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Ask HN: Has anyone ever been hired from “Who wants to be hired?” threads?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone ever been hired from “Who wants to be hired?” threads?

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One simple trick: I bike to work. Remote-only companies hate me!

Sounds like you have a really short commute! That’s a great way to do it.

I try to live 5 miles or so from work. 10 round-trip a day, plus a little extra for errands (I never learned to drive) is enough cycling for me. I can do it in about half an hour at an easy and relaxed pace and during the winter it’s short enough to just walk if it’s snowy/icy.

But I know people who do 25 miles each way by bike for their daily commutes. Just depends how much you care about it and what you’re willing to sacrifice to do it.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone ever been hired from “Who wants to be hired?” threads?

#202
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me like the actual problem is staring you right in the face, though: you are not in a tech cluster and you don't want to countenance remote working. That instantaneously removes 90% of the pool - or rather 99%, since no city on Earth has 75m people in commuting distance. No wonder you struggle to find people, particularly for a hard skill like assembler.

Somewhat yes. It depends on where you draw the line for "tech cluster", both for the size and for the industry. Austin and the DC area sort of count. No, they aren't the Bay Area, but nothing else is. Specifically for low-level security work, there are a number of competitors both large and small in Melbourne, FL. There is also embedded work related mainly to aerospace.

> there are a number of competitors both large and small in Melbourne, FL

And they are all competing for the services of assembler programmers living in Melbourne FL, population 80,000.

Wouldn't it be smart to widen that pool?

EDIT: obviously you have security constraints, I appreciate that - but most businesses in similar circumstances won't, and still won't consider remote, to then bitch about skill shortages.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone ever been hired from “Who wants to be hired?” threads?

#204
post #6

I reached out to a company from a Who's Hiring post and got hired. Great job, got to move with relocation.

How does relocation actually work, especially if you are overseas? I got like a ton of stuff in my home... I guess I could trash my furniture and buy new one, but what about my other things? Does relocation include transportation for that too?

Really depends on company. I work for an University, and we have a stepping ladder of "stipends" we offer to assist in relocation. They go this route basically to avoid any haggling, tracking of payments, or other issues... It's essentially like a signing bonus to help relocation.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone ever been hired from “Who wants to be hired?” threads?

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One simple trick: I bike to work. Remote-only companies hate me!

Biked to work for years and loved it until I crashed. No car involved just a stick or rock or something that allowed my front wheel to slip out from under me. If there’s some brilliant MEs out there, build a safer bike! Lower the center of gravity, improve traction, stability, whatever it takes!

What you desire exists: it’s called a recumbent tricycle.

I replaced a pretty good road bike with a Greenspeed GT3 Series II five years ago and have happily used it ever since, including three multi-week trips (two and a half weeks mostly through California, USA in 2014 before the Strange Loop conference; three weeks from St Louis, USA to Philadelphia, USA last year after Strange Loop; and a couple of weeks around this Easter in western Victoria and South Australia). Until I moved from Melbourne out into the country two years ago, cycling was my primary means of getting anywhere, augmented sometimes by public transport. Now I don’t cycle so often because I live in the middle of nowhere, 40km to the nearest town that I go to for church. For the last two long trips, I was essentially not fit beforehand (e.g. not having ridden at all for two months in one of the two cases), and doing something like that immediately on an upright bike would be murder on the buttocks, back and hands, but doing it on a recumbent trike was completely fine. I would not have done any of these solo cycling trips on an upright bicycle. Since this last trip I’ve even started vaguely planning to cycle around Australia at some point.

Recumbents tricycles are much safer. For example: they’re inherently stable; they’re closer to the road; they’re wider, so cars can see them better from behind despite them being lower, and so they can’t sneak by in such dangerous ways as they do in many parts of the world with bicycles; when riding one, it’s easier to be watching the road (especially compared with a road bike where you’re constantly craning your neck up); your mirror (necessary, since you can’t look over your shoulder) will be well-mounted and clearly in your stable field of view, you can constantly keep an eye on upcoming traffic, too; and as they’re unusual, cars pay them more attention and act more carefully.

On a good surface, a trike is much more comfortable than a bike. On a low-quality surface, such as many cycling paths, it can be less comfortable, since the seat and frame are providing suspension and not your legs as they can on an upright bike.

I personally like to go fast, and am not afraid of roads on my trike; I didn’t worry much about roads on a bike either, but in high-traffic scenarios I definitely feel happier with everything on my trike than on a bike. I generally just ignore cycling paths and ride on the road.

Another negative point on the recumbent tricycle: having three wheel tracks instead of one is occasionally troublesome: highway shoulder often has corrugation at the edges (the Australian style of adding One more: trikes take more space. Greenspeed specifically pioneered and uses a folding frame, which is great for transport. I’ve taken my trike to the US twice now, just folding it in half and wrapping it up in a tarp, no extra cost with Qantas since it’s sporting equipment (otherwise it’d incur an oversized baggage fee).

But back to the positives: a recumbent tricycle is much more fun than an upright bicycle.

Why aren’t they more popular? They’re generally more expensive: in part because there actually is a bit more to them, but mostly because they’re less popular so the cheap junk category doesn’t exist, which will skew price perceptions. And not many people even know about them. This may be in part because of UCI’s ban of recumbents in 1934 (a sordid tale of political intrigue, commercial interests, wounded pride, and arguably bribery and corruption), which basically crippled the recumbent industry. http://www.pjrider.com/BentHist.htm has some details of the history and story. (For racing, you’re talking about recumbent bicycles, but recumbent bikes and trikes exist in the same “human-powered vehicle that isn’t an upright bicycle” category.) But recumbent trikes really should be more popular, because in most ways they’re just better than trikes.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone ever been hired from “Who wants to be hired?” threads?

#209
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would bike to work. It's a nice 12km. But I think it would significantly shorten my life expectancy.

Statistically, it's the other way around.

Maybe because people actively avoid biking on dangerous roads ? It's easy to say that bike is safer than car when being safe is the number one concern for a vast majority of people cycling, while it's pretty obvious it isn't for automobilists. It's _because_ people like quickthrower2 don't go on dangerous roads that bike is safe.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone ever been hired from “Who wants to be hired?” threads?

#210

My view on these 'Who wants to be hired?' and 'Who's Hiring?' threads... 90% of the readership of Hacker News are Web Developers, either front end only, or full stack. As such the hiring threads are mostly jobs in that discipline. I'm an oddball on Hacker News, I have a keen interest in all tech development, but my official skill set is Windows Server Applications based Architecture[1], and Identity & Access Manageme…

Based on your skill set, we'd hire you immediately (we're a listed, 3000+ employee company). I work in the Berlin office, but we do have offices in every world region. The other comment here is BS. People who work with Windows Server, AD and .NET are sorely needed. Even more so in Europe, where an enterprise world exists that HN people apparently never heard of (see your 'oddball' statement). The real problem here is…

> We don't save the world. We don't stop climate change. We don't use AI to be the next Uber of X. We need somewhat skilled devs working on (what HN would consider) boring problems, to help tens of thousands of companies/IT people get other boring shit done quickly.

I tell people this regularly - the low-drama jobs that pay well, have good working conditions, and are straightforward to get are in boring, unsexy business logic jobs. Market forces exists everywhere, even in tech jobs, and the sexier the company, the greater the supply of workers. Companies that have to work a little to hire good people tend to treat them well; companies with hundreds of brilliant engineers knocking down their door, maybe not so much.

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