Naturally, all of the players and coaches get rings. But after that, there are various executives, owners, player personnel, etc. The "team" is more than the people on the field.
Honestly that's pretty awesome (and a genuinely amazing story); every time I've seen a championship ring, it spurred deep conversation. Admittedly it only happened three times, all for Nationals staff, but everyone was passionate about what they did.
The role will include, but not be limited to, online video analysis and developing robust code that can be transmitted by various means including percussive impact of waste recepticles."
I joined his company as employee #8 in a (non-technical) role I wasn't qualified for, in an industry I didn't know existed, leveraging a technology I knew nothing about. I didn't have any accomplishments but a few failed startups, but he thought the hustle I demonstrated was all I needed to be successful in the role he was hiring for.
Fortunately he was right.
1. We scaled to 200 employees in 4 years bootstrapped.
2. I got to work on problems you only get access to 15 - 20 years into your career
3. Very cross functional role working on sales, biz dev, product, legal, support.
4. Raised a few rounds and got acquired for a lot of $.
5. The company was acquired 6 years after I left, but I had 10 year options that had less than 6 months left before the expiration date.
The company experienced a lot of growing pains around year 3/4 that caused me to leave (along with some mistakes I made along the way), but I only look back at the experience with fondness.
Absolutely incredible experience.
https://www.meetup.com/find/?keywords=hacker%20news&source=E...
The average sales cycle was 9-18 months, and the average GTM was ~9 months. Technically I was in a partnerships role and I was supposed to work with our dept heads to align with our partner's dept heads for sales, support, product, legal, etc.
But because I joined earlier than all of our department heads and worked with the CEO to develop the program, was closer to the requirements, and they weren't KPI'd on these partnerships / had their own problems, they were happy to let me do most of the work.
I was 26 when I joined and the folks I worked with were 10 - 25 years older. I pitched SVPs, negotiated legal agreements, wrote API integration specs, did on-sites, repped us at industry conferences, product managed packages, trained sales and support teams, etc.
HN is a wonderful place full of opportunity.
I've also hired ~3 people from those threads, now that I'm in a position to do so. They've all been excellent hires (though be prepared for some resume spam in your inbox if you have a post that catches people's eye)
I also met the guy who ended up building my custom dream home (from which I sit as I type this) via HN.
1) I was sitting on a house that I thought was a fixer upper, that turned out needed to be torn down. Feeling very discouraged about it, and ready to walk away and eat a loss.
2) I (thought I) was in the market for a new job.
There is a YC company called BuildZoom. You may recognize them from their job postings here on HN. At the time, they posted a job for a Principal Engineer...which is roughly the title I was aiming for at the time. So I clicked it to check it out having no idea what BuildZoom was. I discovered that the job wasn't for me, but I also discovered that their product was basically helping people do real estate development.
So I signed up. Got the whole pitch from them. Agreed to pay extra $$ for their "premium tier" which they never delivered on and refunded entirely after acknowledging this. But what they did do was set up 3 interviews with builders to come see my dilapidated old house. Two of them were obvious no gos, and I almost cancelled with the 3rd because of that. But it turned out he was our goldilocks, and built us a beautiful house that we absolutely love on time and on budget during the height of Covid. It also turned out he had no idea who or what BuildZoom was, they had just found him on some builder directory and added him to their list and basically started marketing for him.
TLDR followed a link to a YC company looking for a job, ended up getting paired up with a homebuilder.
The company was 90-some people when I left. We posted in the HN threads every month, but as far as I know, I was the only one hired from HN. One time I asked someone from HR about it, and they told me that we only got a very small number of responses from the HN threads, but that they were generally high-quality candidates, and that it just never worked out. In at least one of the cases we tried to hire the person, but he ended up ghosting us (I remember that one because I interviewed him... and now often notice his username in the comments).
