Tell HN: Thank you whoishiring, a.k.a. Matthew Walsh-Cloonagh

[dang]

Back in 2011, an HN user volunteered to consolidate the scattered "who is hiring" posts that were popping up and post one automatically at the start of each month. This not only worked well, it became an HN institution.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2391828

Four years of yeoman service later, our mysterious benefactor has gotten a lot busier and arranged with us to take over the account. I asked if we could thank him publicly and he said sure. So thank you, Matthew Walsh-Cloonagh! You've helped a ton of people get jobs, and made Hacker News a better place. We're all much obliged.

Any thoughts about "Who is Hiring" and related threads that any of you want to share? Fire away.

Edits, based on the discussion below:

I think we'll change the time of these postings to 11 AM Eastern time. This balances east and west a bit better, and has the practical advantage that when something goes haywire with one of them, the problem won't languish for hours before we fix it. (If anybody posts before 11 AM Eastern tomorrow morning wondering where the thread is, or tries to make one, please refer them here.)

We'll also make the posts show up on the first weekday of each month, instead of each day—but that won't make a difference until August.

Finally, we'll make it more explicit that to post a job in the thread you need to personally be part of the hiring company, not a recruiter or third party.

[tptacek]

The ranking of stories on the hiring threads should be randomized.

It's one thing for my comments to be bolted to the tops of threads about crypto, owing (in reality) mostly to name recognition.

It's another thing entirely for my job posts to be bolted to the tops of hiring threads, which they were, routinely. It felt like cheating, and it was pretty valuable to us. It's perverse.

[crdb]

To be the devil's advocate: that the community recognizes you as high quality (even in an unrelated field) IS in itself a signal that the job might be higher quality than a random new user's. A kind of reference from a trusted source.

[sjackso]

Great idea. Potentially more useful alternative: rank the posts strictly by the time they were posted, so that it's easy to see what's new since you last looked. (Perhaps allow posts to be downvoted but not upvoted?)

I was reading the hiring threads regularly for a number of months, and I picked up the habit of scrolling past the first N postings each time: they were highly-ranked HN users posting jobs for their companies, often repeated month to month. Good jobs, no doubt, and good people, but I didn't need a monthly reminder that (e.g.) Matasano is hiring in cities far away from me. :)

[comrh]

I like this idea but the thing that makes the threads tough is I can scan 400+ posts then come back to 100+ more posted but I can't sort to the new ones.

[cperciva]

you need to personally be part of the hiring company — not a recruiter or third party.

What about recruiters who are full-time employees of the hiring company?

I think a stronger restriction, namely "you should only post about positions which you will be personally involved with" would make this more even useful -- we don't need to be told every month that Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple are hiring, but if tptacek (to take a local celebrity as a convenient hypothetical) posted that Starfighter was looking to hire a sysadmin then potential candidates would be able to ask questions and anticipate getting useful answers.

[dang]

I personally agree with you. The best kind of job post, to my taste, is by someone I'd be working with. But I fear it would be a step too far to impose this on the whole thread.

[binxbolling]

I would personally prefer this stay fairly loose and only exclude recruiters/middlemen who have no relationship to the hiring company. These are the people blowing up my phone and inbox based on one random keyword from a resume or profile.

On the other hand, an in-house recruiter, an outside recruiter contracted by the company, the actual hiring manager, just a peer or colleague, the company's receptionist... I think all these should be allowed.

If we're going to cut one more cohort from the above paragraph, cut the 3rd party recruiters. However, excluding all talent acquisition teams and/or other co-workers within the company seems unnecessarily restrictive.

[seanp2k2]

Then they'd personally be part of the hiring company, no? I think the intent here is to not have "middle persons" posting jobs trying for the interstitial profits, and in the case of a recruiter for FooBar Inc on the FooBar Inc payroll, there doesn't seem to be an issue IMO.

[timv]

I agree, but for a slightly different reason.

Only large(ish) companies have recruiters that are also employees. Most small startups have no one in that role, and medium sized startups would be more likely to have a freelance consultant than an employee. (Our startup has used a consultant for more specialised or senior roles).

Its seems strange that we'd want to let the Google/FB/Apple etc HR folk post, but not "Sally Smith, consultant to UltraSecretLabs.io"

It seems the easiest rule is what you suggest, ban them all - you can only post roles that you're personally involved in.

[shawnps]

I hadn't thought about this very much until I read this post, but I got my first job out of college through a "who is hiring" post back in 2011 (so I guess it was one of the first posts!) and that job changed my life. I flew out to California from the east coast, lived in SF, met a large number of incredibly smart and passionate people, and to this day the network I grew out there is hugely influential on my life and my career. So thanks from me as well!

[dstein64]

> "Any thoughts..."

Existing HN hiring threads start with:

> "Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords INTERN, REMOTE, or VISA if the corresponding sort of candidate is welcome."

Searching for "intern" matches postings with "internet", "international", etc. I've seen comments suggesting that a search for "remote" matches "no remote".

Here's a quick fix that uses a prefix, for consideration:

> "Please lead with the location of the position and include the keywords +INTERN, +REMOTE, or +VISA if..."

