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Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

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Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#121

Post by Pedro_Ribeiro »

mikhael28 wrote: post #66
Pedro_Ribeiro wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe HN is a high quality forum that enforces high quality standards, there is no reason this shouldn't be a thing. Companies that advertise here should be held accountable.

Maybe a startup could work on this problem - HN has two moderators, I’m not sure it’s realistic to ask them to track more than what they already do. How would they even track and verify such hearsay anyway?

HN has two moderators but the YC Job Opening ads are not just part of HN, they're part of YC as a whole.

I expect YC to do due diligence if one of their companies receives several reports that they heard no replies (it's not that many companies). If it's found to be more than hearsay, they lose HN ad privelleges.

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I wouldn't do a startup but I certainly could see myself creating a bunch of fake developer profiles of varying skill levels and sending them to companies en masse. If they don't reply to anything even though they have had a job opening, they get placed on the (public) name & shame list.

Would also be interesting to automatically keep track of which job openings a company has and how long they've been open for.

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#122

Post by heurist »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #109
heurist wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a YC startup, but jobs I've posted recently had over a thousand applicants in the first few weeks. I post multiple places, including HN. There's a huge culling process to find the 20-30 most applicable candidates, then to narrow down from there to the 1-2 that fit best. The best way to stand out (for me) is a real application not written with AI. Everyone uses AI now and it all sounds the same. Express your hones…

> Express your honest enthusiasm for joining the company/mission in the cover letter… I just can’t muster honest enthusiasm for all the companies/missions to which I must apply to get even a call from their internal recruiter. I have enthusiasm for creating viable, efficient, maintainable software. I can adapt those skills to the mission du jour. But apparently, that’s not sufficient - if it were, my 30yrs of experie…

I'm in a mission driven organization so I pay more attention to that than other companies might. Regardless, a little authenticity and enthusiasm can go a long way. The bar is low.

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#123

Post by scarface_74 »

daemonologist wrote: post #78
doctorpangloss wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unspoken problem is that most people want way too much fucking money.

I don't think demand for engineers is necessarily that elastic - even if candidates were willing to accept less money, it would take a long time for companies to respond by hiring more and they might never match supply. I've personally applied to several jobs offering less than $80k TC (government, nonprofits, startups) and heard nothing back. That's a small sample size because I'm currently employed and only looking…

My anecdotes last year and the year before was that when I was looking for my preferred jobs - full time positions at cloud consulting companies and a couple of product companies as an “architect”, I had a 100% response rate.

When I looked for my Plan B jobs - just regular old C# enterprise dev jobs looking for AWS experience paying less - crickets.

It’s seems harder to get interviews for jobs you are overqualified for than ones you are slightly under qualified for.

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#124

Post by AznHisoka »

themanmaran wrote: post #120
AznHisoka wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It begs the question: why not just post your job in your website and nowhere else (ie LinkedIn/Indeed)? That reduces the spam AND gives you a link to point people to. I hear these complaints all the time from companies. To me if you’re leaving your jobs up at aggregators like LinkedIn, you have no right to complain (not singling you out btw, just a general thought)

Because maybe we'll get a good candidate. The cost is virtually free (30 minutes a day clearing an inbox). And once a week we get a decent application.

30 mins a day isn’t virtually free and last I checked it costs $$$ to post jobs on Linkedin

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#125

Post by tennisflyi »

TheGamerUncle wrote: post #7

I would like to assume that I am a good candidate I usually get calls back from even LinkedIn posts or even indeed, but after well applying to more than two hundred offerings on the who is hiring posts in this place, and only having had been called twice. I can assure you that the ones here usually are not hiring and at best just want a rooster of possible replacements for their current employees. Most notable offend…

Same experience - people are getting hired, just not me

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#126

Post by tennisflyi »

themanmaran wrote: post #42

As a YC company that is currently hiring, yes! And all of the YC companies I know are also struggling to find engineers. But the job listings (HN, WorkAtAStartup) practically never bring in good candidates. A few big problems: 1. AI Spam. I categorized the inbound we got the other day from a job post. Out of 172 daily applicants, we got 22 that looked reasonably like a person, and 150 that were primarily AI generated…

> 1. AI Spam. I categorized the inbound we got the other day from a job post. Out of 172 daily applicants, we got 22 that looked reasonably like a person, and 150 that were primarily AI generated messages. Which are pretty easy to spot because they're 500 words of tech jargon and rehashing the job description.

Is that not the ideal answer? Those that get to move forward are the one's that just happen to write a message that hits a non-descriptive sweet spot? A fucking Magic 8 Ball

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#128

Post by XCSme »

scarface_74 wrote: post #117
XCSme wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we do our job, we very rarely interact directly with the "mission". We are coders, if we like the project/technology and the team is fun, of course we will be happy to do our job well. On the other hand, what does the mission matter if you are unqualified and can't solve the problems at hand. Yes, a good mission is always a plus, but most capable coders code because the problem/implementation is interesting. The…

> When we do our job, we very rarely interact directly with the "mission". And this is the problem, if I am hiring for a startup or in my case green field initiatives, I don’t need just “coders”. I need people who understand the business and can give prescriptive insights and deal with the ambiguity that comes with any green field initiative. If you are just a coder, how do you plan to stand out from the literally 10…

You can still stand out by being an outstanding coder and good person/communicator.

In my experience, companies tend to avoid people that know or pretend to know too much about the company/vision. I'm not sure why that is, but likely because they want someone for a specific role, not a generalist. They want someone who will be happy doing their job, not have their focus spread across disciplines. In the (really incipient) start-up environment it's good to have generalists, but such jobs are kind of rare.

Plus, when it comes to mission, people can just say what the company wants to hear, a lot easier to fake interest than the coding and communication skills.

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#129

Post by scarface_74 »

XCSme wrote: post #128
scarface_74 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When we do our job, we very rarely interact directly with the "mission". And this is the problem, if I am hiring for a startup or in my case green field initiatives, I don’t need just “coders”. I need people who understand the business and can give prescriptive insights and deal with the ambiguity that comes with any green field initiative. If you are just a coder, how do you plan to stand out from the literally 10…

You can still stand out by being an outstanding coder and good person/communicator. In my experience, companies tend to avoid people that know or pretend to know too much about the company/vision. I'm not sure why that is, but likely because they want someone for a specific role, not a generalist. They want someone who will be happy doing their job, not have their focus spread across disciplines. In the (really incip…

> You can still stand out by being an outstanding coder and good person/communicator.

There are tens of thousands of “outstanding coders” and even if you are one of the best, how do you communicate that through a resume to stand out from the crowd? Honestly, most companies don’t need great coders.

Historically I haven’t cared about the mission of the company except when I was working for a company that sent nurses to the homes of special needs kids and when I was consulting for state and local government during COVID.

But, what triggered me is the thought “I just care about coding and not the actual business value of what I’m doing

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#130

Post by muzani »

heurist wrote: post #122
jagged-chisel wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Express your honest enthusiasm for joining the company/mission in the cover letter… I just can’t muster honest enthusiasm for all the companies/missions to which I must apply to get even a call from their internal recruiter. I have enthusiasm for creating viable, efficient, maintainable software. I can adapt those skills to the mission du jour. But apparently, that’s not sufficient - if it were, my 30yrs of experie…

I'm in a mission driven organization so I pay more attention to that than other companies might. Regardless, a little authenticity and enthusiasm can go a long way. The bar is low.

Drop a link if it's still open. Mission driven orgs sound fun.
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