[HN Gopher] Lowest "Who is hiring?" Post Count in 30 Months
___________________________________________________________________
Lowest "Who is hiring?" Post Count in 30 Months
October 2022 - 408 April 2020 - 608 January 2016 - 471 First
time the thread has been under 600 posts since January 2016. Posts
still trickle in throughout the month but the first 12 hours is
when the majority of posts show up. I'm sure someone could do a
more thorough analysis of post count but the overall number is
unusually low.
Author : trenning
Score : 401 points
Date : 2022-10-04 17:02 UTC (5 hours ago)
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| tester756 wrote:
| Aren't budgets being made around last/first months, so people
| wait for it?
| adoxyz wrote:
| Didn't Oct 1 fall on a Saturday? Where web traffic to hacker news
| is typically much lower.
| _bohm wrote:
| thread was yesterday
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33068421
| grumple wrote:
| That might have had a big impact. I used to always look for
| it on the 1st of the month, many posters might have failed to
| find it and just moved on.
| cahoot_bird wrote:
| On past who is hiring threads I seen posts throughout the month,
| but in September it seems it only lasted about the first week
| before new posts stopped.
|
| Perhaps the posts were restricted to a certain time frame, or
| coincidence?
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| For a data centric view on the larger economy and an assessment
| of leading indicators I highly recommend this blog:
|
| https://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2022/09/predicting-next-r...
| minimaxir wrote:
| Similar discussion a few months ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675201
|
| This thread by myself contains a BigQuery to reproduce the data +
| a chart of Who is Hiring posts over time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31675750
|
| Here's a new chart of up-to-date data:
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13yGlJzFpVzZ-WNHAOsdo...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Just wanted to say thank you for collating and sharing this
| data, I thought it was really helpful and interesting!
| angrais wrote:
| Do you have data for the past 12 months rather than only October?
| That way, we can observe how gradual (or not) the curve was.
|
| All data in CSV format would be ideal if someone has it to share
| via gist or such.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Here's a chart from the thread I linked above:
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13yGlJzFpVzZ-WNHAOsdo...
|
| EDIT: I generated a new sheet for the chart with up-to-date
| data and fixed a data issue noted below.
| angrais wrote:
| Does anyone have any idea _why_ there's a peak in Q1 2020?
| ericskiff wrote:
| I can reflect that we saw this happening in real life
| hiring. Remote hiring competition got FIERCE from the
| beginning of the pandemic and really through most of 2021.
| It has since settled out quite a bit.
|
| There was a combination of large companies needing
| programmers to enable remote work or process changes due to
| the pandemic, stimulus funds causing a lot of VC funding to
| hit startups, hiring binges at FAANG companies, and
| everyone suddenly being remote-friendly.
| randomdata wrote:
| Things that used to be done in person suddenly went online
| and everyone was in a rush to make that transition happen
| quickly and smoothly.
| tyingq wrote:
| Covid opening up more companies to the idea of remote
| workers? Or forcing development to fill gaps of processes
| that used to happen offline?
| minimaxir wrote:
| So that appears to be a fun edge case with that quick SQL
| query!
|
| The spike was in March which was the start of the COVID-19
| pandemic in the United States/shelter-in-place, which was a
| time of odd behavior and so a spike wouldn't be too weird.
|
| It turns out that dang posted a special whoishiring soon
| after which was massively popular:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22665398
|
| I _thought_ I filtered out nonstandard threads in the
| query: WITH whoishiring_threads AS (
| SELECT id FROM `bigquery-public-data.hacker_news.full`
| WHERE `by` = "whoishiring" AND
| REGEXP_CONTAINS(title, "Ask HN: Who is hiring?") )
|
| ...but that filter is a regex, and in a regex the `?` is a
| modifier character and not a literal. So the query will
| combine the counts of both the top-level comments of that
| thread and the original one.
|
| Data science is fun like that, and surprisingly not the
| first time I've made that particular query mistake.
| boulos wrote:
| This is part of why I prefer to use LIKE directly when
| the thing I'm doing isn't actually a regexp. Then again,
| it's equally easy to screw up the %, but I feel it's
| maybe more visible (due to the less common characters).
| [My primary reason is clarity for the reader, so they
| don't have to attempt to parse the potential regexp].
|
| More pernicious than ? is . though. Not that it matters
| in your case, but a lot of matches really can be "oops, a
| one character substitution totally matches, too".
| minimaxir wrote:
| You have more experience in this area, but
| REGEXP_CONTAINS() seems faster than LIKE for bigger
| datasets IMO.
|
| Although in my work I tend to use REGEXP_CONTAINS() as an
| efficient multifilter for different inputs, which speeds
| things up too.
| anonu wrote:
| Is there seasonality? Like hiring slows down into the end of the
| year, is my guess. In which case, can you get 10-15 years of HN
| posts? Then you would need to adjust by user base as well..
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICNSA << in fact, Jobless
| Claims are typically seasonally adjusted. Non-seasonal adjustment
| indicates claims spike around start/end of the year. The idea
| being, all else equal, if same amount of people get hired/fired
| every month, but supply of jobs dips, then claims go up...
|
| Conclusion: not enough data points.
| jollyllama wrote:
| It definitely continues through October, though; it usually
| drops off in December.
| jamisonbryant wrote:
| I've thought about tapping into the HN BigQuery dataset (or
| perhaps the HN API, whichever is more appropriate) to analyze the
| results of the Who's Hiring posts and their companion Who Wants
| to be Hired posts. I think aggregation of this data will paint an
| interesting picture for job-seekers and other technology
| professionals as to what's hot, what's not, what employers are
| looking for (and not), as well as other trends.
|
| Does anyone know if such a resource already exists? Don't want to
| duplicate effort.
| sideshowb wrote:
| I think this used to exist for stack overflow jobs, probably
| not up to date though
| mmastrac wrote:
| We've had a good run in tech, but I don't think it's necessarily
| over. While the days of social media and advertising might be
| limited, there's still a wide world of technological advances
| that I think can make good businesses.
| indymike wrote:
| Would be interesting to see this chart:
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13yGlJzFpVzZ-WNHAOsdo...
|
| With traffic stats for HN, so we could see if there was a change
| in traffic/participation, or something else.
|
| My personal thought is that many startups have been advised by
| investors to trim the sails for less follow on capital for a
| while, and that results in more conservative hiring. What I'm
| seeing at the day job (I have a recruiting tech platform), is
| that non-tech companies have plenty of open tech jobs to go
| around - and still can't find enough people.
| newbie578 wrote:
| Mind sharing some cool facts regarding your experience from the
| platform?
|
| What is currently in demand, what is desirable?
| newbie578 wrote:
| I do have to comment that while I see a lot of job postings
| online (incl. HN), the requirements are going up as crazy.
|
| People wanting a Mobile Developer with knowledge both in iOS and
| Android, and it wouldn't hurt if you knew some crass platform
| solution also.
|
| I see posting with wanting 8+ years in a particular framework or
| language...
|
| Am I the only one who finds that insane? I know that before "the
| requirements" were more like "wants" and if you are a good
| candidate, the company will give you a chance, but I have had
| situations right now where the recruiter would just answer point
| blank that all of the requirements must be met...
|
| How are people with under 2,3,4 years of experience supposed to
| find a better paying job?
|
| God forbid if you are fresh from college...
| seattle_spring wrote:
| Presumably enough employers have stopped posting to be
| statistically significant. I know I did; finding one qualified
| candidate in a sea of 50 bootcamp grad applicants for an
| explicitly staff-level position just wasn't worth the effort.
| Worse was when I was threatened with an ageism lawsuit because
| our recruiters didn't want to move forward with a guy with 10+ <1
| year job stints became immediately argumentative in the recruiter
| phone screen.
| seibelj wrote:
| Totally agree - never received a good candidate from here so I
| stopped trying a while ago. Maybe once and a while I post.
| Hiring good people is always hard, it's a full time job for a
| full time recruiter.
| atraac wrote:
| That sounds like an issue you would have with or without post
| on HN. How did you solve that and how did it affect your hiring
| numbers? It feels like HN would at least attract way more
| technical people than generic job boards.
| atemerev wrote:
| Well, third quarter in the row -- now it is finally a recession,
| or what?
| vuln wrote:
| Nah, that's how it was defined historically, it has been
| changed to be defined in another way in order to influence
| certain demographics.
