Show HN: New job search site for hackers | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: New job search site for hackers

staticjobs.com

23 pointsprogrammer0153 comments

How about some ads that aren't posted by headhunters?

https://www.staticjobs.com/search.php?query=php+new+york

Cybercoders, Kforce, Randstad - all bottom feeder headhunters.

Actually, that's my #1 want in a job search site - the ability to filter out all ads that don't explicitly include the company name, the real client, not a headhunter.

We heard you. We'll try to attract direct employers and come up with a feature to eliminate staffing agencies from the results while keeping the interface as simple as possible.

We're still an early stage start-up and there are just to few jobs in our database.

That's the #1 hard part about a new job search website.

If you have no jobs, why would the candidates search there?

If you have no candidates, why would anyone post their jobs?

Surprisingly, I only get decent interviews from Craigslist. I tried a couple of others with zero conversion rate.

Agreed. By creating this thread, we were trying to attract both job seekers and recruiters/direct employers.

It would be helpful to me if I had the option to disable posts from third party agencies like Yoh and Kforce. I prefer to apply directly to the employer.

Michael, I hear you but haven't you noticed that most employers use third party agencies these days? Don't know about OR, but it's very true for NY and NJ (and probably CT). That's why there are threads about jobs being difficult to find. On one hand there are plenty of jobs, on the other hand there are none (or too few).

We're very sympathetic with all the job seekers but right now there are just too few jobs in our database. Eventually we may introduce a special keyword to omit staffing agencies from the search results or something like that.

And thank you for your input too! Good luck with your job search!

> haven't you noticed that most employers use third party agencies these days?

I have not noticed this in MA, and companies that do this go to the bottom of my response list. I had the same reaction as the grandparent poster, and something that tries to foist those sorts of things off on me is an immediate "nope, I'll look elsewhere."

I understand you very well. We're from NYC and most jobs here are in the financial industry. They pay really well but it's hard to go through all those staffing firms and, later, interviews.

My co-worker says "there's life outside of financial industry" but, somehow, we get to stick to "financial" jobs.

Well, that's been my experience for the past 15 years or so.

There's a reason why I only chat about consulting opportunities with fintech companies. =) Ain't got time for FT for them.

Still, financial industry has lots of high paying jobs as well as bonuses to neglect it.

Would you resist making 140K on a base full-time? Keep in mind benefits and bonuses too.

I get offered quantitative investment jobs all the time, as I have substantial experience with finance.

I eventually came to regard it as unethical, so I turn those jobs down.

And if you're good you can make $140K base outside of finance (and outside of NYC and SF, too) without too much digging, too.

In most places $140K is about the ceiling. In NYC it's not. Plus finances pay bonuses.

Furthermore, what does it mean to be good? If you're smarter than your interviewer or know more, they'll reject you. In general, I would say selling yourself has nothing to do with your programming skills.

My total take-home at my last job was about $180K. I'm 27. I'm not top-of-market in Boston; top-of-market is around $220K and that's assuming an average-ish bonus situation. And, no, I tend to be better prepped and, usually, more knowledgeable than my interviewers, because that's what they would be paying me for. Because I am good at what I do, I have a deep and wide base of knowledge and have significant successes in my past, and they know it.

You're digging a real deep hole and making your project seem remarkably unserious. I would suggest that you stop.

Ok, thanks! Let's stop.

Do you get actual offers or do you get asked to interview with them? There's a difference.

Yeah, a lot of my co-workers including myself don't like it because we're helping the rich get richer plus associated consequences.

Here are some leads for you:

http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/united-states/oregon/m...

http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/united-states/washingt...

http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/united-states/californ...

None of them are staffing firms.

Michael, we'll do our best to attract direct employers to our site. To be honest, it is difficult to attract (and satisfy) both job seekers and employers. We're still an early stage start-up.

Read the book "Successful Cold-Call Selling". It doesn't have to do with tech but is very food.

Then call each of the companies that I list. If you think they're a big company, ask for their HR manager, otherwise ask for their software engineering manager, then pitch your job board.

Will do. By the way, we all can help each other if we tell our employers about this site (yeah, I know I need it more than you).

Yesterday a couple of direct employers signed so hopefully we'll have more jobs but don't expect a lot at this stage.

Keep checking once in a while. We're not a social network and therefore don't want you to spend a lot of time on our site.

