Where the Jobs Are in “Who Is Hiring” (June 2013) | Hacker News Reader

Where the Jobs Are in “Who Is Hiring” (June 2013)

iseld.org

57 pointsheidarb52 comments

I don't like to be THAT guy on HN who posts off-topic criticism (especially on a really interesting link like this), but as someone who is very interested in data visualization I think it's worth pointing out: pie charts are almost never the correct way to visualize data. I decided to mention this because it's not really intuitive - even many data vis experts had to be taught this. A bar chart presents the same information and is better in almost every way.

Both your pie charts are a good example of how useful information is lost when you have more than a few categories. Both also make it hard to compare the relative magnitudes of smaller categories.

http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Pie-Charts-Are-Bad/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_chart#Use.2C_effectiveness_...

Relevant data-visualization when talking about data-visualization (it's served me well):

http://img.labnol.org/di/choose-chart-type.jpg

A possible way of not been that guy is providing a better visualization. I downloaded the data and tried to do a better graph, but I think I failed :( . http://imgur.com/a/HEcFu

In the linear graph, the size of the U.S. column is so big that makes the sizes of the other countries difficult to see.

In the logarithmic graph () the sizes are too deformed, so it doesn't look good neither.

(() Is it even legal to use a logarithmic scale with percents??)

I see it as a good sign the "Other" city is the second leading location. Maybe we're starting to spread out the good jobs.

One thing I haven't been liking is it seems like most of the jobs are looking for worker bees. No one is looking for managers, directors, VP's, or even team leads. For those of us with over 15 years experience there didn't appear to be too many opportunities.

Those sorts of jobs are not often posted. I would think the vast majority of these roles are filled through networking.

Who's Hiring: Where are all the Candidates?

I posted for a Python developer to take over my contract in London doing interesting work for good pay and I've only had remote respondents. Surprised me a little.

So I'll say it again :) Can someone please take my job?

You're probably better posting on an actual jobsite like cwjobs or maybe even gumtree. There are tons of python developers in London, but you're only looking at a limited subset by posting here and as a UK contractor, I barely even check these threads because of the signal to noise ratio. I don't have the python experience though, so no email from me. :p

Can you tell me more about the job? I know a Python developer who is originally from London, so he may be interested.

What do you consider good pay? If you have no candidates it may not be very good (or you haven't advertised the position properly).

If your area is like Phoenix-AZ-USA, then you may well have more jobs than developers to fill them. You need to either expand your candidate pool to those whom are less proficient in Python but willing and able to learn, or you need to offer a compelling reason for someone to leave their stable job. Usually a 10-20% increase in salary+benefits will do this.

If you are offering 10% more than your competitors in terms of pay, you stand a better chance at recruiting talent away from other companies... if you offer a "senior" position at typical pay, you can't expect much.

Personally, I'm tempted to put on my outgoing voicemail (about half my inbound calls are recruiters) that I'm not interested in less than X in my local area or Y out of state. X being about 10% more than I currently make, and Y being 30% more (most areas recruiting, such as SF/SV cost that much more to even live there).

Cambridge MA should be included with Boston, if SF Bay Area is an area by itself.

Also, Arlington, VA is considered part of the Washington DC metro area. and Bellevue is close enough to Seattle to count over there as well.

But other than that (which you wouldn't know unless you lived there) its awesome. I was curious about this information.

Thanks for the feedback. My US geography isn't great. I've fixed it in the charts and spreadsheet and will keep note of it if I ever do this again.

As a foreigner, I've been lead to believe that Seattle is one of the top tech hubs after the Bay area and NY (don't have any specific source for this). I've noticed the lack of advertised jobs in Seattle while reading the Hiring threads, and this just confirms it.

Is the Seattle scene not as big as I think it is? Or are they just not hiring (through this channel)?

From what I have seen, Seattle companies are big (amazon, Microsoft, f5, etc), consultancies (eg ioactive), in enterprise/vertical markets, and/or tend to retain staff pretty long term vs Bay Area companies, so don't need to hire as often.

Yeah, and I don't think the Microsofts, Googles and Amazons of the world do a whole lot of grassroots-style recruiting via HN, SO, Github, etc. Their hiring process is more traditional. They tend to use university CS programs as feeders.

It's really interesting how some companies are so great at university recruiting (Palantir!), vs. ones which seem to hire more later-career people (Netflix?), and how it is different.

