4 ms·

Where are the places that developers show up? On HN and Twitter. Do something to spread awareness of your company. It will be a long journey, but if you don't h

Where are the places that developers show up? On HN and Twitter. Do something to spread awareness of your company. It will be a long journey, but if you don't have $$$ to throw at a problem, you need to find alternatives: - There's a monthly "Who is hiring" thread on HN every 1st day of a month. - Create a technical blog. When it gets popular and people see that it's high quality, brand awareness will increase. It takes time but it can bring massive gains. Extreme example: Cloudflare. But there are many smaller nice blogs. If your blog is good, it will naturally come up when people google for things etc. - Create an RSS feed for the blog and a Twitter account ${Foobar}Engineering that RTs your blog posts. Just make sure the blog and Twitter are high quality and rare, and not random filler content every day. - Do something unexpected, like: TikTok or YouTube channel. There's one small company in Poland that has a YouTube channel with basically short fun programming sketches (2-3 min), and this YT channel became huge. Everyone in IT in Poland knows them (https://www.youtube.com/c/HRejterzy https://www.youtube.com/c/HRejterzy). - Relax your requirements, and post job offers to good job boards. Are you fine with people working remotely? Or 4 days a week? Check stuff like https://remoteok.com/ https://remoteok.com/ https://4dayweek.io/ https://4dayweek.io/ etc. - Include approx. salary data in job offer. No one likes this dance of "do they want seniors at half my current rate?". - Perhaps become a sponsor of some underinvested opensource repos? The repo owners will likely give you some visibility on their website and top of the repo README.

azangru 5y ago
Add StackOverflow jobs to the mix.
- jakub_g 5y ago
  SO jobs is shutting down in a few weeks, sadly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023343
  - azangru 5y ago
    Oh no! I didn't know that.
Nextgrid 5y ago
> No one likes this dance of "do they want seniors at half my current rate?". This is the reason I don't even bother with permanent roles in startups anymore. Every time the budget ends up being disappointing and about half my current income. Even worse when they approach me on a platform where they can see my profile & history and infer very well what I currently make and still proceed to pitch me their terrible role.
- nfriedly 5y ago
  Haha, seriously, although to be fair to the startups, it occasionally works. I was getting really burned out at my last job (wasn't a FAANG, but had FAANG-level pay), and ended up joining a startup at ~half my current pay, but way less stress. I am so much happier now. Also, thanks mostly to equity appreciation, I'm almost up to what my previous jobs starting pay was :-)
- miklosme 5y ago
  > Every time the budget ends up being disappointing and about half my current income. Protip: on the very first call, say “My current salary is XY. A competing offer is in your budget?” Protip2: XY doesn’t have to be your actual salary, use a number that is your desired floor to start the negotiation from.
  - CoastalCoder 5y ago
    I get the impression that in the long term and on average, people benefit more from being honest. So how about just saying, "I'm currently only considering positions with salary XY. Is that in your budget?"
    - muzani 5y ago
      Often if I go job hunting, there's a 25%-250% increase in salary. The 250% is often some tiny startup in a developed nation, which comes with its own costs; no healthcare, dodgy contract, remote, etc. But the idea is that it's easy to just take -- or turn down, a range much higher than you make now.
jakub_g 5y ago
Also: think about all the candidates you implicitly reject and others reject. They are an opportunity. Hire people that no one else wants (for wrong reasons). Go to universities and hire motivated juniors. Offer paid internships etc. Highly recommend to follow https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz
- maccard 5y ago
  Hiring juniors and/or interns is something every company should do, however they're not "just" missed opportunities. If you want them to succeed you have to put in the work to help them do so, and that in itself needs to be budgetted for with every junior hire.
  - jakub_g 5y ago
    Definitely. Every option requires $$$/time/effort or combination of them. There are very few good & experienced & cheap & available devs just waiting for job offers.
- e4e78a06 5y ago
  The vast majority of candidates are applying because they got bounced around and have to apply everywhere due to not being qualified. If you're a no-name firm paying merely around market rate you're not even going to see the high performers because they've already been snapped up by bigger or higher paying players. I don't know a single person from my college days who I'd describe as a strong performer that would have taken a job from a random startup (i.e. no name recognition of founders or investors) for subpar pay. The people who ended up working at these no-name companies with subpar pay were almost always 1x or 0.5x programmers, whereas many of the people I knew who got A/A+ in OS and compiler classes were easily 10x programmers capable of building complex products from scratch. Not saying we don't need 1x programmers but if you're a startup I think paying 3x salary for a 10x programmer is a much better deal than hiring 3 1x programmers.
  - PiedPiper1337 5y ago
    There are diamonds in the rough especially at university. I wouldn't consider myself as a "high-performer" but I did consistently get decent grades and I myself worked for below "merely" market-rate as we didn't have alot of big companies in my country. Now days I work at one of the most "prestigious" tech companies in the world that alot of people want to get into. So I wouldn't be jumping straight to the conclusion that all good tech talent is immediately already in the "amazing" companies as soon as they graduate.
Varqu 5y ago
We run a few developer-dedicated job boards with mandatory salary information (and our own approach to the Joel-Test): - UK: https://devitjobs.uk https://devitjobs.uk - US: https://devitjobs.us https://devitjobs.us - Germany: https://germantechjobs.de https://germantechjobs.de The audience is growing steadily and the US and UK sites are free to post (but you have to provide the salary)
- nfriedly 5y ago
  Looks like there's a typo in your US link, I believe it should be https://devitjobs.us/ https://devitjobs.us/
  - Varqu 5y ago
    Thanks, fixed!
ecshafer 5y ago
Do developers show up on twitter? Of the 100 or so professional software engineers and it pros I have worked closely with over the last decade, I think I know... 1 that used twitter. Maybe they follow engineering on twitter, maybe not. Twitter gets you, twitter people, not necessarily software engineers.
- jakub_g 5y ago
  There are many people who passively use Twitter and don't follow / comment much. But I agree it's true, Twitter is massive time sink and many people rightfully avoid it. It's just one of places to look, and it attracts specific subset of devs.

