5 ms·

Operating a failed job board is a lot like operating a failed casino. If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault. Especially when they

by pluc 1y ago

Operating a failed job board is a lot like operating a failed casino. If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault. Especially when they were so dominant a few years ago. Monster.com was a pop culture icon, even featured on The Office! I'm guessing that they failed to keep up with the market and kept developing features nobody wanted, until competition overwhelmed them.

mschuster91 1y ago
> If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault. The job markets are dead, just look at the last few months of layoffs across the board. First the Russian invasion and the resulting inflation plus the end of ZIRP, then the Trump tariff wars.
- pluc 1y ago
  The job markets aren't dead, job boards are still full of opportunities. What's dead is the interaction between recruiters and candidates, and we can thank AI for that. For job boards, there's definitely opportunities to cut through the bullshit there, but it's a lot easier to get on the bandwagon than it is to say the train is headed for a wall.
  - kassner 1y ago
    > job boards are still full of opportunities That’s not a proxy anymore. In my corner, I keep seeing the same listings over and over again. Friends with hiring power have all sorts of stories, multiple reorganizations, budget cuts (and then a week later announcing record profits on earnings calls). Companies are just not hiring. They need to say they are to keep investors on the hype (if you aren’t hiring you mustn’t be growing).
    - jf22 1y ago
      Idk about this. Every dev I know that has lost or left a job in the past year found another one without too much struggle. Cycles take longer and are more annoying but companies are definitely hiring.
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    > The job markets aren't dead, job boards are still full of opportunities. Many of these "open positions" aren't really planned to be filled. They're just out there to gauge interest or wait for the one "rockstar" candidate. Honestly, this kind of deception should be banned by law. So much time is wasted every year applying to jobs that practically aren't real.
bee_rider 1y ago
Like anything else, the casino business is competitive, right? A casino might be a money printer, but as the years go by the tech to print money can get cheaper, and there isn’t a ton of incumbency advantage because it’s all straightforward. Also with a job board, there seems to be a natural progression—the most valuable asset you can have is that the dummies and the useless resume-optimizers haven’t figured out how to game your system yet. So if anything there’s a huge incumbency disadvantage.
- pluc 1y ago
  If you invest nothing in your casino upkeep, or focus on stupid ideas like daily themed coasters, the new casino next door will take all your business just by being new.
  - bee_rider 1y ago
    Or if your casino has debts, like employee pensions, that your competition doesn’t have. Or if the town over has decided they want a slice of the pie too, and has added tax incentives that you can’t take advantage of.
skeeter2020 1y ago
I don't know their particular journey, but based on my experience with other PE-owned companies any post-mortem should trace that path to look at how that unfolded.
- lumost 1y ago
  As a Bostonian, I’d blame Bain capital and other east coast VC firms for the current state of the Boston tech scene. Firms largely lacked growth capital unless they adopted thesis driven strategies such as velocity sales. Chasing scale through cheap talent and cheap products doesn't really work in tech. The winning employee strategy was to pivot into either SV based firms or biotech about a decade ago.
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    The non-competes don't help either, but that's more of a symptom of the observations you have (and I +1 them). There are a couple promising Boston area tech startups I've been following, but it is definetly a much weaker ecosystem compared to even 15 years ago. The decline of Dell+EMC, Akamai, and VMWare+CarbonBlack also seemed to have play a role. That said, there are good Boston area VCs like General Catalyst, Unusual Ventures, and Fidelity Ventures, but at this point they've all basically moved to concentrate on identifying talent at Harvard+MIT who were already going to move West or to NYC. I hoped Klaviyo would have had a significant impact, but it seemed fairly muted for the size of exit it was. Same with it's ancestor Hubspot.
    - lumost 1y ago
      You can add trip advisor, wayfair, kayak, and others to that list. There is probably a bias at this point that experienced employees who are good are unlikely to work for the prevailing wages at these companies unless they are unable to earn more at west coast firms.
    - busterarm 1y ago
      I know some very early hires at Akamai and they're all still there and effectively lifers. And filthy rich.
boo-ga-ga 1y ago
> If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault I think it's exactly the opposite situation. In this market most money are made from companies and recruiters. If there is less demand and more supply for white collar jobs, companies don't need to spend their resources on all possible channels to reach candidates. That's why some "default" channel like LinkedIn will get a job posting, and all others won't, especially if these are paid.

