop the negotiations because war in Russia started and the company was based in Russia, so I was scared to be impacted by sanctions.

A friend of mine found a job in a startup through HN.

Obvious throwaway account.

I had around 10 interviews via HN jobs, and around 50ish through the startup match making thing.

7/10 job interviews were fake jobs that actually didn't exist and where there's not even a budget available for them. These jobs were abused as early customer feedback and I didn't believe what happened there. I was basically braindumped.

The interviews from the startup matchmaking site were also kind of ridiculous. More bullshit consultants there than actual founders or actual developers that could or want to be building anything. These consultants want to hire you as a cheap developer, not as a founder, and definitely not as a shareholder. Happened so many times that I am not using this site for anything startup related anymore.

In general I'd argue that HN has a huge vetting problem, and by vetting I mean whether or not the intent of the people attending there come with honest intentions as to both their experience (which pretty much is almost always totally made up if you discuss more technical problems) and the idea of putting a lot of work into a problem to solve it (a _lot_ of people think that having a startup gig on the weekend, but only afternoons, leads to anything successful).

Most people come with so high expectations that it feels like being inside a ponzi community. Startups are a percentage game of luck, and you can only get an advantage if you have the right team at the right time, which implies that teams have to be absurdly motivated by a problem.

The people I found on this site are the opposite of that. They see it as a way to make quick cash because "they heard this is how to get rich fast".

I was very disappointed and am now much more involved in our local startup related meetups and events, and found a lot of team members through that.

Twice actually. One time thru who's hiring and once thru who wants to be hired. Both were great jobs that I enjoyed. Good way to get straight to the hiring manager

I wanted to move to Denmark and saw a startup looking for an engineering lead. I applied, received a coding challenge, was invited for some interviews with the engineering team, after I came back home I had an online interview with the CEO (which to me felt like the worst interview in my life), and was offered the job along with a relocation package.

Stayed with the company for a couple of years.

In late 2019, I applied for a job I read about on a Who's Hiring thread, and worked at that company for about 2 years.

I landed a remote internship at a stealth Startup this February. The pay wasn't mentioned nor even discussed, but they offered me more than I expected.

Thankful for the Co-founders and HN

I reached out to a company here and got hired as a working student, still there 9 years later :)

My current and previous position were found through HN (and the one before that through Reddit). I've also hired through HN a number of times for other positions at the same companies with pretty good success.

I got hired via HN through the Who's Hiring post and gotten two solicitations through comments.

The Who's Hiring post was actually posted by an employee seeking a referral bonus. Overall a good experience.

I was hired for my current role at Cortical Labs via a “Who wants to be hired?” thread a year ago. First time I had tried via HN, I had a great experience and I recommend trying it if you haven’t.

I think it was almost 7 years ago but I was flown from VA->SF and interviewed for a company that I ultimately didn't end up getting an offer for, but it was a good experience

Yup: I had reached out to a small business owner (had to hunt down his email) to pick his brain on CRMs. That one phone call turned into me consulting for him for a short period of time.

I got a job at Elastic via the Who’s Hiring thread. I haven’t used the Who Wants to Be Hired thread yet, though.

I got hired at my current company back in 2022 through their post on a Who’s Hiring post here. Likely never would have heard of them otherwise, but glad I did!

I found my first job out of school and my current job both through HN Who's Hiring. I have also hired 2 people myself from posts I made to Who's Hiring.

Me! Twice! :D

Both times I saw job openings that greatly matched my experience (although very different one from the other), got in touch and got it working.

I found my last 2 jobs via "Who wants to be hired" and hired 2 people via "Who is hiring".

I found the experience was great, in both cases

Got hired by a startup in 2011 via one of these threads. Hired someone from another thread a few years later. Thanks HN!

Yep was hired once and hired someone once. Both great experiences, still friends with my ex-boss and my ex-coworker !

Got a job from here last year, goes alright, tho it was a lucky one as noone else has invited me for an actual interview.

Me and 10 out of 15 devs of my team got hired and we are very happy with current client for almost a year now.

Twice! First through who’s hiring fresh out of university in 2013 and more recently via a submission (Kanmail).

I hired a couple who posted they're seeking employment, and interviewed a few more than that.

I did, from a YC startup based in SEA.

Who's Hiring hit-rate is much better than my LinkedIn hit-rate :D

Got a few pings, but nothing of substance. Being in Europe, it’s not easy.

One time through whos hiring. Applied to about 5.

Me through monthly job posting thread

Me. Best company ever.

have gotten 3 jobs off here . wonderful place.

Anyone else from latam?

As suspected, this long-running "Who is hiring" recurring submission is mostly fake jobs and has a success rate for the "applicants" of close to zero.

Perhaps the "Who wants to be hired" recurring submission is similarly bogus.

Free information gathering at the expense of gulllible computer users, here, "developers". Another page from the SillyCon Valley playbook.

I'd love to list the founders on here who reached out and totally wasted my time trying to figure out how they should build the team they are hiring for vs trying to hire me the couple of times I posted on here about working with one of you. Totally overt bait and switch. I'm pretty sure a bunch of you would go "hmm, surprised those guys did that" given they're "known".

Some scammer "founder" invented a "job" to pick my brain while pretending to be hiring. Absolute liar. One of those customer/feedback chat widgets with video call features.

once, 2021 march

Me

I used a throwaway account because I was hired through HN. The work environment was terrible, extremely stressful, and led me to become very depressed. It wasn't until I shared my experiences with a friend, who was shocked and convinced me to quit, that I realized how bad it had been.

This hasn't completely discouraged me from being hired through HN in similar situations, but I will definitely do more research on the company beforehand.

This comment was rewritten by AI to anonymize the writing style.