Proposed Who Is Hiring Spec

#1

Post by perspectivezoom » Sun, May 31, 2015, 11:56 PM UTC

Proposed Who Is Hiring Spec
github.com

Re: Proposed Who Is Hiring Spec

#2

Post by northisup » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 1:39 AM UTC

This spec isn't very human friendly. As a human this bothers me.

Re: Proposed Who Is Hiring Spec

#3

Post by vcarl » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 1:42 AM UTC

northisup wrote: post #2

This spec isn't very human friendly. As a human this bothers me.

Their explanation of a line break doesn't really explain why JSON or something wouldn't work. Strip whitespace from input and it's basically the same.

Re: Proposed Who Is Hiring Spec

#4

Post by purephase » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 1:46 AM UTC

The real answer, as many have tried to implement, is another site/tool entirely. One that allows filtering, notifications etc.

Pretty easy to build, not so easy to get community engagement unless the HN folks endorse it officially as an alternative.

Re: Proposed Who Is Hiring Spec

#5

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 2:08 AM UTC

northisup wrote: post #2

This spec isn't very human friendly. As a human this bothers me.

[deleted]

Re: Proposed Who Is Hiring Spec

#6

Post by adjwilli » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 2:27 AM UTC

Isn't this basic just a job listing micro format? http://microformats.org/wiki/job-listing

Re: Proposed Who Is Hiring Spec

#7

Post by phantom_oracle » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 2:32 AM UTC

I really like this, but salaries should definitely be considered something that could (optionally) be added as well.

I guess this is the HN way of turning a simple proposal by dang (for feedback) into an engineering problem where we try to solve:

============================================================

The optimal method of describing a job post where the utility of most users/readers is, at least, mostly satisfied

============================================================

:)

Re: Proposed Who Is Hiring Spec

#8

Post by brudgers » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 2:40 AM UTC

purephase wrote: post #4

The real answer, as many have tried to implement, is another site/tool entirely. One that allows filtering, notifications etc. Pretty easy to build, not so easy to get community engagement unless the HN folks endorse it officially as an alternative.

Another site probably won't solve the underlying problem that Who is Hiring addresses - the problem of non-YC companies posting jobs on HN. Basically, Who is Hiring provides an outlet for what would otherwise be spam. Move it off to another site and then non-YC companies will still want to post on HN because that's where the eyeballs are.

The companies posting in Who is Hiring aren't posting on HN because they have no place else to post.

Re: Proposed Who Is Hiring Spec

#9

Post by e12e » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 2:57 AM UTC

I think breaking a bit from the current de-facto format would be better. Consider the example:

==

Engineer needed to test prototype products. Must be able to lift and carry anvils. metafriendly

==

The only real problem I've had with existing listings, is that people tend to list both "remote" and "no-remote" -- making search hard.

I propose moving those "tags" to "hash-tags", and just list them at the bottom of the ad:

==

Acme Products | Test Engineer | Las Vegas, NV; Austin, TX

Engineer needed to test prototype products. Must be able to lift and carry anvils. metafriendly

#on-site #full-time #part-Time

==

Note that the two are different; I don't see how you could work remotely testing anvil-lifting... ;-)

At any rate, if we're talking about a new "spec", I'd say:

* Apart from position, and location, as little as possible on the first line.

* Replace the "text"-tags with "hash"-tags - #remote is easy to search for with text-search, and won't match #no-remote, No-remote -- and doesn't require regexp magic to match word-boundaries etc (which few (no?) browsers support anyway).

* Put the tags at the bottom -- they're really for searching (and machine parsing), with the amount of listings we are getting now -- no-one is reading just your ad, they're reading a stream of ads.

* Don't go overboard with "hash"-tags. I'm not all that interested in seeing: mulitple-line lists of #python #ruby #haskell #c++ #dev-ops (...)

Now, if we really want to over-engineer this thing, why not draw some inspiration from the Dewy decimal system? So 001-234 could be 001:devops 2:python and bash 3:unix-like-and-windows-nt 4:remote-or-onsite ... ;-)

Re: Proposed Who Is Hiring Spec

#10

Post by msvan » Mon, Jun 01, 2015, 3:34 AM UTC

This is not going to work unless it is enforced by software running on the HN servers. Many of the hiring posts are posted by non-hackers who don't give a flying roomba about specs and correct formatting. The ideal format would be something generated by a set of dropdowns and textareas, but then again, would it still be HN?