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Ask HN: Would you sign up for a "Hire-a-HN-Hacker" board?
HN has monthly "Who's hiring" posts, but not "Who wants to be poached into a better job" posts.
So, I want to ask: Would you like such a service? Are there any comfortably-employed hackers hanging out at HN who would like something better -- new challenges, work-life balance, kegerator, whatever?
We created this page to test the idea: http://blog.fiveyearitch.com/2013/05/show-hn-unofficial-hire-hn-hacker-board.html (Clickable link below.)
It uses the same embeddable FiveYearItch widget which learning sites use to get better jobs for their students.
Do you like it? Tell me in the comment below and vote in the quiz at the widget page.
If enough HN people sign up, our next step is finding a permanent high-profile home for an unofficial "Hire a HN News Hacker" page.
- josh_fyi 13y agoClickable link: http://blog.fiveyearitch.com/2013/05/show-hn-unofficial-hire-hn-hacker-board.html http://blog.fiveyearitch.com/2013/05/show-hn-unofficial-hire...
- scottalpert 13y agoLike! We need a way for GOOD employers, the ones who grok hacking, to poach us out of the corporate jobs. We all got what it takes to hunt up a job, but if employers can find me with other HNers, all the better!
- mandytolliver 13y agoStrange how employers have to dig through HN profiles or LinkedIn accounts to find the good ones -- and many of us just don't WANT any offers at all. I wish I could say "Job's not so awful I gotta move, but I want to hack for real, please, and not just on my GitHub at night."
- sheshbesh 13y agoLiked the quiz on the FiveYearItch.com welcome page. I got a 3-of-5 "itch" score, so, I guess I'll give it a try.
- maldinii 13y agoI'm not sure if this will work, the thing is that a lot of good hackers that I know, don't like to spend time on writing nice resumes, sign-up for jobs websites, write a good bio, introduction etc, they simply prefer to do what they like :)
- josh_fyi 13y agoThanks, maldinii, that's exactly the problem we are trying to solve. Take a look at the sign-up page http://fiveyearitch.com/register http://fiveyearitch.com/register We made it super-simple: No resume, no bio, super-short form. And even after employers contact you, we have optimized to make it easy to ignore them. No chit-chat, you can just click "no thanks."
- maldinii 13y agoYes, I understand your point, but the problem is that if the developer doesn't post enough information, the employer won't be able to evaluate their work and they will not be able to differentiate people that are good from people that are not. A solution that I see for those kind of people is to introduce a 5 minute call with any developer that apply and see what kind of person they are .
- josh_fyi 13y agoRight, we developed a workflow to work around it. The employer can ask for some quick qualifiers, FizzBuzz-style questions, to separate the sheep from the goats. They should take two minutes each to answer and are not intended as an in-depth test or interview. Afterwards, the employer can move into further discussions and the regular interview process.
- bliker 13y agoHow about people in EU? Please only sign up if you have authorization to work in the US.
- josh_fyi 13y agoWe're not quite worldwide yet :-/ but we have been adding countries gradually and will be adding more soon. So far, FiveYearItch supports the US, Australia, Canada, the UK, Israel, and India. You can register at our user-feedback page http://fiveyearitch.uservoice.com/ http://fiveyearitch.uservoice.com/ to get updates.
- white_devil 13y ago> FiveYearItch supports the US, Australia, Canada, the UK, Israel, and India. Why is supporting the EU more difficult than supporting any of those countries?
- dangrossman 13y agoAre you volunteering to spend the time building up a list of partner companies willing to hire through them from every country in the EU? Are you also volunteering to do the legal consultations to ensure they're meeting labor law requirements in each of those countries? Or, are you asking that they let engineers spend time putting their profiles into a pile nobody will see? This isn't a technology problem ("add EU to line 284 of config.yml"). It's a regulatory problem, a cultural problem, a sales/support staffing problem, a marketing problem. There's nothing wrong with not half-assing it.
- BraveNewCurency 13y agoAmen to that. People tend to forget that Amazon started off selling only books, Facebook started off exclusive to Harvard students, CraigsList started off as a local SF site, etc. Companies that try to do too much at once end up spreading themselves too thin.
