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Next dream job can be in an HTTP header

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Re: Next dream job can be in an HTTP header

#41

Post by niftich »

mholt wrote: post #34
galaxyLogic wrote: post #25

I had a similar idea for financing Open Source software projects. The contributing sponsors would get their URL and add-text into a comment at the top of the source-code. The bigger your sponsorship the higher up in the list your company will be. The adds would of course be targeted at hackers, such as come work for us, since only hackers read source-code. So it would be a very targeted ad (like the http-header thing…

Don't do it. People will hate you for it... and never, ever let you live it down. :-/

He's speaking from experience. But, if your circumstances aren't exactly the same, the outcome may be different.

Credits pages in software, accessible from the main UI, used to be very common, and having names there -- or embedded in source code -- doesn't violate a user expectation.

Server software sending 'Server:' headers also doesn't violate user expectation, though some people prefer to turn these off.

Custom headers that cannot be turned off have a higher likelihood of violating user expectation.

To the OP: in open source projects, some users will attempt to remove undesired behavior, within the rights afforded by the license, but these exercises of copyright can interact adversely with trademarks and other brand protections, and with the surrounding (human) infrastructure and information-space around a project (e.g. names, URLs, references to services, secrets).

Your attempts to reconcile such a situation are nontrivial, and both inaction and action have a high likelihood of resulting in bad press (e.g. user confusion about fork, or heavy-handed enforcement). The harm will persist long after the original situation has been resolved or mitigated.

Re: Next dream job can be in an HTTP header

#42

Post by Polylactic_acid »

koz_ wrote: post #20

It's pretty clever advertising really. I don't imagine that having noticed an HTTP header would really give an applicant much of a boost in the interview process, but to some it probably feels like finding a ticket to Willy Wonka's factory and may motivate them to apply in the first place.

They always just tell you to apply through the normal process.

Re: Next dream job can be in an HTTP header

#43

Post by nurettin »

Reminds me of the time google mined my search data in order to redirect me to their recruiting pages, but instead of abusing my data in unforeseeable ways, these guys only require that you are able to switch to the network tab of your browser. Pretty neat.

Re: Next dream job can be in an HTTP header

#44

Post by ricardo81 »

Trying to recall where I first seen this being done, it was definitely a long time ago, perhaps Google?

Seems slightly less effective nowadays what with the standard browsers tools available, ctrl + shift + K

Not that using telnet, curl or some such was much of a higher barrier, just you had to go out of your way to use them.

Re: Next dream job can be in an HTTP header

#45

Post by [deleted] »

jedberg wrote: post #38

For a while we had a recruiting message in the reddit headers. We also had this for many years: x-Bender: Bite my shiny metal ass We also had this for a long time: Server: '; DROP TABLE servertypes; -- Sadly, it looks like it was removed when they switched from haproxy to varnish. They did put this in though: x-moose: majestic So that's something I guess.

[deleted]

Re: Next dream job can be in an HTTP header

#47

Post by tarasmatsyk »

I stumbled across "we hire" messages across Paypal, Techcrunch, and dozen of other websites, even no-name startups. You can find them in headers, CSS, HTML, JS and all over different places.

The thing is: the message neither changes the recruiting process nor company values, so it does not matter if you come from X-Header or company/careers. This cryptic message thing will only get you "oh cool" reply from recruiters. If you are a good engineer you'll be hired no matter of these messages, if you don't fit the company because of who knows why - you'll not get there anyway.

Engineers, thank you for giving me a bit of hope or fun ¯\(°_o)/¯

Re: Next dream job can be in an HTTP header

#48

Post by dylanz »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #23

Just telling people to apply to domain.com/jobs is pretty lame. So, basically the same door that anyone else goes through when they click the "Careers" link in your site's footer? Reminds me of when I solved one of the CTF challenges for a website only for my reward to be "We're hiring! Apply at jobs.example.com!" Real "be sure to drink your Ovaltine" moment.

A perfect "be sure to drink your Ovaltine" moment! If anyone is unfamiliar, it refers to the movie "A Christmas Story". The moment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdA__2tKoIU

I first saw that movie a only a couple years ago and quickly realized how many pop culture references come from it. It does such a good job of capturing a period of time in North America. Even before I saw the movie, eating out at a Chinese restaurant was a thing for me and my family. I had no idea it may have been related! Also... one day I'll own that lamp.

Re: Next dream job can be in an HTTP header

#49

Post by Animats »

ricardo81 wrote: post #44

Trying to recall where I first seen this being done, it was definitely a long time ago, perhaps Google? Seems slightly less effective nowadays what with the standard browsers tools available, ctrl + shift + K Not that using telnet, curl or some such was much of a higher barrier, just you had to go out of your way to use them.

Google used to have job ads which showed if you searched for CS topics such as "proof of correctness".

Re: Next dream job can be in an HTTP header

#50

Post by m0dest »

When Google was working on the first Chromebook, they decided to give away some prototype Chromebooks to developers for free. There was a web form to request one. A small portion of the requests were granted.

But they also took a more targeted approach: If you appeared to be a frequent user of the Dev release channel of Chrome (unstable), an offer would appear on the New Tab page to immediately claim a prototype Chromebook for free.

I only know this because that’s how I got mine. A coworker of mine was interested in developing a ChromeOS app, tried switching to the Chrome Dev channel like me, and received a similar offer in a few days.

It was great targeting. We both ended up making ChromeOS-specific improvements to a popular web app. When you compare this to the cost of paying a company to port their app to your platform, this was a good deal for them.

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