Month after month, the same companies list the same opening here (with probably 30% shift.) I would love to know if the companies that relist aren't getting applicants, aren't getting the right applicants, have a high turnover or are (hopefully) just continuing to grow.
Also, are any HNers getting hired from these threads? Success stories are the most needed ingredient to remind everyone that hiring is happening.
That's the case for Factual. We have perma-openings for software engineers and are always trying to find additional great people to work with.
I've been posting to HN monthly for about a year. I get responses from 2-10 HNers each month and several have been hired at Factual. About 20% of our technical hires in 2011 were people who came from HN.
I wondered about whether a similar post each month would be useful. I've been surprised in two ways: 1) The number of applicants has generally gone up each month, not down and 2) almost every month, one or two of the people responding say something like "I've seen your post several times now and have been meaning to reply. Today, I finally decided to do it."
I guess what I'm saying is that my experience with posting jobs to HN has been great, and posting (almost) the same content each month seems effective.
That location has a lot of upsides for us: most of the employees live within 3-4 miles of there, rent is affordable, and our building is next door to a large mall with lots of lunch options. For those who live further away, commutes are made easier by letting people set their working hours and work from home as necessary.
Public transit in LA is poor, so can't disagree with you there.
We post on most of these threads and our batting average for hiring from them is MLB respectable. We have below-average turnover; we're just growing. Every single thread we've posted on has introduced us to candidates we were thrilled to talk to.
HN is our single best hiring vector, both in quantity and quality.
I think you can safely assume that people are getting hired from these threads.
(I think posting the job thread on weekends is counterproductive and don't post in those months).
Actually, I did get hired thanks to the Nov 2011 HN thread - one post in particular caught my eye and while I initially just asked for more details, I ended up starting my new position there in December.
Obligatory segue: incidentally, OkCupid Labs (San Francisco, CA) is still growing and looking to hire in a few areas, including design (visual, UX, and/or UI welcome), front-end dev, and senior software engineering. I don't know much about the last one, but for more info on the first two, you can ping me via chang at okcupidlabs. Or the jobs page works too: http://jobs.okcupidlabs.com/.
Khan Academy posts here every month because we're growing. I was hired after responding to a post on HN, and since then we've hired roughly 1 full time developer or designer per month. See this months post for more details: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3413910
I landed an interview with a company from one of these threads for an internship they were not advertising. It was a good experience, but in the end I was told that they did not have anything for me. It would have been my first development job and I suspect that they were too early stage to take on someone that was completely entry level like me. And it appears that they're still looking.
Success story: I met someone recently who found her new job at OKCupid Labs from last last month's HN Who's Hiring thread. (She'd also met her husband on OKCupid, so that helped.)
As a comparison, between Dribbble's (a design-specific community) job board and HN, all of the best designer candidates so far have come from HN.
My employer (LucidMedia Networks) still is growing so I keep posting. Simple as that.
I'm not sure how many applicants apply to the companies listed, but I think our application quantity might be lower than average. Could be location (not SF, NYC, Boston), tech stack, low profile . . . not sure. There isn't feedback on the posts. Oddly, we also sometimes get posts from HNers outside the US, but we never advertise for them.
We've hired a full-time dev (myself) and an intern who just started recently from the pool of HNers. These things do work (and I state this in the post monthly).
I'm a long time reader but don't post much. I was hired in NYC through a post on the Oct 2011 thread. Obviously I'd rate myself as amazing. The job isn't bad either hehe.
Also, are any HNers getting hired from these threads?
I've been posting to some of these threads occasionally, nothing ever happend. While I guess some of us are getting gigs out of it, I believe the majority probably don't. On the other hand, my skillset (doing PHP apps, but not a web designer) is not in demand to be fair.
I can only speak for the company I work for, but we are growing so fast that the company has doubled in size in the last year or so.
We've got real revenues and growth in traffic to our main site and our partner sites. Also, we now power Yahoo! Autos, which will give us another big boost in traffic and revenue.
I got an offer (well, sort of a [paid] trial period type offer, but I believe it was a good fit for both parties) from a company that posted here a few months ago. I ended up declining it and taking a safer option. Kind of regret not taking that offer, actually.
AcademicWorks has hired two people from posting on HN. We consistently find our best candidates from these threads. I have a memo to post at the first of every month, because we are always looking for talented engineers.
Sadly, I've only had one response from posting here (for Phunware, Inc.). Initially, my desire was that we hire solely from HN, but the reality hasn't lined up with that ideal.
I was hired from a post on here in October 2010 for a company in Atlanta. I'm still there, and I've posted a few "we're hiring" posts since then (no hires yet).
Also, are any HNers getting hired from these threads? Success stories are the most needed ingredient to remind everyone that hiring is happening.