I still keep in touch with some of the people I worked with there and it was honestly some of the best quality people I've ever been on a team with, unfortunately the founder decided to shark everyone technical at the company after we hit a major milestone early letting go the CTO and everyone on my team, including me, and at the time I was traveling (with the company's encouragement). They stranded me in a foreign country with no severance and no working technology (no phone/laptop). I eventually sorted things out with them, and I hope they continue to succeed as I have no hard feelings, but it was definitely one of my wilder startup experiences. Just to clarify, it was definitely an issue of incompetence, not of being malicious, they had no formal HR function and just really handled things badly out of ignorance rather than a desire to cause me harm.
The experience was actually key to why I decided to stop being an engineer and become a product manager instead, so in that way it was a massively necessary moment in my career to get to where I am today. That said, I'm not sure if I'd repeat the entire experience.
Could the company not make another payroll, no option other than to spin it down? So the incompetence was first in getting that close, and second in executing the spindown?
Or did the business keep going, or did some people walk away more comfortably?
The business kept going and is still operating. Why it was incompetence is because they had no formal HR function or Legal function at the company at that time, and so just mishandled things because they didn't know what they were doing from an HR/Legal perspective. I believe this has since been resolved. I don't want to go into more details, but as one of the harmed parties, I am satisfied it was not malicious and merely an oversight due to ignorance.
And the details are usually crappy, like even a very early critical engineering hire offereed only 1% ISOs, vesting over 4+ years, and a 90-day window to exercise upon severing employment.
When the company structures terms like that, for people who you'd think the company would want aligned with the success of the company, a company that's enjoyed the work towards equity of employees should make layoffs a last resort, including after having the founders take the hit (e.g., trading some of their much larger equity for funds to retain their team).
I posted on the Who Wants to be Hired?
Had someone reach out to me from a very cool company and ask if I might be interested in joining them. Interviewed... Found out the guy who hired me was really looking for his new boss... now I run the Platform and Data Engineering groups at this company, and he's one of my directs, and we are having an immense amount of fun. Landed in a company with an incredible mission (Software for Youth Sports), and couldn't be happier.
Looks really well done!
Note: On https://www.voetbalassist.nl/perfecte-wedstrijdweek/ going to demo through the menu ( mobile - Android) doesn't work. "Gratis uitproberen werkt wel.
De meesten van ons hier geloven dat een van de manieren waarop we kinderen vaardigheden zoals leiderschap en teamwerk kunnen bijbrengen, is door middel van teamsporten.
Sorry, mijn Nederlands is roestig.
Het lijkt me wel bizar dat een bedrijf verantwoordelijk is voor het financiëren van jeugdsport/voetbalvelden :O ( ipv. de gemeente bv)!
De financiering van sportvelden is meestal het domein van de gemeenten en deelstaten. De sportteams worden vaak gefinancierd door fondsenwerving, donaties/sponsoring en/of lidmaatschapsgelden. Dat gezegd hebbende, heeft een groot percentage van de bevolking (vooral de kansarme jeugd) geen toegang tot speelplekken of de middelen om een team te runnen (uniformen, sportuitrusting), vooral in de grotere gemeenten. De kosten van bijvoorbeeld grond in New York of Seattle om toe te wijzen aan een voetbalveld zijn astronomisch. Als gevolg daarvan zijn de meeste sportvelden/-arena's (bijv. hockeypistes) dag en nacht volgeboekt.
Helaas - in de VS worden veel sporten pay-to-play en alleen beschikbaar voor de welgestelden. Dit is vooral duidelijk bij sporten zoals skiën - waar een dagpas van ongeveer $ 80 per dag ging tot dichter bij $ 150 / dag op sommige heuvels.
---
Financing sports fields is usually the domain of the municipalities and state governments. The sports teams are often funded by fundraising, donations/sponsorship, and/or membership fees. With that said, a large percentage of the population (in particular the underserved youth) don't have access to places to play or the funds to run a team (uniforms, sports equipment), especially in the larger municipalities. For example, the cost of land in New York or Seattle to allocate to a soccer field is astronomical. As an effect, most sports fields/arenas (e.g. hockey rinks) are just fully booked up at all hours of the day and night.
