I'm sorry you feel misprocessed ArtemZ. It looks like, based on downvotes, a few others feel the same way. If anybody submitted to one of my older job postings, and feels misprocessed, please email me, james at ptown.tech, with your name and which month(s) you submitted for, and the subject “HN Hiring Override Inquiry”, and I’ll respond - even if only briefly. (If you submitted to February, though, please give me at least another week, we’re only just getting ready to do initial mail outs to folks who submitted since last Monday.)
In the meantime, I'm going to try to cover a lot for some folks with a longer explanation.
First, I have personally looked at _every single resume_ that has come in since October 1st. Including ArtemZ's (which I won't comment on publicly here). I am responding to people - we have done initial calls with nearly a hundred candidates in the last few months, and some have even been hired. I just had somebody who responded to the December posting sign and start last week. If I have not reached out to you personally yet, and it’s been more than a few weeks since your submission, your resume did not win out against the competition for openings we had at the time (at least, to get scheduled for an initial screen); but was not so bad that I wanted to turn you down yet either.
I have admittedly been bad about turning down the folks in the December and January job postings. If you haven't gotten an email scheduling an interview, and you submitted to one of those, you're very soon going to get a mass rejection email. I really hate telling people "no", and even worse, not being able to explain to them individually what we would have needed to see for them to be more competitive. I’m slow to adjust what I want (everyone to get a bespoke and considerate response) with reality (at best we have time to mass reject most).
For those who haven’t gotten to talk to me in a phone screen, some general feedback:
- You're in the middle of a multi-quarter tech labor recession, with all of the majors constantly firing quarter-over-quarter, and there is a butt-ton of literally amazing competition for any single job opening.
- There's also a lot of unbelievably good people facing RTO mandates that are trying to jump ship to a quality remote-friendly shop like mine. Like, imagine running a boutique science research shop, and getting resumes from Einstein and Bohr.
- The guys and gals who tend to get hired, hop to the top of everybody's queue, and for the same reason - we hirers know they're going to get sucked up in days, not weeks, and we have to act to be the one who gets them. (This is also some of why I continue to post to HN Who's Hiring even when I'm not done processing from earlier months.) That doesn't mean others don't have a chance; but it can explain why weeks go by and some people don't hear back; they’re getting bypassed.
- I used to post one of these a year or two ago and it would get 15 responses. These days we are getting 100-200 a month, and I can usually do about 5 calls a week. There's a lot of LLM-generated fraud. I like to give everybody a very bespoke, human touch - I do most of the opening phone screens personally. But I am the head of this company, and I have a lot of other things to do besides hiring; I'm simply having a hard time getting to everything and everybody.
- y/o/e is “Years of Experience”. If you just got out of college and you’re submitting for T3 or T4, you’re not qualified. If you’re a VP of engineering or have been coding for 20+ years, and you submit for a T3 or T4 position, you’re likely overqualified. To be clear, there are some good college grads and some good VPs that have written in, and I get greedy and want to see if I can pull them for something else - but they’re not, strictly speaking, the best match for the job posted.
- I put a lot of weight on people following instructions. If I say upload a .pdf somewhere I can wget it, and people link their LinkedIn or a Google Doc - and heaven help you if I would need to “request permission” - it’s just an instant reject. If they take the .pdf down before I can get to it, I have nothing to read. (We usually wait for several submissions to come in, and then wget everything all at once.) Yes I could require everybody to sign in to gmail and then get the ability to make them upload their .pdf in the Google Form, and maybe I should do that; but I know some really talented folks who are really anti-Google, and I don’t want to lose out meeting really qualified people just because of that.
- I also value resume conventions - even if the candidate is unconventional. One page, max two. Focus on the techs and techniques, not the “achievements” - I want a match between the job I’ve posted, and the tech on your resume, with proof you aren’t just buzzword stuffing, have been using the tech for years, and that your experience in the tech isn’t dated or superficial. Schools and employers I know stand out, especially if we know someone in common who can vouch for you. If you have a habit of changing jobs every 12 months, that starts to be a concern for most hirers.
Also, a nit, I'm not "reposting" - there are material changes from one month to the next:
- In October, PM, engineers, and infra/devops. We filled PM quickly.
- In November, swamped, no posting.
- In December, engineers and devops, mildly different tech stack description. Our first attempt with a Google Form. We’ve actively closed/redirected this posting.
- In January, -”devlops/infra”, +”platform engineer”, in an attempt to better describe the open hole. Folks that can orchestrate microservices but can’t code don’t tend to do well here. New questions in our Google Form. We've closed the form/posting.
- In February, completely new role: +"data scientist". Also still more improvements to the Google Form. The need for T3 and T4 engineers is perennial; we’re still looking to fill that platform engineer role.
Put another way - if we just had one gigantic evergreen Google Form that we never shut down, and left it running for months at a time, the chaos would be even worse, especially considering changing descriptions and needs of the jobs we're trying to fill.
I am sincerely sorry that folks feel neglected, and that I don't have the time to meet and help each of you. I want to help as many of you as I can, but it sounds like swift rejection would actually be the better blessing, based on the feedback here. See the top of this mega-comment for my email if you want to reach out.