| EddySchauHai wrote:
| I heard this argument and thought the same, but looking into
| it there is _no_ standard definition for a recession. Two
| quarters is a nice layman version people share, but it does
| involve other factors. This isn 't something that's changed
| recently, economic textbooks from the early 2000s say this
| too. Just something some people heard and ran with :)
|
| When people hear these anecdotes, check yourself! In an era
| of fake news and bubbles you have to be accountable to
| yourself by researching if common sayings are really true
| before sharing them.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I think GDP growth will be positive in Q3 when it's announced.
| Current estimate is like 2.4%
| buro9 wrote:
| I didn't post this time. But I've hired lots and I'm ahead on my
| hiring plans.
|
| A lack of posts can't be interpreted as a lack of hiring.
| typon wrote:
| It may not be a perfect indicator, but here absolutely is some
| correlation.
| adra wrote:
| I don't know what's happening but I'm getting way more
| unsolicited recruiting requests than I have in a very long time
| (Sr+swe), so either they're more desperate in bringing in
| seasoned employees to replace the often lighter pulling entries,
| or something.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| Do we know what is happening with HN engagement overall? I assume
| it's monotonically increasing, but, maybe not?
| connor11528 wrote:
| Well it's October 4th. Isn't there the whole month for people to
| post? We should at least wait until the end of the month..
| OJFord wrote:
| Who is hiring vs. wants to be hired (top-level) post count
| disparity could be a fun one to track.
| jamesgreenleaf wrote:
| I actually check that sometimes. Anecdotally, I remember the
| ratio being ~4.5 in 2019, then ~3.5 during the pandemic. This
| month it's at 1.8
|
| I don't know if it really means anything though.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| It might at least control for changes in the hackernews
| popularity.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Here's the chart for those threads, which isn't too exciting:
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kqUnALPvgpM6HiK5s-GP...
|
| Although I'm not sure why 2019 ushered in much better
| performance on those threads.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Post-pandemic people wanted to change jobs
| dandigangi wrote:
| Minor but I wish it got posted only on business days when it
| falls on a weekend. I tend to wait until the following Monday but
| then we usually lost in all the other comments.
| minimaxir wrote:
| > This account automatically submits a 'Who is Hiring?' post at
| 11 AM Eastern time on the _first weekday_ of every month.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=whoishiring
| verdverm wrote:
| > A regular "Who Is Hiring?" thread appears on the first
| weekday of each month
|
| From the FAQ
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Can we get a "Who is firing?" post going?
| [deleted]
| greenie_beans wrote:
| https://layoffs.fyi/
| xtracto wrote:
| I like https://www.trueup.io/layoffs a bit more because of
| the stacked chart. I was [pleasantly] surprised that
| September layoffs were less than half of the ones in the
| previous month.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| nice! that's clever. thanks for sharing
| jenscow wrote:
| We'd then also need a _" Who wants to be fired?"_ post.
| jt2190 wrote:
| I genuinely don't understand what the purpose of such a thread
| would be.
|
| * Weird sense of relief? ("At least _I_ wasn't laid off!")
|
| * Gloating? ("Ha! I knew that wildly successful company wasn't
| so great!")
|
| * Determine if a particular company is shrinking headcount?
| (Seems unreliable at best.)
|
| Something else?
| ayewo wrote:
| You must be new here. Just kidding, just kidding :)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31585304 (2022)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22887346 (2020)
| willcipriano wrote:
| Good signal not to apply. I won't join a firm that has
| recently had layoffs for obvious reasons.
| ryanSrich wrote:
| I imagine it would serve a similar purpose to fucked
| company[1]
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucked_Company
| pkrumins wrote:
| inb4 rip economy
| gorbachev wrote:
| Any analysis such as this should account for seasonality and/or
| some sort of trending.
|
| Not saying the results would different, but just comparing
| arbitrary dates for this sort of data is not going to give you
| data to derive any meaningful conclusions.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| No one knows what the economic forecast looks like these days,
| and anyone that thinks they do is fooling themselves. Whats
| happening in the EU/GB is very real, and uncoordinated
| inflationary control measures are amplifying issues.
|
| Around Q2/Q3 of 2023 we should have most supply chains stabilized
| again, and a better estimate of actual market demand.
|
| Hang on, it is going to be one volatile winter... ;)
| harryvederci wrote:
| I don't know the intention of the author, but I see like a lot of
| "Look, it's happening! The economy is going down!" posts pop up
| these days. Which may be true, but it can also be a self-
| fulfilling profecy if everyone is doing that on all platforms.
| Which would be a shame.
|
| I'm not saying HN and other platforms should censor (/ take
| action) either. It's just a thought I have on this subject, and I
| don't know if there is a solution.
| Sophistifunk wrote:
| If HN can sink the economy it was going down either way
| battery_glasses wrote:
| This could be considered a good thing. The whole point of
| increasing interest rates is to lower business investment and
| consumer purchasing power, which is what we need to do to
| combat inflation (or magically fix all supply chain issues.)
| User23 wrote:
| Another option for lowering inflation is increasing
| productivity to allow the same amount of money to chase more
| goods and services, thus resulting in lower prices.
| citilife wrote:
| > This could be considered a good thing.
|
| Lower wages, lower job mobility, asset deflation, consumable
| inflation -- YAY!
|
| ...
| [deleted]
| slg wrote:
| It is still wild to me that this is the approach we are
| taking, things are getting too expensive so let's shrink
| the economy. That can't be the best solution. We are
| throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
| xapata wrote:
| Not shrink. Slow the growth of. Decelerate is different
| from stop.
|
| The real problem isn't any particular position, velocity,
| nor even acceleration. Those can all be planned for. It's
| the 4th time-derivative, jerk, that messes us up.
| slg wrote:
| That is a semantic debate on whether we cross an axis on
| a graph and we won't know whether that will happen until
| after the fact.
|
| We are intervening to make the economy smaller than if we
| didn't intervene. I think that qualifies as "shrinking"
| even if the growth is what is shrinking and not the
| overall economy.
| caeril wrote:
| > Those can all be planned for.
|
| Literally nothing can be planned for. Compare the Fed dot
| plots at any given meeting since 2008 with actual rates a
| year, or three years hence. Look at the BoE and BoJ flail
| wildly around right now, absolutely shocked by the
| consequences of _their own actions less than a year ago_.
|
| These people have arguably a _worse_ predictive ability
| than the canonical South Park Chicken ritual.
|
| Central Banking is the only industry I know of in which
| you can be catastrophically wrong, always, and retain job
| security. Great gig, if you can swing it.
| pbz wrote:
| It's the only way we know of to stop greed/fomo running
| rampant. Folks need to be put in a time-out to cool off
| and force them to reprioritize. We like to think of the
| market as this calculated and rational entity. It's far
| from that, in fact it's closer to the opposite of that.
| The other option is to do price control, but that won't
| fly in capitalism.
| prottog wrote:
| > to do price control, but that won't fly in capitalism
|
| Price control doesn't fly in any economic system. Putting
| a legal floor or ceiling on the price anything doesn't
| affect what it actually costs to produce it.
| battery_glasses wrote:
| I wouldn't say its the only way we know, rather its the
| only politically feasible move. Increasing taxes on the
| wealthy would arguably be a more effective way to take
| money out of the economy and wouldn't hurt non-wealthy
| people as bad, but good luck getting that through
| congress.
|
| The only party that can act right now is the Fed, and the
| only move the Fed has in increasing interest rates.
| slg wrote:
| There are other levers that can be pulled. Taxes are one
| example that could be much more targeted at the specific
| sources of the "greed/fomo running rampant". We instead
| chose to take it out on everyone.
| pbz wrote:
| I'd put taxation in the same bucket as price control
| because for this to be effective the taxes would need to
| be on the rich (in effect to drain liquidity) and that's
| as likely as price control.
| slg wrote:
| I don't disagree with the unlikely nature of new taxes on
| the rich. That was basically my original point. It is
| wild that we decided that we would rather go into a
| recession than tax the rich and I don't understand why
| there is seemingly no public pushback against this.
| pbz wrote:
| There's historic precedence that increasing rates
| controls inflation. Yes, it's a very blunt and crude
| instrument. However, when you know this tool works,
| trying another tool is too risky to experiment with (in
| case it fails).
|
| Inflation does have the risk of getting out of hand and
| being even harder to control. The risk analysis is that
| whatever pain increasing the rates would cause it pales
| in comparison to having hyperinflation.