[pash]

Is the +VISA keyword meant to indicate that the hiring company will aid candidates in obtaining a visa, or that the candidate must already have the right to work locally?

[dang]

Would INTERNS do? INTERNSHIP is a bit long, and I don't like +INTERN; we like HN threads to consist of plain, good English. It's moot anyway because half the posts would ignore it.

[superuser2]

INTERNSHIP would be a nice fix for the "intern" problem. However I suspect that requiring willingness to schlep or dig into regex might be considered by employers to be a feature rather than a bug :).

[Hello71]

[INTERN] [REMOTE] [VISA]

[dools]

Just search the word intern with a space after it. Remote matching no remote is harder but if we have a remote indicator why would anyone say no remote? If they did it would be a sign you don't want to work for them ...

[petercooper]

There are things the kids are using nowadays called hashtags that might be more familiar to people? :-) #intern #remote etc.

[simi_]

Or, just have a nice interface on top. Something like http://hnhiring.me/, but with actual features - sorting and filtering, for starters. Maybe even embed that functionality into HN for "who's hiring" posts, instead of relying on a 3rd party website.

[lukasm]

Whenever there is a new hn whoishiring I'm trying to add remote companies to a "persistent" list. The problem is filtering. Please use REMOTE, LOCAL, {COUNTRY, CONTINENT, TIMEZONE}-ONLY

Shameless plug: Please send me PRs. https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job

[raverbashing]

Just search for 'intern ' using Ctrl-F

Now, I'm not sure how search engines deal with +A, google considers +A to search on G+ (used to mean "mandatory", now quotes mean that)

So the prefix idea might work but it may need to change

[davidddavidson]

The following regular expression can be used when searching to match "intern" and "internship" (singular and plural):

    \bintern(ship)?(s)?\b

[phantom_oracle]

I think you can probably fix the "REMOTE" issue, which makes it difficult for the hundreds of talented people looking for remote-only work and having to deal with this:

- "Sorry no remote"

- "REMOTE - No"

- "remote unavailable currently"

- etc.

The phrasing should change to:

REMOTE or ON-SITE

That way, from amongst even the coolest "Who is Hiring" sites, like this:

http://hnhiring.me/

Folks can finally filter out the non-remote work properly.

[timv]

Can I propose something like

- REMOTE(global)

- REMOTE(continental US)

- REMOTE(UK work hours)

A number of employers consider "Remote" to mean come in to the office once a month, but many job seekers think of remote as live on the other side of the world.

Encouraging some disambiguation would help.

[sarciszewski]

Yes, this would be completely Ctrl+F friendly too.

[dang]

I'm happy to add ONSITE (probably best without a complicating hyphen?) but can't say I share your optimism about it fixing the inevitable issues with free-form text.

For the same reason, I think it's a lost cause trying to impose a machine-readable format on text fields, as many have been suggesting. There would be so many exceptions as to make the situation more complicated, not less.

[zo1]

One particular down-side I've noticed when browsing those sorts of threads:

I often "view" them before people have stopped posting to it. As such, I have absolutely no idea which ones are new or which ones I've already read after I've refreshed the page to get new items.

The only easy-to-implement solution I can think of is allowing us to sort the posts in chronological order as opposed to the hybrid point/time system that's currently in place.

[dang]

> I have absolutely no idea which ones are new or which ones I've already read after I've refreshed the page to get new items

After thinking about this for a bit I believe it's best addressed by solving this problem for all threads, not just whoishiring threads. That is, make an easy way to optionally limit a thread to the comments you haven't seen before (edit: or highlight them). This is something we intend to do.

[prophetjohn]

Shameless plug for a Chrome extension that I wrote that helps with this a bit (if you use Chrome).

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacked-hacker-news...

[cgearhart]

I wrote a plugin that hides replies and allows you to permanently hide jobs. [1] I'd like to update it so that hidden posts carry over between months, and perhaps to re-sort the posts based on post date.

I have since found that with over 800 posts each month positive sorting is not efficient enough. Around the same time I found a search plugin from another user, but I haven't used it. [2]

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/modwh/hefjlchphbeb... [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-whos-hiring-job...

[jstx]

I, too, had issues with this, so I made this script to limit the thread to only the jobs posted in the last 24h. It should be simple enough to modify it to meet your needs. Not the most elegant solution, mind you, but it worked.

https://gist.github.com/JasonGhent/8b04fffbacb006cb870b

[danso]

Great service, thanks Matt.

One suggestion for the posting text: maybe provide a more machine-readable template for submitters to provide metadata? Just a minimal amount of metadata to make it easier for those who write mini-apps to parse the submissions.

To refer back to the most recent hiring post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9471287

Seems like submitters try to do their own, e.g.

      Soostone | NYC or Remote Possible | Functional Programmer (Haskell) | Backend, Frontend, DevOps, UI/UX Engineering


      San Francisco - Full Time - iOS, Android, Design


      GoDaddy | Product Manager - Managed WordPress | Sunnyvale, CA or Phoenix, AZ | Local

How about this, for each job:

[Company name] | [Job title] | [location(s), semi-colon delimited] ["Remote", if applicable] | [Full-time/Part-Time/Intern/Visa/Remote | [Optional list of semi-colon delimited skills]

e.g.