Sadly - in the US, many sports are becoming pay-to-play and only available to the well-to-do. This is especially evident in sports like skiing - where a day pass went from around $80 a day to closer to $150/day at some hills.
Anyways if you see a company that is constantly using their free job listing every month on this site you should probably assume there's a reason they are constantly looking, and it isn't always good.
What do you mean by this?
The people were mostly nice, but they tended to want very specific niche skillets, had a fair amount of hoops to jump through for sucky comp and no equity.
There was one exception but they hit me with several "2 hour" take home tests and I tapped out because there's easier money even in this market.
I suspect the story is a bit better for the US cohort, but comp wise if you can get into FAANG you probably should.
( I turned down FAANG for CTO of a UK startup in 2020, and despite stellar performance, I became much poorer whilst the owner became a paper billionaire, so part of the problem might be I'm just not interested in wooly promises that can be revised )
I’ve posted a a few times on “who wants to be hired?” and despite explicitly ruling out full time work, I’ve gotten some decent offers. The last time I posted a little over a year ago, things worked out and I was hired.
To be fair, though, I was only contacted by that one company (and like 2-3 spam emails) so I wouldn't really count on HN as my main strategy.
On the other hand, I'm Mexican and HN is very Silicon Valley centric, so maybe people from the Bay Area get more replies?
I'm asking because salaries here in Mexico are not exactly something to get super excited about compared those from some other places.
As a non-mexican living in Mexico, I don't bother applying for jobs here. With 20+ years of experience in development I just can't justify even spending time looking for them knowing the salary ranges.
It was a pretty good experience.
Skipped most of the HR process thanks to speaking directly with the HM. Had a Skype interview which was pretty awkward, they left a single laptop in an empty interview room and people came in an out to speak with me as if it was a physical interview. It worked out great
In the last two years, I worked for 3 companies outside of Brazil. These were the first professional and international experiences of my life.
The first experience (Nyxt browser) is simply the best team I have ever worked with. The last experience is the current one which I am also very grateful to have. I particularly enjoy interacting with folks from the Bay Area, a place I have never visited but I dream about going one day.
In the middle, there was also a short project for a British company that I also got from the “Who is hiring thread”.
These experiences dramatically improved my family savings and exposed me to people that would be very hard to meet in my daily life.
Also, the first and last experiences are on the lisp family - which is a niche. It would be hard to have found them without the thread.
Thus, thank you very much, HN! My gratitude goes to those that run the website and to the community :)
Very grateful to this community as it had genuinely never occurred to me to apply to work for big tech. Which is obviously dumb, I've been obsessed with the industry since the early 90s, a good reminder that goals and sense of possibilities can be surprisingly blinkered by our environment/culture.
I’d say at least 200 problems, if no leetcode experience prior. Maybe 100 if you’re just refreshing. In both cases, I’d say there’s still a ton of luck involved. You can get interviewers who just won’t hire you no matter how well you do on the problem. I think 100/200 is still low for how the industry is today, to ensure at least one reasonable offer.
I owe my entire career to HN.
I wanted to be a DE, but I got interviewed for a success engineer post for one company. So, in a random thread, I described what my plans would be if I got hired in a success role.
So, Coderholic saw that comment, he sent me an email and asked me to apply to be their first DevRel. He was extremely patient with me and was kind enough to give me a shot.
That's how I made it IPinfo. I really love my job, and I feel privileged to be a part of the team.
I had 0 intentions of using an API to query every single incoming address for privacy reasons.
Let me know if you have suggestions or feedback about it. Also if you are found a neat trick please share it as well. Because it is a data product there are infinite ways to use it, so, documenting everything is very hard.
It was generally a bad experience (no reply or bad interview process).
BUT... a few years ago I randomly applied for a very niche job I would have liked and spent 1 year doing some pretty amazing stuff. The company got a nice exit too (alas, I had no stock).
So, I don't think HN ads are pointless, but they are pretty random just like any other recruiting platform, etc.
Oddly, I found the next job on LinkedIn at a big corporation! Lower pay, of course, but interesting (to me) domain.