|
| As far as the lack of a pushback: My guess is a
| combination of apathy and the fact that it doesn't affect
| the average person quite as much as inflation.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| Not to mention the greatest wealth transfer in history from
| the poor to the rich: https://www.newsweek.com/were-living-
| through-greatest-transf...
| tsunamifury wrote:
| This isn't 1980, raising interest rates doesn't fix supply
| chain issues. This isn't inflation it's a real supply
| shortage. By the fed doesn't seem to know how to help with
| that so, let's just tank everything. Killing demand to get
| workers back to lower wages and unemployment up seems to be
| that real goal.
| baggy_trough wrote:
| It's both.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| There is a supply shortage in some areas... and there is
| price inflation as well. That's actually what you'd expect
| with a supply shortage that isn't very evenly distributed
| anyway, but when you add dramatic expansion of the money
| supply in a period of very low interest rates on top of
| that, you'd certainly expect to see dramatic price
| inflation to match, as we have. The idea that a supply
| shortage is causing all of this seems insane.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The "expansion in the money supply" has been going on for
| 15 years. The supply issues started 2.5 years ago. The
| inflation started about 2 years ago. So only one of those
| factors is correlated with serious inflation.
|
| The explicit goal of expanding the money supply in 2009
| was to drive inflation in order to combat deflation. It
| didn't work. We ended up with a decade+ long period of
| low/no inflation.
|
| Even today, the USD is growing stronger relative to other
| currencies. So in spite of this continued money supply
| expansion, Americans are experiencing inflation the least
| of anyone in the developed world.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Money supply has roughly doubled since 2020. So you are
| not correct.
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2SL
| mywittyname wrote:
| That big spike is literally just a change in the
| definition of M1/M2 money supply. Specifically, in May
| 2020, the Fed began including certain liquid investment
| accounts. So you can't compare pre-May 2020 figures with
| post-May 2020 figures because they are measuring
| different things and they aren't going to go back and
| retroactively fix the figures.
| llampx wrote:
| Zimbabwe has 200% interest rates and 280% inflation iirc
|
| https://www.africanews.com/2022/06/28/zimbabwes-key-
| interest...
|
| Why am I being downvoted? All this is is a data point showing
| that rising interest rates don't have to bring down
| inflation.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Zimbabwe's economy is non-functional. Stats for inflation
| and interest rates aren't meaningful to anywhere else.
| There's no real applicable lessons other than to look at it
| and feel bad for Zimbabweans stuck in that situation.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I don't think people should downvote you for disagreement,
| but I do disagree with your analysis. The US has a system
| where the Fed lets banks manage the money creation, and
| they control that by changing the interest rates to change
| the bank's incentives. In Zimbabwe, the government prints
| money directly (or at least they did under the Mugabe
| government, I am not up to date on their current affairs),
| which means that the central bank interest rate doesn't
| restrain their money supply growth.
|
| That does have _some_ relevance to the US because the
| federal government can borrow+spend way more than a small
| country with a bad credit score - but since the interest
| rates they borrow at are coupled to the Fed rate, rising
| rates should _in theory_ slow that down.
| User23 wrote:
| The Fed is a creature of Congress, which is to say that
| Congress completely controls the Fed. All talk of the
| Fed's independence has no constitutional basis. The Fed
| was created by an act of Congress and can be
| restructured, abolished, or otherwise changed however
| Congress likes by subsequent acts of Congress. Indeed, in
| the history of US central banking, Congress has done so
| before. Therefore, the Fed's continued existence is
| predicated on not motivating a congressional majority
| plus the executive or alternatively a veto-proof
| congressional majority to change things. Practically and
| observably speaking, that means when Congress says
| "print" the Fed says "brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr." There
| is no operational limit on how much money Congress can
| spend. There are real limits though, in particular the
| productive capacity of the economic zone that does
| business in US dollars. If, for example, China were to
| withdraw from the dollar denominated global market, it
| would be a severe supply shock and result in massive
| inflation.
|
| Furthermore, most money in the USA isn't even reserves,
| but rather bank deposits. Theoretically bank deposits are
| supposedly somehow constrained by reserves, but that
| hasn't really been true for well over a decade. Raising
| rates doesn't directly impair banks ability to originate
| as many new loans and corresponding deposits as they care
| to. Conceivably, higher rates could reduce the demand for
| loans from credit-worthy borrowers, or even reduce the
| pool of credit-worthy borrowers directly, but I'm not
| sure it doesn't end up being a wash after accounting for
| inflation.
|
| Personally I suspect most of the effects that we do see
| are related to hysteresis rather than a fundamental
| transmission mechanism from interest rates. That is to
| say, the shocking effects we see from rate increases
| aren't due to a fundamental change, but rather a lag
| while market participants to catch up with the new rules
| of the game.
|
| Another important factor is the prestige media using all
| of its persuasive powers to convince market participants
| that Fed actions will result in a downturn. There
| certainly is a large psychological component to economic
| activity.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| > The Fed is a creature of Congress, which is to say that
| Congress completely controls the Fed.
|
| No no no no no. It means that Congress created the Fed,
| and Congress can destroy the Fed. Congress can also
| change its charter.
|
| But Congress is capable of creating and destroying
| independent agencies.
|
| "I buy that car and fill it with gas. You drive it."
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Given Congresses inability to get almost anything done
| other than the absolute "must-do's" like NDAA and yearly
| appropriations and then 1-2 big ticket admin items, why
| do you think that Congress has the capacity, much less
| the will to control or even exert significant interest
| over the Fed?
| User23 wrote:
| I think that if the Fed stopped acting in the interests
| of Congress's real principals, who are observably not the
| general electorate, then we would see exactly that. It's
| instructive to observe the cases where Congress reliably
| acts promptly and more or less unanimously. Pare off the
| procedural stuff and other fluff of course.
| gonz0p0litik wrote:
| As a conceptual body it has the authority. The meat bags
| currently running the show have no motivation. Of course
| they too are Americans and would deflate their value by
| changing the rules, which is the problem with thought
| ending populist chants and mantras like "no new taxes!"
|
| The public is "data structure" illiterate. They're
| educated with spoken traditions coupled to vague imagery
| of hierarchical power structures of history and the work
| place. I am not sure it's intentional, more of a Duning-
| Kruger thing.
|
| As usual any sustained shift in the appropriation of
| agency is up to the public. Science shows us how to build
| things, but no theory states "we must build rockets to
| nowhere." But "keep your hands off muh capitalism _click
| clack_ " gets in the way of sincere discussion of fully
| automated logistics.
|
| Protectionism of spoken tradition in human memory is not
| going away anytime soon. It's innate to our biology.
| mywittyname wrote:
| The Zimbabwean economy is to the American one what a kids
| soccer match is to the World Cup.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Those numbers don't mean anything.
|
| The currency in Zimbabwe is so unreliable that barter has
| become the principal way of saving and storing wealth.
|
| Zimbabwe has "cow banks." You take your cash salary, and
| give it to the cow bank. The cow bank uses the cash to buy
| a cow.
|
| The cow is put into a pen. You can make surprise visits to
| ensure the cows are alive, healthy, and not being "shared"
| with other customers.
|
| Interest rates are based on the fertility rates of cattle,
| not central bank policies.
| rgblambda wrote:
| This sounds like it's just investing in a cattle ranch.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| A bit ... each customers cattle is sequestered. You get
| an actual cow with a name/number. You can take the cow
| home if you want - it's yours.
|
| More like owning a pet horse.
| sangnoir wrote:
| It's a little short of full-on financialization of a
| cattle. So, perhaps closer to beef/dairy futures? What's
| missing is a bank classifying the cattle, selling them
| fractionally, and creating a hedging instrument.
|
| If you own oil or soy futures, you can go get the product
| if you like (to everyone's inconvenience). This is not
| far off.
| badpun wrote:
| Why people there can't just store value in a hard
| currency, like USD? That's the typical approach in
| countries with shitty currencies. Even if it's illegal, I
| can't imagine enforcement being that great.
| speby wrote:
| I mean, it's not just anecdotal, or only looking for bad news.
| New job postings in general are down markedly:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/04/jolts-august-2022.html
| fundad wrote:
| People want ANOTHER round of layoffs because the high demand
| doesn't help their candidates
| riffic wrote:
| > self-fulfilling profecy
|
| that's not really how it works though, and it should absolutely
| not be a concern (it's quite common to get a sort of tech-
| industry tunnel vision while discounting the bigger picture or
| regional focuses.)
