Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

I always feel so terrible for people who always have to inject politics into everything.

I got hired from a "Who's Hiring" post about 5 years ago and it's been an amazing experience. I've been able to work on interesting problems without having to deal with a bunch red tape as I had become accustom to in previous roles. I also got to go through a successful IPO which has been incredibly gratifying.

I later found out that the company doesn't regular post to those threads and someone did it on a whim which made me feel even luckier for having happened to come across it.

Then, early in the pandemic when lots of companies were laying people off there was a thread for companies still hiring. I posted something and we got a ton of applications but sadly none of them panned out. Later I was talking with some coworkers about how we all found the company and someone mentioned they found it via HN. Turns out it was actually my post and I just didn't realize someone had gotten hired from it which was pretty cool.

I have had the fortune to find a job through HN and, later, to hire people who found my company through HN. So the system definitely works :)

I met the CEO of a startup a local Hacker News meetup.

I joined his company as employee #8 in a (non-technical) role I wasn't qualified for, in an industry I didn't know existed, leveraging a technology I knew nothing about. I didn't have any accomplishments but a few failed startups, but he thought the hustle I demonstrated was all I needed to be successful in the role he was hiring for.

Fortunately he was right.

1. We scaled to 200 employees in 4 years bootstrapped.

2. I got to work on problems you only get access to 15 - 20 years into your career

3. Very cross functional role working on sales, biz dev, product, legal, support.

4. Raised a few rounds and got acquired for a lot of $.

5. The company was acquired 6 years after I left, but I had 10 year options that had less than 6 months left before the expiration date.

The company experienced a lot of growing pains around year 3/4 that caused me to leave (along with some mistakes I made along the way), but I only look back at the experience with fondness.

Absolutely incredible experience.

I love HN. For me, this is the best online space to be. Among reading interesting content and amazing comments, HN helped me to make my career international.

In the last two years, I worked for 3 companies outside of Brazil. These were the first professional and international experiences of my life.

The first experience (Nyxt browser) is simply the best team I have ever worked with. The last experience is the current one which I am also very grateful to have. I particularly enjoy interacting with folks from the Bay Area, a place I have never visited but I dream about going one day.

In the middle, there was also a short project for a British company that I also got from the “Who is hiring thread”.

These experiences dramatically improved my family savings and exposed me to people that would be very hard to meet in my daily life.

Also, the first and last experiences are on the lisp family - which is a niche. It would be hard to have found them without the thread.

Thus, thank you very much, HN! My gratitude goes to those that run the website and to the community :)