I'd tend to say startups should initially recruit from their own networks; for founders just leaving a school, or with strong ongoing connections to a school, that's great, but getting someone with 2-5+ years of experience means a lot more in a startup than it would at a big company with enough structure. A fresh college graduate with some independent project/startup experience is entirely different from the 50th percentile CS grad from a good-academically-but-not-amazing program, though.

Not entirely true. Amazon has contacted me via SO Careers.

There is a startup scene here, but it's nowhere near as vibrant as the Bay Area. I'm not an expert on this, but one of my coworkers at the Seattle-based startup I previously worked at told me that most local investors were skittish. Supposedly, they tend to balk at any startup that isn't a B2B.

The technical reputation definitely comes from Microsoft and Amazon being headquartered here, along with branches for eBay, Google, and Facebook.

The technical reputation definitely comes from

Does Nintendo count for anything?

Do they develop there?

Apparently

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Software_Technology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Technology_Development

Exactly. Not a whole lot in the way of consumer web / social media startups going on here. We have a lot of B2B and consulting companies, many of which feed off either the Microsoft or Amazon or perhaps even Boeing ecosystem.

There is a lot of tech talent in Seattle, and even more demand for it, but there seems to be a lack of VC money looking for startups to invest in. It just isn't really the model here.

Seattle is a tech hub in scale, but not diversity. The city is basically held down (on the software front anyhow) by Microsoft and Amazon. The number of actual software companies is low compared to the Bay Area or NYC.

Seattle's tech job market also heavily favors large, entrenched players - the same folks who aren't advertising on HN.

There are a number of startups there too! I've talked with a number of them. Lots of cloud-esque & analytics firms there.

In my experience (7 years in Seattle) there are a ton of great companies large and small, hiring locally and also active with local meetups. Seattle is more desirable and affordable (IMHO) than many tech hubs, so people are already doing the legwork to find positions, rather than companies searching far.

Aside from a couple postings from India, I was slightly shocked (disturbed?) that there wasn't a single posting for any Asian country. Feels like a huge opportunity is being wasted.

My guess is Indian HNers would expect to be paid reasonably well. Most startups in India (Mumbai and Bangalore, in my experience) pay their engineers quite poorly.

According to the spreadsheet, there was one posting from Bejing and another from Singapore.

I'm kind of incredulous that this made the home page. It does not seem to add much value above the job listings themselves.

Breaking up the jobs by level and 'specialty' would be useful.

There is absolutely no reason to post this yourself. It's posted every month on the first. June's was already done:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5803764

Edit: I was completely wrong. My apologies. I'll keep the original comment in place. The subject was a bit misleading, but still, mea culpa.

His bog post is about stats based off that the link you've mentioned.

> Edit: I was completely wrong. My apologies. I'll keep the original comment in place. The subject was a bit misleading, but still, mea culpa.

Good for you. Have an upvote.

Everyone of us has fired off a comment in haste that we wish we could get back.

It happens. It's actually good that it happens. It usually means that you'll atleast be aware that you are about to do it next time:)

These are pie charts of "where are HN users" and contain little information more useful than that.

Well, it is useful if you want to work for or hire HN readers. :)

How does a pie chart help me email potential employers?

It tells you where you might want to move to.

And I should move there....so I can more easily email the employers in that city?

I am certainly interested to see that my own country does appear in 'HN Who Is Hiring'. I didn't think it did.

I really like the understated interactivity of the graphs.

Hover over an area of the graph or list, and that section of the graph is highlighted.

Hover over the graph and amplifying text appears.

Click on the graph or list and a persistent marker for that part of the graph is displayed.

Google Charts. It's not d3js but it's good stuff.

Your graphs are impossible to read on an iPhone (or at least a pre-5 iPhone). Regardless of rotation, the right edge of the graphs is cut off, and you can't scroll or zoom.

Sorry about that. I should have added some auto scaling. I just made them big so they are clear but without realizing the lack of a horizontal scroll bar.

iPhone 5 cuts them off as well

The graphs auto scale now, sorry about that!

I love this. I know I'm hanging out on the right site when people post comments and followups to articles with data collected and statistics analyzed.

Very cool information, and it's very much what I'm seeing personally. Just from the number of linked in pokes I get, SF is by far the highest city.

Anyone know where Ireland fits on this chart?

I don't see the 3 jobs in Denver, CO.

Did you click the more link and look at all the pages? Here are the jobs in Denver, CO: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5814622 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5809210 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5804613

Nice, go Denver!

I kinda wonder if that's mostly Boulder though, seems like most of the startup action is in Boulder (TechStars is there, of course).

My fault. Thanks!

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