|
| I've always argued that downturns are a natural part of _every
| business cycle_ and perhaps instead of trying to avoid them, we
| plan for their inevitable occurrence.
| randomsearch wrote:
| If sites like HN were that influential we'd all be running
| Linux on the desktop and listening to our nomads.
|
| Not sure if that's a good or bad thing.
| wombatpm wrote:
| I find my zune to be a perfectly cromulent device
| VictorPath wrote:
| > a self-fulfilling profecy (sic)
|
| I think Powell jacking up the fed funds rate is going to have a
| much larger effect than some random HN post.
| mountaineer wrote:
| I believe the intent is to share as a possible leading
| indicator. I don't know the OP's exact reasoning, but I have
| tracked this data for years at hntrends.com and it was my
| original thesis that this thread is a leading indicator of the
| tech job market at a minimum.
| throwaway292939 wrote:
| I would think the leading indicator would be Big Tech layoffs
| and hiring freezes that started months ago.
|
| If I were to change my course of action, I'd use that since
| it happened way earlier.
| fernandotakai wrote:
| i mean, even with hiring freezes and layoffs i'm still
| getting emails from recruiters (this month i got one from
| google amongst other companies).
| WWLink wrote:
| I feel like the big companies have nothing to lose from
| saying and doing these things. First it frees them of any
| guilty conscience to hack and slash at 'extra fat',
| second it allows them to get away with running skeleton
| teams. Third, it makes people who get solicited and
| receive a job offer feel "lucky" that they were given an
| offer in a "bad market".
|
| There's no reason for them to not act like this. Unless a
| pile of startups are standing around throwing more money
| at engineers and loudly attracting google's talent away.
| vadym909 wrote:
| Freezes are never absolute or company wide. It just means
| that it will be harder to get headcount. The recruiters
| keep filling the funnel at a lower pace.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| I think everyone is getting emails from recruiters, and
| this will keep happening until the recruiters themselves
| are laid off. Good people are hard to find in any market,
| and if there's even a chance that you're a good person
| from your resume or current employer, you will keep
| getting these emails.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Isn't it too early to count the total on October 4th?
| altdataseller wrote:
| OP wants to be early to report a trend. Too early and
| premature IMO, but he wants to be first, I guess.
| Redoubts wrote:
| Oh I don't know about that. I would say the vast majority
| of a threads discussion happens in the first 12 hours
| here. The who's hiring threads don't have that much
| longer of a tail.
| whatshisface wrote:
| How can you call it a leading indicator of the tech job
| market when it is a tech job market?
| zdragnar wrote:
| It is a pretty narrow segment of a much larger market,
| presumably.
| whatshisface wrote:
| "Startups quit hiring first," sounds like a leading
| indicator on the surface, but if you think about it that
| also means that they will stop hiring during smaller dips
| that later pick back up. Every big dip has to do through
| the smaller dip state, but since plenty of smaller dips
| recover it is still a martingale - unless it isn't, but
| if it isn't that's the cause of my surprise.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| That's basically true of all "leading indicators", and is
| summarized in the popular joke that "Economists have
| predicted 8 of the last 5 recessions".
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Yeah, there are literally thousands of tech companies
| that don't use HN.
| Jiocus wrote:
| Not the author but I would assume they mean that "Who is
| hiring" was indicative of the job market outside the HN
| thread itself, in a macro-perspective.
| mountaineer wrote:
| Leading indicator of the (overall) tech job market is a
| better way to put it. The job postings in The Who Is
| Hiring? threads are a small sliver of the overall industry.
| pb7 wrote:
| It's a fine sample though.
| pitched wrote:
| "The vibes are off" is the best way I've heard this explained:
| https://www.npr.org/2022/09/15/1123281909/vibecession-vibes-...
| fundad wrote:
| We are teetering on theocracy which doesn't bode well for
| employment.
| interpenetrate wrote:
| Within a single firm, particularly large ones, surpluses and
| deficits can be communicated absolutely and crises can be
| practically eliminated. (It would be unthinkable for Amazon to
| leave the coordination of its processes up to some sort of
| internal free market.) As for action between firms, the anarchy
| of the market is fundamental to capitalism. Real competition is
| a basic characteristic of capitalism and so perfect information
| is not a tendency of the system (despite its theoretical
| elevation in neoclassical economics).
|
| So, no, there is no solution. To avoid crises of overproduction
| (including the subsequent adjustments), the planning that takes
| place within the capitalist firm has to be extended to the
| global network of production.
| cercatrova wrote:
| It seems you're advocating for a centrally planned economy,
| but from history we see that it doesn't work. It seems that
| there is simply too much in an economy for one entity to
| wholly plan. It can work in a smaller organization like
| Amazon (and even then, I'm sure teams compete for allocation
| of resources, it's not all centrally planned) but not at
| large. We see that people in centrally planned economies
| revert to underground black markets, signifying that somehow
| markets are a key to functioning economies.
| interpenetrate wrote:
| There are differences between the systems of a private
| capital and of a nation (or for that matter, the entire
| globe, which has never been planned centrally; incidentally
| this explains black markets).
|
| The difference in goods is a mere quantitative difference.
| (Amazon sells literally everything.) Still, the amount and
| diversity of crap managed by Amazon is much greater than
| that of North Korea (comparing net sales vs. GDP). "It
| seems that there is simply too much in an economy for one
| entity to wholly plan" has to be tongue-in-cheek if it's
| not simply a mindless mantra. It's a staggering ideological
| contradiction whose poles the Hacker News crowd must
| oscillate between. On one hand, we're on the cusp of
| generalized artificial intelligence, and on the other we
| can't figure out the linear algebra needed to maintain a
| input-output table that changes over time.
|
| But the difference in competition is a qualitative
| difference. The laws that determine the "competition"
| between teams at Amazon are different (opposite, even) than
| the laws of competition between capitalist firms. This is
| an empirical question. We can certainly imagine Amazons
| teams undercutting each other's "prices" in order to
| maximize private "profit," leading to a centralization and
| concentration of "capital" in the hands of a "monopolistic"
| team, but this simply does not happen in practice. The
| categories of intra-firm operation are totally different
| than those of inter-firm operation.
| theptip wrote:
| I see what you are saying, but I think the impact of a post
| like this on something so intangible as "market sentiment" is
| extremely tenuous. It's hard to measure/quantify but I'd be
| shocked if it's more than a rounding error.
|
| On the other hand, there are actual fundamentals like economy-
| wide inflation, employment numbers, GDP growth, supply/demand
| curves, etc., and it's important as an operator to have
| information about how the economy actually is, and more
| importantly how it's changing. I think the benefit of a post
| like this is much less tenuous; it provides insight into how
| the broader market conditions are panning out in our specific
| corner of the economy.
|
| So yes, every measurement perturbs the system under
| measurement. In some cases that can be substantial. But in this
| case I don't think it is so.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| Yeah also looking at what jobs are in demand at recruiters
| from LinkedIn, I can see already since the pandemic it's more
| from companies with proven business models and rather small
| startups. Good to see some real numbers actually. But of
| course the effect is there, job seekers and companies get
| more cautious. Still, better than hiding this data. Also I
| don't think there is a real reason to worry within tech
| kortilla wrote:
| If data upsets you it may be worth thinking about why. It's
| just saying that hiring appears to be cooling off and that's
| showing up in other places too (layoffs/freezes at FAANG, the
| BLS job opening stats just this morning:
| https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/us-job-openings-post-
| bigg...).
|
| This isn't some insidious campaign to crash the economy by
| showing that the economy is finally cooling off. Getting
| inflation under control is good long term but it will be
| painful.
| NaturalPhallacy wrote:
| We're also heading into the holiday season, and notably "Open
| Enrollment" for health insurance, which is titanic industry who
| typically freezes their code in September. Lots of companies
| slack off or halt their hiring, particularly health insurance
| during this period.
|
| And also all the inflation and recession action going on.
|
| So it's likely a combination of the two.
| ternaryoperator wrote:
| The first factor, if valid, would have shown up in previous
| years too, no?
| robertk wrote:
| https://www.financialsamurai.com/best-time-to-start-a-busine...
|
| " The Best Time To Start A Business Is During A Downturn"
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| As others like Jason Calicanis have pointed out, it will
| hopefully be easier for the resilient startups to hire and
| retain talent.
