Ask HN: How did you find your current job?

This is legit. I wasn't aware of gm4jh, but that's how I got my first job out of school without even knowing it.

Every job I've had in the past 20+ years (just a few of them) has come directly through people I knew. I've admittedly been in roles where I'm in contact with a fair number of people on a regular basis.

For my current job (10+ years), I knew I needed to move on from my last position. I put together a short list based on companies I was interested in and contacts I had. I wrote to a higher-up who I knew and had done some work for. He brought me in. I had some interviews. And I'm still there.

Every job I’ve ever had has been because of hackathons. Either being directly approached by a sponsor at a hackathon, or being remembered by someone involved with the hackathon after the fact. I briefly did a stint in a wildlife conservation NGO and even that came about because I had helped out at a hackathon at a zoo once.

I don’t think hackathons are particularly unique, I’d abstract this to “be visible and known in your tech community”.

I found my current role on IRC :-) A real company in Australia so I work remotely. Super fun place to work at, and the fact that they listened to my urging for improving a11y (which is a passion of mine) is the icing on the cake!

Jobs, I've found can come from anywhere. It's important to keep a good network of people who know you - on as many platforms as you want. The more you're "out there" and the more relationships you build is the key imo.

I'm a software engineer.

I used the "Who's Hiring" monthly thread on Hacker News. To be perfectly honest, it's the best "job board" I've ever used for tech jobs.

In my case, it was during Covid. Unemployment benefits were good enough that I wasn't eating into my savings. Every month, I would spend a few hours going through the thread, narrow it down to about 10-15 good postings, and see where it went. Hiring was also slow at the time.

The thing that I really liked about the job board here is that, almost every time, my initial contact was with a hiring manager or someone who'd I'd work very closely with. The job descriptions also get to the point quickly, unlike most job boards where the job description is 1-2 pages of 80% fluff.

For awhile I had the "open for work" flag on my LinkedIn profile. I got a lot of great outreaches that way, (and recently declined a very good offer,) but they tend to be bigger companies. (FWIW: Any time someone reaches out to me on LinkedIn with a vague "We might have matches for you, sign up and we might follow up with you" request, I flag them as SPAM.)