I'm not entirely certain this will work so well, since it seems everybody is an expert at personal branding with GitHub contributions and all that nowadays.
A "hyper connector" I knew also provided some leads but smaller in scope and pay.
HN job announcements were pretty bad as an experience. With the one exception.
I'm in corporate now, but I'm also wondering how to find the next leads. Curious what your experience is?
Im still interested in doing work for a swiss company, remote mostly though. Which might make it harder. I am based in NL. Also not strictly a developer, also like product ownership or product management.
Any tips or tricks?
I later found out that the company doesn't regular post to those threads and someone did it on a whim which made me feel even luckier for having happened to come across it.
Then, early in the pandemic when lots of companies were laying people off there was a thread for companies still hiring. I posted something and we got a ton of applications but sadly none of them panned out. Later I was talking with some coworkers about how we all found the company and someone mentioned they found it via HN. Turns out it was actually my post and I just didn't realize someone had gotten hired from it which was pretty cool.
Not only have I enjoyed working for them up till now but they have been by far the best company I have worked for in my career. There have been multiple times when they could have done nothing or said nothing where they went out of their way to do the right/good thing. Some of those things wouldn't have made me angry, they would have just been neutral but instead they went out of their way to do right by me. I'm very thankful for that.
I've also been reached out to at least 3 times based on comments I've made (not from hiring threads). They were all interesting offers but I turned them down as I was happy where I was and more interested in my current job.
I read through the job listings and contacted the ones that seemed interesting.
Among them was a company of whom I am a customer, and who I like.
That company ended up hiring me and I’ve been working for them as a contractor for 11 months now.
I hope that I can stay with them for several years :)
Since then I've had less luck on here. I've put my details into the "who wants to be hired" threads several times without a single email. I'd genuinely be shocked if any employers regularly go through those posts to be honest.
The "who's hiring" threads have been better... I've applied for a few jobs through those over the last decade and had 2 or 3 interviews, but those roles never quite worked out for one reason or another. I don't see a huge amount of value in them anymore though – I tend to find more interesting stuff to apply for from just browsing Linkedin and job boards.
But I still have to try, maybe someday I can get lucky.
Last time was about 6 yeats ago.
If I ever want to find a job outside my network my first stop will be the whoishiring post. Thanks, HN.
PS: The site is still up. Some people think it's a nice alternative interface for quickly skimming the "Who is hiring" posts.
[1] https://www.hacker-jobs.com [2] https://marcotm.com/articles/information-extraction-with-lar... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35259897
Did you intentionally not tell them you were in Iran and instead just said you wanted to be paid in bitcoin without explanation? I'm extremely curious.
A pity maybe, it would have allowed working with Clojure.
Software Engineer with EUR 45.000 yearly salary + bonus up to EUR 5.000 and 6 months probation and cancellation period of 3 months from both sides.
I'm Dutch and lived in the Netherlands and it would have meant moving abroad.
I say this as a European, who has never had US or FANG level wages.
I'm not sure if I would have been invited to interview without it (no MIT or Oxford on my CV), so I am glad it existed.
Now that I am posting on "Who is Hiring" for the company I founded: we see high quality applicants for engineering roles.
4.5 years later we had an exit. Not a massive one because it was a seven-person company with a rather niche product for professionals, but a good outcome for everyone. Thanks HN for enabling this interesting trip!
- In 2014~2015 I released a CSS library (Picnic CSS), which was fairly rare back then, and reached the front-page of HN. Through that post I got contacted by a US dev offering me very interesting freelancing work! That also made me realize I could make in 1 month of international work what would take 3-4 months of a local job through the degree I was studying. We collaborated in multiple projects.
- In 2019 I joined Standard AI through their announcement in the monthly "Who is Hiring?" in HN. TBH it was amazing work, we had a great small dev team in our location and I learned and grew a lot. I've done some of my most challenging (in a tech level) dev work there.
- In 2023 I joined Keeper through HN's "Work at a Startup" program where I had created a profile. It was the only time I've been contacted from a company through the program, but magically it was just when I was looking for a new job so it was a pretty good match. So far it's been pretty good!