|
| https://youtu.be/fU6QlvruLTw?t=607
| brookside wrote:
| Financial Samurai strikes me as sadistic. His post about Mr.
| Money Mustache's divorce is pretty horrible example of
| soulless SEO headings kicking a rival blogger when down
| https://www.financialsamurai.com/mmm-divorce/
| galfarragem wrote:
| I have mixed feelings. It's sadistic but too relevant to
| ignore. It's an hit in the aircraft carrier of the FIRE
| poster child.
| pb7 wrote:
| One of the most common reasons for divorce is finances so
| it seems relevant to draw attention to someone promoting a
| certain financial lifestyle.
| outworlder wrote:
| ESH
|
| He's kicking someone else when they are down, but that
| seems to be petty revenge in retribution for perceived
| attacks.
| conductr wrote:
| I can see it both way. I never liked MMM types because they
| preach what I consider extreme frugality. As a core
| principle of my finances, I focus on the uncapped income
| side of the equation and practice what I consider modesty
| in my expenses. I have no desire to be flashy or flaunt the
| wealth I do have. But I'm sure as hell not living off the
| grid in the middle of nowhere because it cost 10% of a home
| in a metro area. Thing is, I'd never even consider it
| because my wife doesn't want that, and it's important for
| people to be fully aligned on that.
|
| I found the post you linked to overly verbose as these
| bloggers often are. They make lists and sections and go on
| tangents on what could be a 300-500 word essay. I think he
| could have excluded the backstory and just focused on how
| important it is that your partner be onboard the
| FIRE/extreme frugality lifestyle. So I think it's poorly
| written and not an enjoyable article. However, it's a
| pretty damn important message and difficult to talk about
| until someone prominent that is serving as a poster child
| for the FIRE niche like MMM goes through it publicly.
| sulam wrote:
| It's true, I depend on HN posts to tell me whether or not I
| should put the brakes on my spending. /s
| rapind wrote:
| > I don't know the intention of the author
|
| Why does his intent matter unless you think the data is being
| skewed or misrepresented? Seems like a fairly objective factual
| post to me (but I didn't run the numbers myself).
|
| I would appreciate if data observations like this always
| included the script so people could easily (and quickly) verify
| the results, but that's just a personal knit pick.
| gpm wrote:
| > Why does his intent matter unless you think the data is
| being skewed or misrepresented?
|
| Because the data can be cherry-picked, intentionally or un-
| intentionally, similar to https://xkcd.com/882/
|
| If you believe a trend exists (or just want to find evidence
| for it for other reasons) and you keep looking for
| statistical evidence of it, you're going to find it.
| trenning wrote:
| My biggest takeaway from submitting this, is that most people
| (by top upvoted comments) had a negative knee jerk reaction
| to my 'intentions'. I just thought it was observationally
| interesting.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| You know what they say, right? Economists have predicted 9 of
| the last 5 recessions. Talk is just talk until people start
| believing it.
| ptmcc wrote:
| Indeed, and more like 20 out of the last 1.
| ouid wrote:
| The economy "going down" is not necessarily pessimism.
| conductr wrote:
| Official measures are lagging indicators, so a recession always
| exists before it exists.
| tengbretson wrote:
| Despite two quarters of negative GDP growth, the current
| justification for saying we are not currently in a recession is
| that the unemployment rate is so low.
|
| The current stated goal of the Federal Reserve is to raise the
| unemployment rate from 3.7% to a target of 4.4%.
|
| What you are remarking on as possibly a self-fulfilling
| prophecy is instead the result of official policy achieving its
| goal.
| baremetal wrote:
| >Despite falling GDP, the current justification for saying we
| are not currently in a recession is that jobs and employment
| numbers are high.
|
| Pretty sure a recession is two quarters of negative growth.
| Rationalization hamster wheels notwithstanding.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| We have had 2 quarters of negative growth before without an
| official NBER recession (though not since the 50s).
| lurquer wrote:
| Until recently, a recession has meant two quarters of
| negative growth.
|
| The term is used to describe economic conditions in
| various countries.
|
| The NBER is not part of the designation.
|
| Indeed, it would be impossible for an economist to
| observe that Egypt, for instance, was in a recession as
| the NBER issues no opinions on the Egyptian economy.
|
| No, conditioning the definition of a recession on the
| NBER was a silly political stunt by the current admin.
| Don't go along with these redefinitions... it's silly and
| illogical.
| lkrubner wrote:
| That has never been the definition of a recession. All
| recessions are declared by NBER and NBER has always used a
| large number of metrics in their calculations. You can see
| the official list of "peak months" and "trough months"
| here, and you'll note they don't line up cleanly with 2
| quarters of negative growth:
|
| https://www.nber.org/research/data/us-business-cycle-
| expansi...
| willcipriano wrote:
| How did the ancient Greeks and Romans have recessions
| without NBER's guidance?
| nemo44x wrote:
| The formal reason is the unemployment rate. The actual reason
| is because of midterm elections. After November it will be
| agreed upon we are in a recession.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Look, it's happening! The economy is going down!"
|
| I agree this can be a self fulfilling prophecy. A lot of larger
| tech companies were announcing hiring freezes or restructuring
| months ago to get ahead of the downturn.
|
| But I also think we could restate the quote above in ways that
| are actually true. For example, a lot of these posts are
| startups and monetary policy is slowing or shrinking the money
| available for VC. It makes sense that we see slower hiring. The
| past few years have probably been above historical VC funding
| levels anyways, so we may be returning to a more historical
| level for the next few years (or who knows?).
| claytongulick wrote:
| > A lot of larger tech companies were announcing hiring
| freezes or restructuring months ago to get ahead of the
| downturn
|
| Alternately, I think a lot of companies are using the spector
| of a recession as cover for reducing unproductive or
| unnecessary headcount.
|
| Over-hiring is an issue that's difficult to correct. If you
| do a round of layoffs, the perception is that you're in
| financial duress. This can affect investor and consumer
| confidence.
|
| It's also difficult to explain to the public and to employees
| "oops, mia culpa! We asked you to upend your life to take a
| job with us, but our bad, we don't really need you."
|
| I see it as similar to the way a lot of businesses
| implemented cost-cutting measures during covid that they had
| very much wanted to do, but couldn't because of the worry
| that they'd lose a competitive edge. Many of these measures
| had nothing to do with public safety and everything to do
| with cost cutting.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Even if that is the case with some, it would still have the
| self-fulfilling prophecy component.
| a-dub wrote:
| yes, this has been my joke.
|
| "maybe it won't be a recession. maybe it will be. what i can
| tell you for sure is that it will be the first of its kind in
| real-time, full surround, three dimensional, quintophonic
| social media stereo."
|
| economics is the study of population behavior. remember that.
| godelski wrote:
| > Which may be true, but it can also be a self-fulfilling
| prophecy if everyone is doing that on all platforms. Which
| would be a shame.
|
| This also happens with inflation. It is probably because people
| start acting differently. The hypothesis is that if people are
| preparing for a recession then demand goes down, which pushes
| prices up, which is identical to inflation. Obviously this
| model is far too simplistic but it is still interesting.
| etrautmann wrote:
| What? That's opposite of how it should work. Lower demand
| depresses prices.
| godelski wrote:
| Not if you want to make the same profits.
| rvbissell wrote:
| That's not how it works.
|
| Revenue is the area of the rectangle "price times
| volume". (Profit is "revenue minus costs".) Businesses
| want to maximize the area of that rectangle.
|
| If a business thinks they can keep the area of that
| rectangle the same by increasing the price dimension,
| that will cause buyers to react by shrinking the volume
| dimension. That _might_ yield the same effective area for
| the rectangle, but then also might not.
| interpenetrate wrote:
| Well empirically lower demand does not lead to higher
| prices. The hopes and dreams of sustained profits are
| dashed by the coercive forces of competition. It's very
| sad.
| rvbissell wrote:
| Why do you say that softening demand will cause prices to go
| up? That sounds contrary to every economics lesson I've ever
| had.
| kikokikokiko wrote:
| "The hypothesis is that if people are preparing for a
| recession then demand goes down, which pushes prices up"
|
| This makes no sense at all. even the inverse makes no sense,
| if people preparing for a recession stopped buying goods,
| prices would go go down not up, which obviously would not
| cause inflation. This idiocy of saying that inflation comes
| from the people, and not from monetary policy, is depressing.
| It guarantees that governments will keep having a free pass
| to print as much colored paper as they want.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Almost as depressing as this belief that the (US)
| government just prints money.
| kadomony wrote:
| The last quarter of the year is not really a huge time for
| hiring.. a lot of companies are finishing up their budgets and
| waiting for new ones to hit to post jobs in the new year..
| DeRock wrote:
| Its down >50% year over year (which should be seasonally
| adjusted):
|
| October 2021 [1]: 853 posts
|
| October 2022 [2]: 415 posts
|
| Not an exact comparison, as some posts will continue to trickle
| in to Oct 2022, but its still a sharp decline.
|
| [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28719320
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33068421
| macawfish wrote:
| I want to share that there are at least two jobs I've seen on
| "Who is hiring?" for almost 9 months. I applied to one of them
| and never heard back. Can only assume this is an effect of some
| form of "hiring freeze".
