Ask HN: How do you hire top talent in 2019?

Similarly for work hours - if you publish an uncommonly good salary range you better explain what you're expecting in return, in terms of work hours, vacation, etc., or else I might think you will work me to death especially if you have stereotypes going against you (east coast, gaming, finance industries, etc.)

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Speaking of platforms and getting in front of the right eyes, consider presenting at relevant tech events and conferences. Your dev team will probably be excited to share some cool things that they're doing.

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It is also possible that your offer is not as good as you think. Could your target candidate get a job at Google with significantly more pay, vacation, etc.? Consider offering them something that Google won't - remote work, 4 day work week, autonomy, etc.

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Also, the platform you choose to advertise on has a lot of impact on how revealing more information is perceived.

For example, something like AngelList treats job offers like house listings, letting applicants filter by compensation, technology, industry, etc.

On a platform like this where it's routine to see compensation published, putting up a range that is 30K-50K higher than your competitors is exciting, not intimidating.

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(Another disclaimer that I'm not an expert on this by any means, just sharing my feelings.)

During the early days of my previous company (which currently has a ~30 person engineering team), the founding team scoured our networks, reached out to people personally, and did everything we could to share the inspiration we felt about the company. That plus fair compensation, allowed us to bring on some awesome people.

The good news is elite talent tends to know other elite talent, and if they love the company, they become natural evangelists. A generous referral bonus also helps, however means nothing if your people don't already love your company. The end result is this attracts more talent!

Occasionally we'd supplement this with recruiters, but our network was 5x more efficient, and wayyyy less expensive even with referral bonuses we paid to employees.

I'm in the process of starting my next company, and while I'm not hiring engineers for another 6+ months, I'm meeting with everyone in my network and anyone they recommend to let them know about the company. People are already excited, and it's also just plain fun to meet smart people and catch up with friends. From there, I keep people in the loop and also try to support them in their endeavours. This leads to a lot of 'serendipity', where your company is top of mind for people as they plan their next move, which hopefully aligns with when you're hiring.

Now compare that to a random job post or inmail message on LinkedIn.

a. not engaged in tracking people across the web or elsewhere, or any other kind of sneaky spying

b. location that doesn't require being well above 350k to have a nice life

c. politically like the other half of America

I would not accept a FB/Goog job for 350k. Add a golden parachute worth twenty million dollars and I might reconsider, but that isn't normally offered.