Here's what I find amazing. Nobody seems to like staffing agencies. Yet there are plenty of them, they have lots of jobs and employees. Mystery.

It's not that a staffing agency couldn't find me a job. It's that I regard staffing agencies as an albatross around the neck of the economy. Consider how much more could be invested in new products and services, were staffing agencies not to receive their commissions.

I agree with you. There are many problems with staffing agencies and this is one of them.

Searches for "Washington" and "Washington, DC" found nothing for me. When I browse I see "District of Columbia", nobody actually calls it that.

What is it called? We chose to use full state names rather than the abbreviations, i.e. "New Jersey" rather than "NJ." That's why "District of Columbia" rather than "DC."

Right now at least one keyword such as Java needs to be specified in order for the search to return results (assuming there are jobs with those keywords). Adding a location (you can have multiple cities and/or states) narrows your search down to jobs in those cities or states.

We may change the logic to return all the jobs if only a location is specified. This seems to be the confusing part. (We're analyzing job searches to improve them.)

Thanks for your feedback!

Hey Hacker News!

We're a new job search site for all computer professionals. Please, check us out! We made the website intentionally simple but we're C++ programmers, not designers. Therefore, we would appreciate any feedback, both positive and negative.

YC-funded start-ups and everyone else, if you're looking to post your jobs, please, give us a try. We're giving 25 free jobs to promote our site but if you need more, contact us and tell us you found us on Hacker News. We'll figure out something for you.

Those who need a job or looking for a change, we don't require you to register to submit your resume and never will. Just a few basic fields to fill out and you're done!

Thanks, folks!

Not a huge deal but from a design perspective the Times New Roman really hurts my eyes. Just changing it to something smoother like Ubuntu or Arial would make it 10x better for me. The blue hyperlinks also look a little ugly to me on the plain white background, so I would either change their color to be a little lighter or add a slight grey background.

The site itself is great, though.

What's your OS? And thank you for your valuable input!

I developed most of the site on my 15.6 inch laptop running Ubuntu. I just loved Ubuntu's Times New Roman and didn't like its Arial. On Windows it's the opposite. Arial looks much better.

Similarly, blue hyperlinks looked great on my laptop's monitor but they're so-so on other monitors.

And you just confirmed both of my thoughts! There's indeed a great contrast between blue hyperlinks and white background on most monitors. And the font is hideous on Windows too, :-(.

We're going to fix both problems soon. As well, we're analyzing job searches to improve them. There's a lot of room for improvement both on the front-end and back-end.

My response came from a windows desktop with a fairly nice monitor. I just checked on my macbook (retina, 15"), first on osx, and then on Ubuntu. You're right, it looks much better! I still think that loading the ubuntu font from google fonts would be better (and then using arial/tmr as a fallback) but to each their own.

As far as the general design, I don't want to be too harsh but the website looks a little 2005 to me, if you judge by this (obviously unofficial) scale: http://i.imgur.com/7f24Qfs.jpg. This reddit thread is a great place to find good websites (http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/comments/2zpk4u/best_site...) but a few quick suggestions would be to toss the plain white background, make the main search box a little more pleasing, making the logo and text a little bigger, and try a more modern design for the actual job list (I would look into something like what hckrnews.com does or one of these http://www.freshdesignweb.com/free-css-tables.html).

Also, and I hate myself for saying this, but you may want to look into using bootstrap (http://getbootstrap.com/). I was originally against it since it makes websites look similar and I generally like to write my own code, it does make it easy to modernize projects.

Thank you for all your feedback again! You were not harsh at all and I can't help but agree with you. We'll try to improve it on the front end and back end and if we make enough money, we'll hire a professional designer.

I think the biggest threat to this site's success is that it lacks differentiation in a market that's already extremely saturated.

One problem the current job search sites have that you might be interested in tackling, is that they lack a way of objectively measuring the capabilities of the applicants.

There are software engineers that are 100x as productive as some others, but the pay for all of us is always within a factor of 3 or 4. If you can solve that problem, employers will love you for helping them hire better engineers, and qualified applicants will love you for getting them higher-paying jobs.

Thank you for your feedback!

My partner has exactly the same thoughts. The market is indeed extremely saturated and there's huge money in it. However, I haven't seen good websites (in my opinion, that is) without all that clutter and visual noise.

