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Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

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Re: Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

#211

Post by marcinkostecki »

I was pretty skeptical that I'd get any traction, but I ended up connecting with a co-founder of Flat (flat.app), and within a few weeks I was on the team!

I am really grateful that I ended up giving it a shot as it's been a great experience so far - I have sharp coworkers who are eager to share their knowledge and generous with their time, I get exposure to all aspects of the product, and the impact of my work is visible and immediate. Best of all, we use our product to make our product, so I get to directly enjoy the fruits of my labour :)

Re: Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

#212

Post by marcinkostecki »

I was pretty skeptical that I'd get any traction, but I ended up connecting with a co-founder of Flat (flat.app), and within a few weeks I was on the team!

I am really grateful that I ended up giving it a shot as it's been a great experience so far - I have sharp coworkers who are eager to share their knowledge and generous with their time, I get exposure to all aspects of the product, and the impact of my work is visible and immediate. Best of all, we use our product to make our product, so I get to directly enjoy the fruits of my labor :)

Re: Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

#213

Post by emilsedgh »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #97
emilsedgh wrote: post #31

~10 years ago I was living in Iran and was hired as a contractor in a US company.I was being paid using Bitcoins (due to sanctions).

Wow, I can't believe a startup would willingly take that risk. Violating US sanctions law is no joke for a US company! Did you intentionally not tell them you were in Iran and instead just said you wanted to be paid in bitcoin without explanation? I'm extremely curious.

They knew I was in Iran. None of us knew it's illegal to hire contractors we just thought it's some banking access issue. Also it was a small amount and not a systemic thing I was the only one.

Re: Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

#214

Post by nkantar »

Years ago I was relocating to the Bay Area for personal reasons and asked someone I knew if he had any recruiter recommendations. He didn’t, but he was a YC founder, so he posted my details in a corner of HN reserved for them. I woke up to quite a few emails in my inbox, and one of them ended up being a match. Learned a ton from being employee #3, after the two founders.

I think I generally have a more skeptical view of HN than most others posting in this thread, but the value and uniqueness of parts of this community isn’t lost on me, especially with that personal experience.

Re: Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

#217

Post by dylanlacom »

Yes - 5 years ago I had my own small startup building Shopify apps. The business wasn’t growing as fast as I’d have liked and so I was taking on part time contract work on the side. I responded to a job post here on HN from a YC company, and ended up doing a little contract work for them. They liked it and they came back a few months later to see if I’d join them full time to lead the product eng team. I considered my options, and what I liked about the opportunity at the startup was that they were building in a similar space as I was with my business, except better capitalized and further along. I took the job and have been with the company 5 years now. As with any startup, it’s had its ups and downs, but overall it was a good decision for me and I have no regrets. And I owe it all to HN. Thank you HN!

Re: Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

#218

Post by zorrotorro »

moneywoes wrote: post #179
zorrotorro wrote: post #116

I'm an independent contractor and I tried for a few years to apply to the announcements on HN. It was generally a bad experience (no reply or bad interview process). BUT... a few years ago I randomly applied for a very niche job I would have liked and spent 1 year doing some pretty amazing stuff. The company got a nice exit too (alas, I had no stock). So, I don't think HN ads are pointless, but they are pretty random…

May I ask your best funnel for independent contractor leads?

For me, looking back, the best funnel was publishing articles and doing work in the open in a mid-sized niche. People noticed me and offered contracts.

I'm not entirely certain this will work so well, since it seems everybody is an expert at personal branding with GitHub contributions and all that nowadays.

A "hyper connector" I knew also provided some leads but smaller in scope and pay.

HN job announcements were pretty bad as an experience. With the one exception.

I'm in corporate now, but I'm also wondering how to find the next leads. Curious what your experience is?

Re: Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

#219

Post by schnable »

jrmiii wrote: post #167
schnable wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does one find Hacker News meetups? A quick google search didn't turn up anything active.

Looks like quite a few via meetup.com search https://www.meetup.com/find/?keywords=hacker%20news&source=E...

I don't see any Hacker News meetups in those results?

Re: Ask HN: Who got hired from HN?

#220

Post by rco8786 »

jaboutboul wrote: post #200
rco8786 wrote: post #135

I got hired from a "Who's Hiring" post back in 2012 to a very famous, then pre-IPO company that absolutely changed my career trajectory. It prompted a move to SF, followed by NYC. I got to be a part of a "big tech IPO". I got exposed to incredibly smart people and cutting edge tech. And made some money to boot. It put a giant "stamp of approval" on my resume and opened up doors I could only dream of previously. HN is…

Can you tell us more about the last bit there? That sounds fascinating, finding a home builder on HN!

In 2019 two things were happening in my life:

1) I was sitting on a house that I thought was a fixer upper, that turned out needed to be torn down. Feeling very discouraged about it, and ready to walk away and eat a loss.

2) I (thought I) was in the market for a new job.

There is a YC company called BuildZoom. You may recognize them from their job postings here on HN. At the time, they posted a job for a Principal Engineer...which is roughly the title I was aiming for at the time. So I clicked it to check it out having no idea what BuildZoom was. I discovered that the job wasn't for me, but I also discovered that their product was basically helping people do real estate development.

So I signed up. Got the whole pitch from them. Agreed to pay extra $$ for their "premium tier" which they never delivered on and refunded entirely after acknowledging this. But what they did do was set up 3 interviews with builders to come see my dilapidated old house. Two of them were obvious no gos, and I almost cancelled with the 3rd because of that. But it turned out he was our goldilocks, and built us a beautiful house that we absolutely love on time and on budget during the height of Covid. It also turned out he had no idea who or what BuildZoom was, they had just found him on some builder directory and added him to their list and basically started marketing for him.

TLDR followed a link to a YC company looking for a job, ended up getting paired up with a homebuilder.

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