Seems like this would be handy for small startups and talent to find each other, or maybe even would allow fellow HNers to help each other find a good fit via networking.
Or maybe this was already attempted with bad results?
Having it recur monthly, though, is another matter. Since there have been a lot of proposals for recurring threads lately, maybe I should share our thinking on this.
The bar for recurring threads on HN is high. People often suggest new ones, but I'm doubtful that most would improve the quality of the site. When in doubt, we will err on the side of not promoting discussions (even vibrant and interesting discussions) to regular features, because once ensconced, they will be hard to remove—and because predictable things inevitably get less interesting.
Tho whoishiring threads are a special case, because they compensate for the injunction against general job posts on HN.
I understand the feeling of "wouldn't it be cool if..." and the danger of being a party-pooper, so I'm not shutting the door on these ideas. But it's helpful to remember what HN is: a site for intellectual curiosity, i.e. interesting articles and discussions. Optimizing for that is pretty much our sole concern. From that you can derive a lot about what to say "yes" and "no" to.
People have always used HN for unofficial and informal purposes—that's wonderful! I'm not talking about any of that here—only about the core. For example, many of us have friends whom we somehow met because of HN—but that doesn't make HN a friend-matching service. (I originally wrote "friend-finder". We're not that either.)
So the default answer to "can we make a regular thread for ‘foo’" is "no", because a regular thread is a feature, and the default answer to new features is "no" unless ‘foo’ serves the core.
Edit: I'm going to demote this thread now since it isn't really on topic.
So then, HN as date-finder is probably also out huh?
If you're looking to hire and have some cred in the HN community, post in the Who's Hiring thread. The people interested in potentially being hired will be able to contact you with an email that's tailored to you.
If I imagine doing this the other way around -- take each of the responses those companies got, make them generic (because there's no specific audience any more), and post those instead... it feels less valuable. If I guess an average of 10 responses to each company posting on Who's Hiring, that's x10 comments on the post; but they're less useful.
I work on a bunch of interesting stuff and all are open to pull requests.
Since I sold my company to LinkedIn (2011), I've been looking for something interesting to do. I found it with cryptocurrencies. I've been playing with Bitcoin and Dogecoin for a while, and written a few little utilities in Clojure and Java. See:
https://github.com/dbasch?tab=repositories
I hacked https://cointipping.com/ a few weeks ago, but I don't want to work on it by myself. I'd be open to joining a cryptocurrency startup as a cofounder, or to brainstorm with others who want to start a cryptocurrency business.
This idea is somewhat cool in that if there were a few people who interested me, I could scan their comment history (or might recognize the username) to get a sense of their style of interaction, thinking, passions, etc..
A throwaway account means there's none of that; and unfortunately, it also means there's no way to distinguish you from someone who read an article and is posting their inflated self-description on HN along with 219 other places.
I'd be curious to see a trial run, but I don't have very high hopes.
Most of you forgot to mention the most important part, which would be the size of the thread.
If we're getting like 50-100 posts for who is hiring, a thread like this will get at least over 200 (likely a lot more).
The data won't be valuable to anyone except recruiters who want to spam people (somebody mentioned that already).
The thing I can't seem to understand is the "monthly" part of hiring/freelancing. Why does everyone wait an entire month just to post these things?
I also can't imagine company hiring managers trying to filter through the data (there are no filters on HN firstly).
I think a lot of YC applicants (myself included) are having problems with finding co-founders and HN is a great place to find one.
It's completely possible to pick up a brilliant hacker or business genius out of the blue, but the people who are brilliant hackers/business geniuses probably have friends who they'd start a company with rather than a stranger.
Personal anecdote - I picked a cofounder who I had worked with in the past, but didn't really completely know. Incredibly bright guy, but no ability to get things done. He was delighted to blow money when we had it, but when things got rough he brought the whole atmosphere of the startup down with him and eventually left. Now I only work with people I've known for many years, and the success of my ventures with them speaks for itself.
You wouldn't marry someone you just met, would you?
Putting yourself out there publicly on HN while your current coworkers are reading HN and see your name is a liability.
Hundreds of recruiters are going to see that list spam everyone of these people for the next few years now.
If you're on that list every month, that's not going to look great for you. It also reveals a great deal of personal information about you.
You can't delete your post after an hour or whatever.
It doesn't add to HN at all. Look at that list. Going through the who's hiring list is kind of interesting, but going through the list of people looking for jobs isn't.
Although recruiters will probably go wild all over it and nobody really wants that, do they?
Surely if you include "No recruiters please." they will respect that? Or am I naive?
I put "No recruiters" on every single section of my LinkedIn profile, yet they still e-mailed. Eventually I removed every single detail from it. Even now I get the odd message.
They get a significant portion(10% or more) of your first years salary if you get hired. It's a numbers game and the more people they call the more money they make. They have a thick skin and the only thing stopping them from that money is a brief no from you. They will definitely try.
"Who wants to be hired?" maybe?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7573172
It sparked several interesting conversations, so the results were good for me, at least.
edit: added the word "though"
And to make things worse, sometimes they don't have local VCs...
I am from Brazil for example, I DO know local VCs, but startup community in Brazil overall is very weak, of almost all startups I saw, all of them are in the same situation as me (ie: only the founders, struggling to reach ramen profitability, desperate for money, and would jump ship themselves if they could).
What about people that want to get hired from Brazil's swamplands for example? No VCs there, but lots of educated people there (the Federal government here built lots of top-notch tech and STEM universities there, hoping that having the workers there would make companies go there, it failed, instead people study there and then move elsewhere, or get stuck there doing low-pay jobs)