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Has anyone actually gotten much success in either direction
| (hirer/candidate) from these posts?
| atraac wrote:
| Wrote in Who wants to be hired recently. Got two emails from
| actual companies and one from a questionable recruiter with no
| concretes. One of those companies sent me a Triplebyte timed
| algo question without any real human contact whatsoever so I
| just didn't do it. Other one had a take home assignment with a
| fairly easy Leetcode wrapped in an API kind of task. Did that,
| never received any feedback besides 'thanks but no', no invite
| for actual technical interview. Had much better experience with
| companies I found through LinkedIn to be honest. Feels like
| people here feel elitist to a point where a decent engineer is
| nothing, without FAANG experience.
| bckygldstn wrote:
| I've gotten a lot of work through the monthly freelancer
| thread.
| mildweed wrote:
| Posted a job here once. Got 9 applicants, none of those were
| hired.
|
| Archive reasons: (4) Underqualified (4) Work Authorization (1)
| Unresponsive
| ketzu wrote:
| I posted in "who wants to be hired" a few times, and a few
| people reached out. About 50% seem to be somewhat targeted to
| the message. At least one lead to an offer (which I declined
| for other reasons, it was a fair and interesting offer though).
|
| "Who is hiring" never worked out for me, as the geographic
| limitations are too strict or confusingly worded. Looking
| through 400 posts to figure out which are actually open to hire
| someone from europe is not as promising as looking through
| dedicated job portals.
| ja3k wrote:
| I got hired for my current role after posting on "Who wants to
| be hired". Around ~10 companies reached out.
| akavi wrote:
| I got my first tech internship (at a 5 person startup called
| "Pagerduty") thanks to one.
| tomduncalf wrote:
| I found out from an ad on here that a startup in a field I am
| interested in were based 2 minutes from my flat and were
| hiring, so I got in in touch and ended up working there for 5
| years and had a lot of fun, made some great friends and it
| moved my career in a really interesting direction. I'd never
| have thought of applying to them otherwise so it worked out
| well for me!
| joshstrange wrote:
| I got hired for my current job based on a "who wants to be
| hired" thread. I've also been reached out to 2-3 times based on
| comments I've made (some recent, some a few weeks/months old)
| on HN asking me to interview for a position.
| dcatx wrote:
| I posted as a candidate in one thread over the summer and got
| contacted by ~10 companies and did a handful of interviews -- a
| couple were duds with non-technical founders casting a wide net
| but others were solid opportunities. I also applied to a few
| jobs from that same month's employers thread and got to the
| offer stage with one of those companies.
|
| I had enough success to try again the next time I am looking
| for a new gig.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I got previous two jobs via Who's Hiring. And, indirectly, my
| current job due to networking from the previous.
|
| I also recently interviewed for another position advertised via
| Who's Hiring. I didn't take the offer, but it was a very close
| decision.
| brian-b wrote:
| Yes! I was hired for my current role several years ago from a
| Who's Hiring post.
| anuragsoni wrote:
| Its a sample size of 1, but I found my previous job through a
| whoishiring post.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| My current position is directly attributable to a "who wants to
| be hired?" post where the founders reached out to me directly.
| I have gotten to final offer stage with at least four companies
| in the past two years, and had several dozen more interesting
| conversations about potential opportunities that have all come
| through the "who wants to be hired?" thread.
|
| I post every month on the "who wants to be hired?" thread
| except for when the 1st of the month falls on a weekend or a
| national holiday in the US. Why? Because the number of people
| reading the thread, and the number of people posting on "who is
| hiring?" threads dips precipitously when the 1st of the month
| falls on the weekend or a national holiday in the US.
|
| Most of the outreach I get from founders through "who wants to
| be hired?" is low-effort "we'll pay you in exposure!" or "well
| you can't live on what we're paying in any major meotropolitan
| area but think of the equity when we IPO!" but occasionally
| there is a diamond in the rough that reaches out. My current
| job was one of those diamonds.
|
| The difference between entrepreneurs who "get it" when selling
| their company on the "who is hiring thread?" and those that
| don't is stark. And even more stark is the difference between
| entrepreneurs selling their company to prospective hires on the
| "who is hiring thread?" vs developers selling their skillset on
| the "who wants to be hired?" thread. It is the difference
| between selling features vs selling benefits writ large.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| That's really neat to hear your experience, and I'm glad to
| see there are some successes! I wonder if the success rate is
| higher than similar job boards or linkedin-esqe spam
| outreach.
|
| Also, can you expand a bit more on the "those who get it" vs
| "those who don't"? What are you looking for here? What do you
| mean selling features vs. benefits?
| pyb wrote:
| A bit more specialized, but I don't get much inbound interest
| as a software developer for hardware projects.
| amateurdev wrote:
| Yes! At my current position from a post made in the Who's
| Hiring. Been here for over a year
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| One of the worst companies I've dealt with this time around was
| from an HN "who wants to be hired thread". Poor and conflicting
| communication, lack of respect for my time, that kind of thing.
| The company's been posting since late last year, and even made
| an appearance in the October 2022 thread (albeit this time it
| was posted by a different user).
|
| I tend to comment on topics I wouldn't want to discuss in a
| professional setting and so I'm pretty unlikely to ever bother
| with a "who wants to be hired?" thread.
| KAMSPioneer wrote:
| Just passed two years into a job I got from a Who's Hiring
| thread. Emailed the given address and ended up in interviews a
| week or two later. It's worked out well so far.
| noodle wrote:
| I've been hired to more than one job through these posts over
| the past ~15 years; and I've also done hiring for my teams
| successfully through these threads.
|
| Having said that, in the last ~2 years, we've had FAR less
| success with these threads. Didn't post in the last one cuz it
| just didn't feel worth it.
| fritzo wrote:
| I was hired into a super fun startup from a Who's Hiring post
| back in 2012. Thanks for this service!
| jabedude wrote:
| I was hired at my current company because I responded to a
| who's hiring post almost 2 years ago
| bigbillheck wrote:
| I got my previous job thru a 'who's hiring' many years ago. I
| don't think I'd try doing it again, not least of which is
| because I've got less than 20 years left in the ol' career
| (knock wood) and I'd rather stay where I'm at than interview
| ever again.
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| I think I posted in one once or twice and had ~3 people reach
| out to me about roles. One ended up being promising, but I had
| to pull out for a family emergency that kept me from being able
| to participate.
| kesterallen wrote:
| I get a fair number of good resumes from these threads.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I'd say that about 70% of our recent hires came from the
| monthly HN threads, and among first-interview invitees the %
| may well be even higher. Somehow the average quality of
| applicants via HN is way higher than via other platforms and I
| don't know why.
|
| Sidenote: we're not a big company, we hire single-digit new
| people per year. I have no idea how to scale this success up,
| ie if we'd advertise way more aggressively elsewhere the %
| would likely go down.
| Minor49er wrote:
| I got my current job through one of these threads
| coldpie wrote:
| At a previous job, HN's "Who's Hiring" was by far our most
| successful job posting. Frankly it was the _only_ successful
| recruiting method of those we tried (setting aside personal
| referrals).
| ed_elliott_asc wrote:
| The jobs market goes in cycles, sometimes there are less roles,
| sometimes there are more roles.
|
| Don't fret about the state of the market - you can't do anything
| and it is irrelevant.
|
| Focus on making sure your skills are up to date and you network
| and put yourself in the best position.
|
| If there are a hundred less roles, it doesn't matter if you are
| in the top 10%, even the top 50% - just be better than average
| and you'll be fine.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Actually, what's going on is the job market is waiting to
| collapse until I've just about finished my thesis. As soon as I
| really need a job, we're doomed. The problem is, the universe
| needs to fill in the backstory, so my unexpected delays have
| messed up it's ability to build the narrative. On the bright
| side, my laggardly pace may have fended things off until after
| the midterms.
