Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2023)

Looks like some cool opportunities available, thanks for posting!

Thanks! What’s the best way to apply?

Some forms of feedback are fine of course, but complaints about hiring processes, such as "I applied and never heard back from you" can't be assessed properly without more information. Some of those complaints are no doubt accurate (and of course companies should get back to job applicants—it's the least they can do); but it's also clear that some of those complaints are bogus—why? because when people complain on the internet, they often leave out salient details that would completely change the picture if readers knew them.

To take an example from a different domain, HN occasionally gets posts from people complaining that a payment provider has denied service to their business—but such posts usually omit to mention what the business actually is. Often this is because the business is dodgy enough that the community would immediately side with the payment provider if they knew that detail.

The only approach that (partly) works to tell an accurate complaint apart from a bogus one is to have an open community discussion in which the details get hashed out and readers make up their own minds. That works ok when there's a thread dedicated to the process—it may not be the most on-topic thing for HN, but at least people get to ask questions, get more information, and sift through the story. The critical thing—what makes it (partly) work—is that everyone who's interested in the story gets to ask, point things out, etc. (For example, to go back to the payments domain for a minute, HN commenters have learned to respond to such complaints by asking "What's the business?", and if they don't get an answer, they've learned to be a bit more skeptical of the complaint.)

A Who Is Hiring thread is not the place for such a deep dive, for two reasons. First, there isn't the space for it—these threads are their own genre and they're not free-form like regular threads are. If the comments ballooned up with complaints and community adjudication of the complaints, it would make the Who Is Hiring threads a lot less useful.

The second reason is a little deeper: a job ad thread is not a level playing field, because the employee posting the job ad is usually in no position to respond to the complaint against their employer. Often they have no access to the relevant information; and even if they had, they're posting in a public capacity on behalf of their employer, and that places a lot of restrictions on what they're able to say. An asymmetric situation like that doesn't serve the cause of the truth. For the community to evaluate a situation fairly, both sides of the story need a chance to be heard.

For those two reasons, we have a rule disallowing this sort of complaint in Who Is Hiring threads. I guess there's a third reason as well: such posts tend to be repetitive, and therefore tedious, and that quality is the main thing we're trying to avoid on Hacker News. That doesn't mean the complaints aren't important! Obviously they can be quite important because job searching is critical for people and hiring is critical for companies. But HN in general might not be the best place to litigate them, and certainly the Who Is Hiring threads aren't.

Boblsed | Hiring SDET, SRE, and SWE|Hiring Focus in Europe (Fully Remote)

Our goal at Bobsled is to transform the way data is shared across organizations, clouds, and data platforms. Our cross-cloud platform enables enterprises to share data quickly and securely through one unified control plane that manages all aspects of data sharing, including replication, updates, versioning, entitlements, telemetry, and more.

We are looking for Developers, SDETs and SREs to help us continue to scale.

Skills: Typescript | Cloud Infrastructure | Data Warehousing and Management |

Check out more details here: https://www.bobsled.co/company#open-positions

Principal SDET: https://boards.greenhouse.io/bobsledinc/jobs/4293662005?gh_j...

Senior SWE: https://boards.greenhouse.io/bobsledinc/jobs/4098494005?gh_j...

Senior SRE: https://boards.greenhouse.io/bobsledinc/jobs/4225184005?gh_j...

Principal SRE: https://boards.greenhouse.io/bobsledinc/jobs/4305569005?gh_j...

Seasats | San Diego, CA | Primarily on-site, flexible for some roles

We build and operate solar-powered autonomous surface vehicles (AKA ASVs, AKA robotic boats) for customers in defense, science, and commercial fields. We got started in 2020, and since then we've raised funding, launched a new flagship product, and increased our headcount. We've gained some stability as a company, but we're still very much in scrappy get-shit-done mode, so if you're the sort of person who has fun working with a lot of responsibility and autonomy we'd love to meet. Everyone here benefits from great coworkers, all the perks of San Diego life, and endless opportunities to identify potential improvements and quickly make them happen.

Our current openings include Senior DevOps, Software, Electrical, and Mechanical Engineering roles as well as an ML-focused role. Take a look using the link below, and if you have questions feel free to reach me at declan@seasats.com.

https://seasats.com/careers/