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.
There was another post in this thread that basically said, “toughen up buttercup” that I can no longer find. While I agree that this is a dickish thing to say, I can’t help but somewhat agree with the sentiment that tech workers are perhaps a little bit better off than the average person and don’t have a lot of perspective here about how bad it can get. Not saying that it’s ok, rather that when you can easily find another job it’s pretty easy to take a principled stand.
I flew for a living for a long time and was verbally harassed at many jobs by a superior. I remember talking on the radio once during a checkride - “do you have shit in your mouth? Because you sound like it.”
He was just being an asshole to rile me up, but it remains an asshole thing to say, and you have to deal with it because he literally holds your career in his hands. Personally, in that moment I vowed I’d never do that to anyone - but it doesn’t mean it isn’t widespread and it doesn’t mean quitting was an option.
Other times in my career I was expressedly told violate regulations or do legal but wildly unsafe things; because I had massive student loan debt at the time (I paid all that shit off eventually greatest feeling in the world), rent to pay, I had to make a lot of compromises I’m not proud of retrospectively because I did not want to be homeless or laid off looking for a flying job in 2009.
To act as though everyone can quit if their ego gets bruised by some jackass is the height of privilege. Many many other careers do not have that option. Not saying it is right in the least, but I feel a lot of people would really benefit from an understanding that how principled a person can be often practically changed by exterior circumstances.
That’s the thing I want people to take away from all this - a sort of “dialectical materialism” sort of view - that being able to quit without worse consequences than a bruised ego is unto itself a sort of prosperity many many people do not have.
This is my first time hearing of 'moral harassment'. Is that an actual phrase or is English not your native language? Reading the rest of your comment it seems the manager was just a bully, but please elaborate if that understanding is incorrect!
I can very much relate to your situation but unfortunately not sure what to do.
I’m doing some contract work on the side. Every day I’m like if this guy harasses me again I’m going to put my notice in go work for less money but unfortunately I’m not even sure what decision should I take since the job is high paying but on the hand the contract work is with the startup and pays less money compared to what I make
I wish economy was better so I could leave my toxic job.
I like that you curated your search, hiring would be in such a better place if everyone did that. Anymore, every single opening gets spammed thousands of resumes with absolutely no skill or history relevant to the company. Makes it harder for the hiring side and people like yourself.
> 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.
2021. Different time, different hiring attitudes. A shame 2024 is no longer an employee's market.
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.
> 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.
That was a piece of advice I wish I had when I was in high school. It wasn't until halfway though college that I understood the difference. It was abundantly obvious that the vast majority of CS students should have been in a "Software Engineering" program, too.
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.
Really? I wouldn't have thunk that this place would have contract roles. Were they w2 or c2c or 1099? The last 2 are super hard to come by. Got any tips to share on where to find such roles?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
[+] [-] atum47|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] piloto_ciego|1 year ago|reply
I flew for a living for a long time and was verbally harassed at many jobs by a superior. I remember talking on the radio once during a checkride - “do you have shit in your mouth? Because you sound like it.”
He was just being an asshole to rile me up, but it remains an asshole thing to say, and you have to deal with it because he literally holds your career in his hands. Personally, in that moment I vowed I’d never do that to anyone - but it doesn’t mean it isn’t widespread and it doesn’t mean quitting was an option.
Other times in my career I was expressedly told violate regulations or do legal but wildly unsafe things; because I had massive student loan debt at the time (I paid all that shit off eventually greatest feeling in the world), rent to pay, I had to make a lot of compromises I’m not proud of retrospectively because I did not want to be homeless or laid off looking for a flying job in 2009.
To act as though everyone can quit if their ego gets bruised by some jackass is the height of privilege. Many many other careers do not have that option. Not saying it is right in the least, but I feel a lot of people would really benefit from an understanding that how principled a person can be often practically changed by exterior circumstances.
That’s the thing I want people to take away from all this - a sort of “dialectical materialism” sort of view - that being able to quit without worse consequences than a bruised ego is unto itself a sort of prosperity many many people do not have.
[+] [-] mylastattempt|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mraza007|1 year ago|reply
I’m doing some contract work on the side. Every day I’m like if this guy harasses me again I’m going to put my notice in go work for less money but unfortunately I’m not even sure what decision should I take since the job is high paying but on the hand the contract work is with the startup and pays less money compared to what I make
I wish economy was better so I could leave my toxic job.
Some managers are really pain in the ass
[+] [-] silisili|1 year ago|reply
I like that you curated your search, hiring would be in such a better place if everyone did that. Anymore, every single opening gets spammed thousands of resumes with absolutely no skill or history relevant to the company. Makes it harder for the hiring side and people like yourself.
[+] [-] gaws|1 year ago|reply
2021. Different time, different hiring attitudes. A shame 2024 is no longer an employee's market.
[+] [-] cchance|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] smabie|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] zer0sand0nes|1 year ago|reply
How is that life anyways? I know very little about it?
[+] [-] snow_mac|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] as1mov|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] qsdf38100|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] drewcoo|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] peterldowns|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gwbas1c|1 year ago|reply
That was a piece of advice I wish I had when I was in high school. It wasn't until halfway though college that I understood the difference. It was abundantly obvious that the vast majority of CS students should have been in a "Software Engineering" program, too.
[+] [-] rvrs|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] nfriedly|1 year ago|reply
On the flip side, I can think of three people who were hired via "who's hiring?" posts I put up.
[+] [-] jaggederest|1 year ago|reply
I generally prefer YC companies and early stage startups, so it's generally been good for me.
[+] [-] zer0sand0nes|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] akg_67|1 year ago|reply
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
[+] [-] djbusby|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] PabloSichert|1 year ago|reply
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
[+] [-] robin_reala|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] loa_in_|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] fuzzieozzie|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] 7thaccount|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] tracker1|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] crench|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Aperocky|1 year ago|reply
I know there are cities in the midwest but I chuckled at this description.
[+] [-] harlanji|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] imroot|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Arubis|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] rco8786|1 year ago|reply
I've also now hired several excellent engineers through the same means (not at Twitter).
"Who's Hiring" threads are amazing.
[+] [-] shortstuffsushi|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] slashdev|1 year ago|reply
Not the ads, but the Who’s hiring posts.
No regrets. I just found a new job, same way.
[+] [-] unnewsie|1 year ago|reply