|
| I'll let you all know when I've scheduled my defense so that
| you can start stockpiling gas, food, ammo, and whatever else.
| robertwt7 wrote:
| This is actually quite scary, we know that the economy is going
| down. We're just not sure when will it recover
| drstewart wrote:
| >we know that the economy is going down
|
| No, we don't know that. If you do, you'll make quite the
| killing on the stock market.
| [deleted]
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| also consider the whole chain --
|
| From the layoffs I've observed Recruiters were some of the top
| laid off roles.
|
| Less recruiters means prioritization of efforts.
|
| HN Who's hiring is probably a low priority platform. (Recruiter's
| boss doesn't know what it is, hard to instrument for tracking
| metrics)
|
| If you really want to know how many jobs are out there it's
| better to index and crawl all the companies jobs page directly.
| Albeit much much harder to do than a single HN thread per month.
| msluyter wrote:
| "HN Who's hiring is probably a low priority platform."
|
| This has always surprised me. At several companies I've
| suggested to the hiring folks that they post on HN and I've
| rarely seen it happen. But IMHO, although you may not get a
| _lot_ of candidates that way, I would imagine the signal /noise
| ratio is high, relative to the average recruiting channel.
| (Would be curious to see that (dis)confirmed.)
| Redoubts wrote:
| As someone on the other side, HN as a funnel isn't much
| better than a linked in job ad. Scanning through The Who
| Wants to be Hired thread might be better, but that's
| obviously more work.
| bigbillheck wrote:
| HN has a lot of very smart and talented people, but a lot
| more who think they are very smart and talented.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > (Recruiter's boss doesn't know what it is, hard to
| instrument for tracking metrics)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I would be curious to know if Who's Hiring is recruiters or
| other devs/founders. I always assumed other devs or founders.
| lysecret wrote:
| Companies job pages are very vague estimates of actual
| offering, especially at startups were everyone is incentivized
| to post more than existing to look good.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| That is a very good point that I had actually forgotten. Yeah
| tons of jobs are fake, sometimes to boost how you look,
| sometimes to fake out the competition (let them overhire and
| burn up their runway.
| nickphx wrote:
| Are you a time traveler? My calendar says it's 2022-10-04, still
| 27 days left.
| freediver wrote:
| A better discussion could be about whether these posts actually
| produce meaningful leads for anyone.
| b20000 wrote:
| i have the impression there are jobs, but they are not getting
| filled because companies don't want to pay proper compensation
| even though there is inflation and there is less supply now than
| a few years ago. they also still think that people are coming
| back into an office which is probably never going to happen again
| except in positions where you really need to because of security
| or confidentiality or physical access to infrastructure. HR
| people tend to be delusional and out of touch with reality. we'll
| see what happens.
| enviclash wrote:
| This was the most abundant (to my perception, as I have no
| numbers) about climate-related work.
| alex_young wrote:
| Looking at September's Who is Hiring [0] it does look like there
| are quite a few posts many days into the month. I don't think we
| can draw many conclusions on this data until the end of the month
| to be honest.
|
| Saying that last month had 536 posts, and that that was a low
| since June of 2020 seems much more interesting IMO.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32677265
| adrr wrote:
| Day of the week matters. I didn't post my job postings because I
| didn't look at hacker news on Saturday.
| DeRock wrote:
| The who is hiring post is always done on the first business day
| of the month. In this case it was Monday, not Saturday.
| jenscow wrote:
| That might be another factor - people set their reminders for
| the 1st.
| rspoerri wrote:
| So you're saying that the economy was worse in 2016 than it is
| now? That is the only possible direct conclusion I can read from
| your research.
| kypro wrote:
| You could both be making more money and have more money in the
| bank, but if you're worried you might be laid off soon you
| might not spend as much as you did last year.
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Now figure out how many "who is hiring?" threads have been posted
| on Saturday, Sunday or a national holiday in the US and compares
| those numbers against any others.
|
| Months when the 1st falls on a Saturday or Sunday.
| May & October 2016 January, April, July & October 2017
| April, July, September & December 2018 June, September,
| December 2019 February, March, August & November 2020
| May & August 2021 January, May, October 2022
|
| Whilst I think your numbers are reasonably accurate, and there is
| "other things going on" to push those numbers down, I don't think
| they paint the full picture. There is a definite slow-down
| towards the end of each year.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| This months post was made on Oct 3rd
| rdl wrote:
| I'm hiring but I'm not sure if I'd post on whoishiring. I find
| hiring by recruiting specific people I know to be awesome to be
| much less pain than inbound.
| yewenjie wrote:
| One reason is that crypto is down and the flurry of random crypto
| startups are absent right now. Compare the number of posts in
| December 2021 for reference, which was peak crypto of recent
| times.
| omegaworks wrote:
| Crypto itself, or at least the bubble, was an unintended
| byproduct of low interest rates and lax securities enforcement.
| The low interest environment is intended to spurn the monied
| rich into investing in productive businesses, but "innovators"
| instead invented crypto assets and lauded them as the second
| coming of Mansa Musa, siphoning nearly a trillion dollars out
| of the productive economy. Clever crypto "innovators"
| recognized the monied rich's need to feed their insatiable
| craving for growth without doing any real work. Now that the
| government itself is providing that outlet, there's no reason
| for crypto to continue to exist.
| boole1854 wrote:
| > siphoning nearly a trillion dollars out of the productive
| economy
|
| Not exactly correct. While the global crypto market cap is
| currently around a trillion dollars (and was higher in the
| recent past), this is vastly different than it being the case
| that a trillion dollars was invested in crypto (i.e.,
| "siphoned out" of the rest of the economy).
|
| In fact, according to one estimate, in 2021 global crypto
| investment was $30.2 billion [1]. (I don't quickly see
| estimates for 2022.) For comparison, US gross private
| domestic investment across all industries was $4.1 trillion
| in 2021 [2] and globally it was several times that. While $30
| billion is nothing to sneeze at when considered on its own,
| crypto investment is a rounding error when compared with
| global investment.
|
| [1] https://home.kpmg/xx/en/home/media/press-
| releases/2022/02/to... [2] See Table 1.1.5. Gross Domestic
| Product at https://apps.bea.gov/iTable/iTable.cfm?reqid=19&st
| ep=3&isuri...
| throwaway292939 wrote:
| What is the government outlet here?
| OzzyB wrote:
| I believe that would be BONDS (or GILTS if you're in the
| UK)
| [deleted]
| cma wrote:
| > Now that the government itself is providing that outlet
|
| Inflation adjusted nothing the government is selling is
| earning other than I-bonds (individual yearly buy limit of
| $15K). With Trump's energy output restriction deal with Saudi
| and others expiring inflation may slow, but the situation of
| gas in Europe over the winter seems poised to keep it up (CPI
| doesn't include energy directly, but it feeds back in).
| sangnoir wrote:
| IIRC, individual I-bond purchases are are limited to $10k
| p.a. - not $15k
| boole1854 wrote:
| > Inflation adjusted nothing the government is selling is
| earning other than I-bonds (individual yearly buy limit of
| $15K).
|
| Inflation-indexed long term US treasuries _are_ now earning
| positive rates of interest. See
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DFII30 -- it's not
| necessarily a high rate (currently 1.74% after inflation
| with a 30-year term), but when you have millions or
| billions to invest, it's certainly not nothing.
|
| > (CPI doesn't include energy directly, but it feeds back
| in).
|
| CPI does directly include energy, including gas [1]. You
| may be thinking of "core CPI" which excludes energy and
| food prices.
|
| [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
| conductr wrote:
| You're conflating causation and correlation. Crypto just
| happened to be the it thing when funding went dry. It could
| have just as easily happened during the dozens of other
| software funding trends. The cause is more macro than a crypto
| startup trend.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| But shouldn't you wait for the entire month of October before
| counting that number? Presumably "We're hiring" posts could be
| added through October 31.
| mtmail wrote:
| It's less days. Companies also try regular submissions and I
| sent some towards the whoishiring threads only to see that
| commenting is no longer possible. Telling the companies they
| have to wait 10 days for the next thread to open is a bit
| frustrating.
| bullen wrote:
| Another worrying sign is "remote US only".
| danrocks wrote:
| Why is that a worrying sign?