by pluc 1y ago

mschuster91 1y ago

> If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault. The job markets are dead, just look at the last few months of layoffs across the board. First the Russian invasion and the resulting inflation plus the end of ZIRP, then the Trump tariff wars.

pluc 1y ago
The job markets aren't dead, job boards are still full of opportunities. What's dead is the interaction between recruiters and candidates, and we can thank AI for that. For job boards, there's definitely opportunities to cut through the bullshit there, but it's a lot easier to get on the bandwagon than it is to say the train is headed for a wall.
- kassner 1y ago
  > job boards are still full of opportunities That’s not a proxy anymore. In my corner, I keep seeing the same listings over and over again. Friends with hiring power have all sorts of stories, multiple reorganizations, budget cuts (and then a week later announcing record profits on earnings calls). Companies are just not hiring. They need to say they are to keep investors on the hype (if you aren’t hiring you mustn’t be growing).
  - jf22 1y ago
    Idk about this. Every dev I know that has lost or left a job in the past year found another one without too much struggle. Cycles take longer and are more annoying but companies are definitely hiring.
- mschuster91 1y ago
  > The job markets aren't dead, job boards are still full of opportunities. Many of these "open positions" aren't really planned to be filled. They're just out there to gauge interest or wait for the one "rockstar" candidate. Honestly, this kind of deception should be banned by law. So much time is wasted every year applying to jobs that practically aren't real.

bee_rider 1y ago

Like anything else, the casino business is competitive, right? A casino might be a money printer, but as the years go by the tech to print money can get cheaper, and there isn’t a ton of incumbency advantage because it’s all straightforward. Also with a job board, there seems to be a natural progression—the most valuable asset you can have is that the dummies and the useless resume-optimizers haven’t figured out how to game your system yet. So if anything there’s a huge incumbency disadvantage.

pluc 1y ago
If you invest nothing in your casino upkeep, or focus on stupid ideas like daily themed coasters, the new casino next door will take all your business just by being new.
- bee_rider 1y ago
  Or if your casino has debts, like employee pensions, that your competition doesn’t have. Or if the town over has decided they want a slice of the pie too, and has added tax incentives that you can’t take advantage of.

skeeter2020 1y ago

I don't know their particular journey, but based on my experience with other PE-owned companies any post-mortem should trace that path to look at how that unfolded.

lumost 1y ago
As a Bostonian, I’d blame Bain capital and other east coast VC firms for the current state of the Boston tech scene. Firms largely lacked growth capital unless they adopted thesis driven strategies such as velocity sales. Chasing scale through cheap talent and cheap products doesn't really work in tech. The winning employee strategy was to pivot into either SV based firms or biotech about a decade ago.
- alephnerd 1y ago
  The non-competes don't help either, but that's more of a symptom of the observations you have (and I +1 them). There are a couple promising Boston area tech startups I've been following, but it is definetly a much weaker ecosystem compared to even 15 years ago. The decline of Dell+EMC, Akamai, and VMWare+CarbonBlack also seemed to have play a role. That said, there are good Boston area VCs like General Catalyst, Unusual Ventures, and Fidelity Ventures, but at this point they've all basically moved to concentrate on identifying talent at Harvard+MIT who were already going to move West or to NYC. I hoped Klaviyo would have had a significant impact, but it seemed fairly muted for the size of exit it was. Same with it's ancestor Hubspot.
  - lumost 1y ago
    You can add trip advisor, wayfair, kayak, and others to that list. There is probably a bias at this point that experienced employees who are good are unlikely to work for the prevailing wages at these companies unless they are unable to earn more at west coast firms.
  - busterarm 1y ago
    I know some very early hires at Akamai and they're all still there and effectively lifers. And filthy rich.

boo-ga-ga 1y ago

> If you can't make it work in today's market, it's largely your fault I think it's exactly the opposite situation. In this market most money are made from companies and recruiters. If there is less demand and more supply for white collar jobs, companies don't need to spend their resources on all possible channels to reach candidates. That's why some "default" channel like LinkedIn will get a job posting, and all others won't, especially if these are paid.