- jetblackio 13y agoGreat idea, and it looks to be executed well. One gripe. Please don't regulate sysadmin/devops to 'other'. I like to believe we're first class citizens too :)
- josh_fyi 13y agoThanks. Yes, this is absolutely for sysadmins, etc. The "fun quiz" on the welcome-page only had room for a few sample options. On the registration page at http://fiveyearitch.com/register http://fiveyearitch.com/register just start typing in the "wanted position" field and you'll see that "system administrator" is already an option.
- michaelochurch 13y agoWell, I lose. It's not even 18 hours and I'm breaking from my self-imposed HN break. Dammit, I suck. Or, we'll just call this thread an exception, because I really want to contribute to this discussion. Neat idea, but probably not. The problem with job boards is that they all turn into ghettos. The technology is fine. The material (sometimes on both sides, but almost always in terms of employers) usually ain't. I was talking to an investor, years ago, about a dating site and he pointed out a mistake I was making. He said, "you think the problem with these other sites is technology, but that's wrong. The sites are fine; the people are broken." We think that the recruiters peddling horrible subordinate corporate jobs are somehow unaware of HN and how geeks really think; but reality doesn't bear that out. We're damn easy to fool. If a sociopath can hoodwink a venture capitalist, then he can pretty easily hire nerds. I don't want to get into a long-running HN thread (I have good reason for my month-long break that I just now broke from) but if you'd like to talk offline about some thoughts I've had about fixing the job market, I'm michael.o.church at gmail.
- josh_fyi 13y agoMichael, Thanks for that comment, you've hit it spot on. The focus at FiveYearItch is not the technology, it's the workflow for connecting the two sides. > recruiters peddling horrible subordinate corporate jobs That's exactly who we are keeping out. We work with employers, preferably technically savvy hiring managers, and they have to be smart enough to reach out to developers rather than assuming developers will come begging for a job to them. They have to be willing to commit to what developers require, which is often not salary or health plans but "ace colleagues" and "flat hierarchy." And as to finding the folks to bring together: That's the key, we're finding various ways to do it -- and note where we're chatting right now :-)
- brudgers 13y agoHow is this different from a conventional full-service executive search firm? How does it scale if employers and candidates are rigorously screened (assuming that they are rigorously screened) since conventional full-service match making is built upon individual relationships and meaningful conversations? This is not to say that there isn't a need for an HN full-service executive search firm. But rather that I don't see how the objectives are satisfied without a conventional labor intensive model.
- ISL 13y agoVery cool. Signed up.
- bitsweet 13y agoIn my experience, most developers are looking for more then "just" another job...it could be a bump in pay but it usually also means a new challenge like working on a particular tech, type of product, domain, etc...nothing here on the Hire-a-HN-hacker tells the employer what you want to do, only what few hot keyword/skills you have and sure, the skills will match the same keywords that crappy recruiters are searching for and you'll learn about heaps of jobs good and more often bad. You could also post your résumé privately on monster if you want to cast a wide net. we're lucky as engineers...tradionally employers have had an abundance of candidates to filter, but with programming skills in such demand, developers now have an abundance of oppourtunities...it's not that we need more job oppourtunities, we need a way to filter the bad ones out. disclaimer, I run trypitchbox.com - which operates in a similar space
- josh_fyi 13y ago>tells the employer what you want to do >it could be a bump in pay but it usually also means a new challenge like working on a particular tech, type of product, domain, etc Sure, that's _exactly_ what FiveYearItch is all about. When you register ( http://www.fiveyearitch.com/register?publisher=e0e3f1 http://www.fiveyearitch.com/register?publisher=e0e3f1 ), you will say "what you need in your next job," whether it is learning opportunities, ace colleagues, stock options, a flat hierarchy, or anything else you'd like. Employers have to commit to provide these if a deal goes through. The "Hire-a-HN-Hacker" widget has limited space, and so it highlights skills that would interest an employer, but when the employer clicks to search, they'll see the developer's requirements as well.