azangru 5y ago

Add StackOverflow jobs to the mix.

jakub_g 5y ago
SO jobs is shutting down in a few weeks, sadly. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30023343
- azangru 5y ago
  Oh no! I didn't know that.

Nextgrid 5y ago

> No one likes this dance of "do they want seniors at half my current rate?". This is the reason I don't even bother with permanent roles in startups anymore. Every time the budget ends up being disappointing and about half my current income. Even worse when they approach me on a platform where they can see my profile & history and infer very well what I currently make and still proceed to pitch me their terrible role.

nfriedly 5y ago
Haha, seriously, although to be fair to the startups, it occasionally works. I was getting really burned out at my last job (wasn't a FAANG, but had FAANG-level pay), and ended up joining a startup at ~half my current pay, but way less stress. I am so much happier now. Also, thanks mostly to equity appreciation, I'm almost up to what my previous jobs starting pay was :-)
miklosme 5y ago
> Every time the budget ends up being disappointing and about half my current income. Protip: on the very first call, say “My current salary is XY. A competing offer is in your budget?” Protip2: XY doesn’t have to be your actual salary, use a number that is your desired floor to start the negotiation from.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  I get the impression that in the long term and on average, people benefit more from being honest. So how about just saying, "I'm currently only considering positions with salary XY. Is that in your budget?"
  - muzani 5y ago
    Often if I go job hunting, there's a 25%-250% increase in salary. The 250% is often some tiny startup in a developed nation, which comes with its own costs; no healthcare, dodgy contract, remote, etc. But the idea is that it's easy to just take -- or turn down, a range much higher than you make now.

jakub_g 5y ago

Also: think about all the candidates you implicitly reject and others reject. They are an opportunity. Hire people that no one else wants (for wrong reasons). Go to universities and hire motivated juniors. Offer paid internships etc. Highly recommend to follow https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz

maccard 5y ago
Hiring juniors and/or interns is something every company should do, however they're not "just" missed opportunities. If you want them to succeed you have to put in the work to help them do so, and that in itself needs to be budgetted for with every junior hire.
- jakub_g 5y ago
  Definitely. Every option requires $$$/time/effort or combination of them. There are very few good & experienced & cheap & available devs just waiting for job offers.
e4e78a06 5y ago
The vast majority of candidates are applying because they got bounced around and have to apply everywhere due to not being qualified. If you're a no-name firm paying merely around market rate you're not even going to see the high performers because they've already been snapped up by bigger or higher paying players. I don't know a single person from my college days who I'd describe as a strong performer that would have taken a job from a random startup (i.e. no name recognition of founders or investors) for subpar pay. The people who ended up working at these no-name companies with subpar pay were almost always 1x or 0.5x programmers, whereas many of the people I knew who got A/A+ in OS and compiler classes were easily 10x programmers capable of building complex products from scratch. Not saying we don't need 1x programmers but if you're a startup I think paying 3x salary for a 10x programmer is a much better deal than hiring 3 1x programmers.
- PiedPiper1337 5y ago
  There are diamonds in the rough especially at university. I wouldn't consider myself as a "high-performer" but I did consistently get decent grades and I myself worked for below "merely" market-rate as we didn't have alot of big companies in my country. Now days I work at one of the most "prestigious" tech companies in the world that alot of people want to get into. So I wouldn't be jumping straight to the conclusion that all good tech talent is immediately already in the "amazing" companies as soon as they graduate.

Varqu 5y ago

We run a few developer-dedicated job boards with mandatory salary information (and our own approach to the Joel-Test): - UK: https://devitjobs.uk https://devitjobs.uk - US: https://devitjobs.us https://devitjobs.us - Germany: https://germantechjobs.de https://germantechjobs.de The audience is growing steadily and the US and UK sites are free to post (but you have to provide the salary)

nfriedly 5y ago
Looks like there's a typo in your US link, I believe it should be https://devitjobs.us/ https://devitjobs.us/
- Varqu 5y ago
  Thanks, fixed!

ecshafer 5y ago

Do developers show up on twitter? Of the 100 or so professional software engineers and it pros I have worked closely with over the last decade, I think I know... 1 that used twitter. Maybe they follow engineering on twitter, maybe not. Twitter gets you, twitter people, not necessarily software engineers.

jakub_g 5y ago
There are many people who passively use Twitter and don't follow / comment much. But I agree it's true, Twitter is massive time sink and many people rightfully avoid it. It's just one of places to look, and it attracts specific subset of devs.