Acme | Senior Database Engineer | San Francisco, CA; Las Vegas, NV (Remote possible) | Full-time | MySQL

[tptacek]

A lot of concerns on this thread about making job posts easier for machines to read. I understand why, but as someone who used to write a lot of hiring thread posts: I'm a little skeeved out by machines reading them, because usually that implies that some other site on the Internet is going to host the ad without my permission.

[e12e]

I agree, as someone who is considering applying for a new job (although I've yet to apply... maybe this month :-).

Much of the value in hn in general and the who's hiring in particular has to do with the community.

On the other hand, the postings have grown in number, and with the poor (non-existent) tooling, it's getting harder to find a subset of "interesting" jobs.

I'd be happy to see changes that focused on making the ads better for the "typical" target: make it easy to short-list interesting opportunities. The classical problem here is browser text-search and "remote/no-remote/remote-ok/remote: no" (my: suggestion: #remote).

The removal of paging is great for this. I only now figured out that the "time since posted"-text is the new place for the "link-to-this-comment"-link. That's also useful, as it allows one to "save" ads to new browser tabs.

[kaolinite]

My partner found his first job through Who Is Hiring working at an American firm (we're based in the UK). He's on considerably more money than he would be if he were working locally. I'm envious that his first job was so good - mine was working for a pretty awful web dev firm, highly underpaid. Things have gotten better since then (I run my own company now, for one), but I can't thank Matthew enough for enabling him to not have to go through a bunch of poor quality, poorly paid jobs before he found something he really enjoys.

Thanks Matthew.

[rickhanlonii]

If you're going to add some code to this, it may make sense to add an additional rule around who is allowed to post that is related to karma and/or account age.

If you compare top and bottom of the May 2015 thread it seems that the quality drops with newer accounts or low karma accounts.

I think a rule like this would also ensure that it's this community posting to the thread and not someone from the outside trying to post to yet another job board--which is the spirit of the "no recruiters" rule.

[dang]

I like this idea. The threshold could be small.

Any objections?

[vellum]

Companies should be encouraged to share the salary range for the positions, as well as their interview process (take home assignment, whiteboard, pair programming, etc.)

[jimjohn2323]

Why not just include Who's Hiring as a top level navigation item. If it's that popular perhaps it deserves it's own archive/timeline.

[giancarlostoro]

I agree, and while it's not the same, you can always look through the submissions of the account.:

https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring

Now if it didn't become a feature of some sort, it could still become an addition to a plugin for small convenience (or a Stylish script or something).

[huhtenberg]

> Any thoughts

1. If it's not done yet, can you disable pagination for these posts to always show all comments?

2. Order top-level comments by submission time rather than with the regular HN weighing algorithm. This would make it much easier to see what new was posted since the last refresh.

[dang]

Re 1, We don't paginate comments any more. I had a fine time ripping out that code.

Re 2, that seems worth considering. Presumably most recent at the top?

[Matachines]

I just want to say that as a college student, HN Who's Hiring has been a great resource in both applying for internships and finding out about new companies.

My university has little to no programming jobs in their career resources, so I have to rely on my own research and HN has made it a lot easier.

Although I haven't gotten an offer yet (really just applied to a few out of curiosity), every company I've interviewed from here has been excellent interviewers and people in general. Way, way better than Angel List!

[Killswitch]

Always seen them, never used them. Due to recent events, I've been patiently awaiting tomorrow for the last two weeks.

Thank you Matthew, and HN for continuing it on his behalf.

[Akkuma]

I'd like to see a way to "review" job postings that stick with companies. I've had many applications on postings go completely ignored without a response even when it is through email and mentions Hacker News. I've also seen what appears to be many purposefully misleading remote labels for jobs.

[peteretep]

    > make it explicit that to post a job in the thread you
    > need to personally be part of the hiring company—not a
    > recruiter or third party.

I thought this was already the case, and have held off posting jobs I'm hiring for.

It would be nice to be allowed to post a single "OH HAI I'M A RECRUITER WITH THESE ROLES" comment on the Hiring Threads. Spamming the thread with 10 jobs, or misrepresenting a recruitment role as the company hiring are obvious losses, but if you're looking at a "Who is Hiring" thread, you're looking for a job. I would like to be able to mention my recruitment speciality and my recruiter email address on these threads, clearly labelled as such. If it gets downvoted to all heck, then it gets downvoted, but it would be nice to give this a go.

[mountaineer]

Thank you Matthew! As someone who found a job through who is hiring as well as created a side-project built on it to learn new things and study trends, I appreciate the idea and the work to keep it going.

@dang Will it be published by the "whoishiring" or "_whoishiring" account going forward?

[dang]

Exercise to the reader. This site was built by a minimalist. :)

[whbk]

I got an incredible job last year through one of these threads. It's quite likely altered the trajectory of my (still nascent) career in a way that none of the other options I was considering at the time would have. Thanks, Matthew.

[mark_o]

Why was the Who Is Hiring post from this morning flagged?

[wazoox]

Because it was posted by someone else than the "official" whoishiring account.