Our focus is more on simplicity and we don't want you to spend hours on our site. Instead, we want you to quickly find a job, send your resume and move on. When you need a job, of course.

We too discussed the problem you suggested. That, however, imposes an additional burden on job seekers. Think about it. Interviews used to be 50 minutes long with one interviewer. Now we have phone screens in addition to face-to-face interviews, tests, job seekers have to fill out forms with hundreds of fields, meet with a bunch of interviewers, post JSON objects to URLs and other "clever" things.

This is not normal and we want to change that. I wonder if anyone else has given a thought to the whole situation.

Anyway, it's not our final decision and right now we just don't have the capacity for all extra stuff.

Feedback: To be honest if I saw it while browsing links to check out I'd immediately disregard it due to the design - it seriously looks like an old geocities template. Even if your content is good - I think the design needs to be worked on, it doesn't need to be flash, but just modernised.

mrmondo, you've got a perfectly valid point! The website was developed by C++ developers. We can write CSS but modern web UI isn't our strength, :-(. And thank you for your input too!

My first view shows me the site is already flooded by recruiters. That's a deal breaker got me personally.

yup searched 'angular' and only recruiters showed up no _real_ companies. If I want to sift through a sea of recruiters, indeed does a great job of that.

Gents, it's in the subject. We're a new site and to be honest, it is difficult to attract and satisfy both job seekers and recruiters. We'll do our best to attract direct employers!

I still gave your thread an upvote because I hope it does take off and get better. I was just a little disappointed to see all recruiting companies.

Sorry to disappoint you and thank you for an upvote!

By creating this thread, we were raising awareness among job seekers _and_ recruiters/direct employers (not just job seekers) but right now it's too early to judge.

A couple of direct employers signed up yesterday and we all can help each other by telling our employers about this site. Yeah, I know I need it more than you.

I am a social sciences research professional following hn. Naturally all job board announcements are geared towards programmers and engineers...

Any idea where i should go to find research jobs? Apart from the crappy Indeed and LinkedIn that is...

Unfortunately I don't know how to help you. If you're in academia, maybe you should check various colleges and universities' websites?

(I'm the OP, was on my phone so ended up with a diff account.)

Unfortunately, I am trying to move from academia to the private / non-profit sector's 'research associate' etc roles. Finding it to be truly difficult.

Thanks for the reply though!

Why do you want to move out of academia? Get a tenure and you'll be doing your research plus you'll secure a job for the rest of your life.

> Why do you want to move out of academia? Get a tenure and you'll be doing your research plus you'll secure a job for the rest of your life.

In short, the privatization (education for profit) and adjunct (severe labor exploitation) issues are horrible in that sector and I want no part in these.

These are the same issues both the non-profit and private non-academic sectors deal with too, but the private and non-profit sectors do not have the same amount of hypocrisy and blindness as academia when it comes to sticking a ten-feet pole on fire up one's ass.

By the way, our friend Evan has jobs paying up to 180K in NYC. You might want to contact him. https://www.staticjobs.com/search.php?company=Quantitative+S...

err, 180K and 2+ years of professional programming experience with.. blah blah blah

2 years of experience and 180k?! What do I get for 10? Im in the wrong city I guess

That's the problem. Most recruiters stuff every keyword they're aware of into their job ads and raise salaries to get resumes but 180K in NYC is definitely not the limit.

I know that man, though he never placed me. He has jobs in HFT field and financial industry in general.

How true those 180K I don't know.

Not intended to find remote work - always "location". It's not even funny in 2015.

It's fast but needs some work. I get a lot of false hits, especially when you add the city.

I wonder how fast it'll be when (hopefully) we have more jobs in the database. Just curious to know.

And a great catch! The search is not perfect yet. False hits are returned if a city name occurs within a job description itself. For example, you search for Java in San Francisco, other jobs will be returned too if they contain San Francisco.

We're aware of this issue and it's on our top to-do list. Plus we're analyzing searches to make them better but right now there are just to few jobs in our database.

And thank you for your input too, old man!

"old man!"

???

Sorry, didn't mean any offense. I meant it as an old-fashioned way of saying "good friend", etc.

As well, you may get "false hits" (note the quotes) because recruiters stuff every keyword they're aware of into their job ads. Even if it has nothing to do with the job itself, :-(. We just don't highlight them (yet).

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