Can’t complain considering that I’m not looking for a full time job, I guess.
The company is great, my colleagues are great, and I owe it all to HN. Thank you HN!
They used HN because they wanted hackers, and they did a lot of hiring from FOSS projects, creative endeavours, anything demonstrably self-driven. Working for peers whose skills, intelligence, and ethic I respect means I take a fully moralized approach to my daily work. The mission is pretty standard other than being super high performance, but the people make it an absolute privilege to be here.
If I ever had to explain this handle it would be that the creative urge is an engine that needs an exhaust stroke to keep going, and so I write, but nobody asks. We just all know we read posts here. Hey co-workers, I'd never say it in chat because being meta wrecks flow and vibes, but you're all pretty cool.
Thanks HN!
I think I generally have a more skeptical view of HN than most others posting in this thread, but the value and uniqueness of parts of this community isn’t lost on me, especially with that personal experience.
Getting interviews at other companies involved more networking, i.e. finding an actual person to contact or reference me first, before getting the interview. On the HN posts I more or less just emailed the person listed on the HN submission and had an interview shortly after
(Had about 8 YOE at the time in full stack dev, for context)
I am really grateful that I ended up giving it a shot as it's been a great experience so far - I have sharp coworkers who are eager to share their knowledge and generous with their time, I get exposure to all aspects of the product, and the impact of my work is visible and immediate. Best of all, we use our product to make our product, so I get to directly enjoy the fruits of my labour :)
I am really grateful that I ended up giving it a shot as it's been a great experience so far - I have sharp coworkers who are eager to share their knowledge and generous with their time, I get exposure to all aspects of the product, and the impact of my work is visible and immediate. Best of all, we use our product to make our product, so I get to directly enjoy the fruits of my labor :)
:)
We are still looking for backend engineer. Join us https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35791719
I added "from HN" to the title because people are responding about lots more than just ""who wants to be hired" and I think the more general question makes the thread more interesting.
Additionally, I know of two people at my current and maybe three at previous employers who found us via comments I've written on "Who is hiring?" threads and were subsequently hired.
I also used to post job posts here for another company and I think we may have hired or at least interviewed someone, but I can't quite remember
The quality and response rate of the postings on here tends to be quite high, which is a refreshing deviation from the norm.
I was able to join a great company with an incredible tech team and get a pay raise. When I interviewed with the CTO, they seemed happy that I heard about the roll on HN. I later found out they post on the who's hiring posts monthly.
had some other legit/promising inquiries and interviews prior and after this as well.
I'm extremely happy with the team I work with.
I wish they promoted it more; cross links from the hiring and want to be hired would be good.
100% success rate lol
Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Dang should delete this submission.
Also, I've expressed this before, but in case Dang is reading this: HN needs to ice new users for much longer. A week or two until they can submit a post, a month or more before they can upvote.
Agree on submission icing for new accounts I guess, as it would help people get a better idea of the guidelines and community first.
@Dang - maybe these could be linked in the header (or in Add Comment too)?
"Who wants to be hired (June 2023)" : 140 points, 17 hours
This submission: 121 points, 4 hours
There's a certain kind of user / member that really craves being a part of the group and yet never really tries, he'll just try and ape what the "successful" people do. As communities get larger, these people increase in number. Submissions like this are basically crack for them. You'll get a couple of these threads every single week, and in the end you'll have to moderate the problem away anyway, because they won't just stop at "Who got hired", they'll start with "How to get hired on HN" and then try to game the entire thing. It'll tank people's confidence in getting good talent off HN. After all, there's only so much you can do to filter candidates, you can't conclusively claim "fraud" if someone has 7/10 "good" indicators.
I speak from some experience, I moderate a small niche community that doesn't require any physical capital to initiate the "hobby". There's a lot of people that just want an exclusive "community" but don't care if they're genuine about it. Some people get it, it invites countersignalling (not always direct, in-your-face stuff) and then the community degrades rapidly unless you can silo the good users away.