Ask HN: Who's been hired through Hacker News?

Not directly, but someone on HN reached out to me in 2014 to ask if I had time to review their new app. Turned out it was a job board (can’t remember what the USP was) and among the scraped initial data was a GOV.UK job ad that ended up being the single most influential position to my career that I’ve ever had.

Obvious throwaway account.

I had around 10 interviews via HN jobs, and around 50ish through the startup match making thing.

7/10 job interviews were fake jobs that actually didn't exist and where there's not even a budget available for them. These jobs were abused as early customer feedback and I didn't believe what happened there. I was basically braindumped.

The interviews from the startup matchmaking site were also kind of ridiculous. More bullshit consultants there than actual founders or actual developers that could or want to be building anything. These consultants want to hire you as a cheap developer, not as a founder, and definitely not as a shareholder. Happened so many times that I am not using this site for anything startup related anymore.

In general I'd argue that HN has a huge vetting problem, and by vetting I mean whether or not the intent of the people attending there come with honest intentions as to both their experience (which pretty much is almost always totally made up if you discuss more technical problems) and the idea of putting a lot of work into a problem to solve it (a _lot_ of people think that having a startup gig on the weekend, but only afternoons, leads to anything successful).

Most people come with so high expectations that it feels like being inside a ponzi community. Startups are a percentage game of luck, and you can only get an advantage if you have the right team at the right time, which implies that teams have to be absurdly motivated by a problem.

The people I found on this site are the opposite of that. They see it as a way to make quick cash because "they heard this is how to get rich fast".

I was very disappointed and am now much more involved in our local startup related meetups and events, and found a lot of team members through that.

I was hired for my current role at Cortical Labs via a “Who wants to be hired?” thread a year ago. First time I had tried via HN, I had a great experience and I recommend trying it if you haven’t.

I wanted to move to Denmark and saw a startup looking for an engineering lead. I applied, received a coding challenge, was invited for some interviews with the engineering team, after I came back home I had an online interview with the CEO (which to me felt like the worst interview in my life), and was offered the job along with a relocation package.

Stayed with the company for a couple of years.

The startup was ServiceBell. It was a feature company in a crowded market with little defensibility. They're still around.

It's easy to get rich quick in business when you're dishonest for a short time, but it's slightly more difficult to be honest, trustworthy, and not a pathological liar. Karma, reputation, and the law eventually catch up with shady people who didn't learn anything about the social contract from their parents.