| bagels wrote:
| Downward pressure on wages due to competition with non-
| coastal wage earners.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| Seemingly, non-coastal wage earners are people and still
| count, and that isn't worrying to them.
| bullen wrote:
| Because if you live elsewhere the positions are not
| available?
| asdadsdad wrote:
| hiring freeze =)
| paxys wrote:
| These are posted every month. If you want to make a point then
| graph all of them rather than pick out three random data points.
| minimaxir wrote:
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13yGlJzFpVzZ-WNHAOsdo...
| anonygler wrote:
| I feel like people are trying to wish the economy into a
| recession / depression, but I really don't see it happening. I do
| see some belt tightening wrt SaaS expenditures. There's still a
| massive demand for labor.
|
| While the housing market has fallen, the actual cost of buying a
| house is still rising. Rate increases have well outpaced the list
| price reductions.
|
| So I think all this talk of a recession is just a bunch of
| reporters trying to jeer people into that state of mind for
| clicks.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| House prices are pretty sticky, it takes a long time and a lot
| of downward pressure for housing prices to fall. No one wants
| to take a loss on their house.
| kiernanmcgowan wrote:
| It feels like _something_ is happening, but it's not quite the
| recession that people are fearing. The US is somehow at the
| lowest unemployment rates we've seen and people are saying it's
| all going to collapse which just feels off. If the US hits 5%
| unemployment that simultaneously worse off than where we are
| but still a solid economic position.
|
| My pet theory is that everyone is just tired, so damned tired,
| and seeps into everything.
| pc86 wrote:
| Tired of (or from) what?
|
| With the major exception of the pandemic/remote work, the
| world is not markedly different than it was in 2013 or 2003.
| What makes it seems like 2023 is so different?
| pcorsaro wrote:
| I run a small business that sells supplies to restaurants
| and other small businesses. Everyone I deal with is busier
| than they've ever been with less help than they've ever
| had. Hardly anyone has been able to take a vacation for 3
| years now. There's a multitude of things going on that are
| drastically different than 10 or 20 years ago. There's a
| schism being created in this world with the work from home
| crowd being one side, and the warehouse/foodservice crowd
| on the other side. The warehouse side has a huge demand, in
| part because of the pandemic, and also in part because of
| the work from home crowd not leaving their house as much.
| None of the restaurants can afford to pay what the
| warehouse jobs are paying. The number of people willing to
| work in the food industry is lower than I've ever seen it.
| realce wrote:
| > the world is not markedly different than it was in 2013
| or 2003. What makes it seems like 2023 is so different?
|
| Nothing seems to be very different for the last 20 years,
| which also means things aren't getting any better. That's
| tiring.
| warner25 wrote:
| I read this kind of sentiment often and I wonder the same
| thing. I mean, I'm much more tired (physically and
| emotionally stressed) than I was in 2013 or 2003, but I'm
| also 10-20 years older with 10-20 years of accumulated
| baggage and responsibilities. I think some people might
| forget that fact.
| yupper32 wrote:
| Why exclude the pandemic/remote work?
|
| But to exclude it for a bit, my personal, super anecdotal
| and biased view is that those years were very different.
|
| 2003 had low hope for a better future, but there was a lot
| of action in the fallout of 9/11. It felt like we were at
| least trying, even if it ended up being a horrible try.
|
| 2013 I felt hope for a better future, but there wasn't a
| lot of action to make that a reality.
|
| 2023 and there's zero hope for a better future and we're
| doing nothing about it.
|
| We need at least hope or action.
| dntrkv wrote:
| It depends on what you think is important, but there is a
| lot more happening today in addressing our problems than
| back in 2013 or 2003, imo.
|
| I think many can agree that climate change is one of the
| higher priority efforts, and in the last few years, we've
| seen some major progress.
|
| In the US, renewables make up the vast majority of new
| generating capacity, by far and solar deployments are
| growing at a rapid pace. We were still deploying
| significant amounts of coal plants 10 years ago,
| nowadays, it's basically zero.
| [https://www.seia.org/solar-industry-research-data].
| China has doubled its solar deployments in the last year.
|
| Wind deployments are accelerating
| [https://www.iea.org/reports/wind-electricity]
|
| EVs are gaining marketshare at a fast pace, many
| countries/states are banning ICE sales in the near
| future. [https://www.virta.global/en/global-electric-
| vehicle-market]
|
| Cost of lithium batteries has fallen by 89% since 2010
| [https://cleanpower.org/facts/clean-energy-storage/]
|
| US passed the IRA which has the potential to really
| accelerate these changes.
|
| Still not enough of course, but we are seeing significant
| progress compared to 2013.
| llanowarelves wrote:
| Remember that people that are not employed are only
| considered "unemployed" in that metric if they have been
| "looking for a job".
|
| If you stop looking for 4 weeks, you're not employed but not
| "unemployed" (in their numbers).
| mywittyname wrote:
| Depends on the which level of unemployment you cite. But
| the thing is, it doesn't really matter which level of
| unemployment you look at, since they all have the same
| trend, just at a different scale.
|
| The BLS collect and categorizes this data in every
| conceivable way. You can see, for example, that the
| duration of unemployment is actually quite low compared to
| previous recessions: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-
| situation/duration-of-...
| [deleted]
| giantrobot wrote:
| Something that is very hard to measure WRT unemployment is
| the number of people that dropped out of the workforce during
| COVID. There's also poor reporting on underemployment. I'm
| not saying that to say the US is just going to drop into a
| recession or something, it's just unemployment numbers have
| always been very loose figures.
|
| We could have low unemployment but high underemployment and
| end up with a similar softening of consumer demand just
| because people don't have the discretionary income to buy
| stuff. Underemployment combined with inflation is extra
| painful.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Something that is very hard to measure WRT unemployment
| is the number of people that dropped out of the workforce
| during COVID.
|
| The labor force participate rate would (theoretically)
| capture this:
|
| https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-
| lab...
| hanniabu wrote:
| > The US is somehow at the lowest unemployment rates we've
| seen and people are saying it's all going to collapse which
| just feels off.
|
| When this point of unemployment is hit, it always acts as an
| inflection point before the trend reverses and unemployment
| goes up.
| LouisSayers wrote:
| I get the same feeling - the only thing to me that makes sense
| is that people with money are afraid that a full scale war
| might break out as a result of Russia and perhaps China or
| North Korea etc.
|
| Otherwise when I look around it seems like the restaurants are
| busy, people are taking holidays (even those who wouldn't
| usually), and people as a whole seem better off than they've
| been in a while...
|
| It kind of seems like the view of the economy is being
| manipulated, because here on the street everything looks hunky
| dory.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > and people as a whole seem better off than they've been in
| a while...
|
| Some people. The lower classes are definitely struggling a
| lot more recently, especially given the rental market going
| bonkers.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _So I think all this talk of a recession is just a bunch of
| reporters trying to jeer people into that state of mind for
| clicks._
|
| Economies don't roll-over in a month, sometimes it takes years.
| But this cycle has peaked. Inflation and rising interest rates
| will cause all kinds of issues, including the highest mortgage
| rates in 30 years.
| keewee7 wrote:
| I'm European and I feel there is a certain segment of American
| libertarians who want a global/European systemic collapse
| because they feel it validates their views. American
| libertarians are overrepresented on HN.
| dan_quixote wrote:
| This is how it happens though. Some people are easy to convince
| with data alone, some are not, and others are simply in denial.
| Watch financial markets before a crash - lots of volatility
| while these groups are placing bets on the direction of the
| economy. Eventually we cross a threshold where the market
| crashes and all those that were unconvinced change their tune.
| It doesn't happen slowly.
| csmpltn wrote:
| > "I feel like people are trying to wish the economy into a
| recession / depression, but I really don't see it happening."
|
| Depending on your personal financial circumstances, it may be
| many months before you end up "seeing this with your own eyes".
| Inflation won't eat up your savings over night - but over a
| period of 5-10 years, combined with increasing energy prices,
| interest rates, costs of living and salary stagnation? A lot
| can change. It's a boiling frog situation...
| myth_drannon wrote:
| But officials are explicitly saying that the unemployment is
| too low and raising interest rates is one way to bring it up.
| The economy is overheated and needs to cool down. It's not
| wishful thinking or headlines grabbing topic, it is a stated
| fact that the economy is artificially induced into recession.
| andyjsong wrote:
| My theory, YC software team has been building features like
| https://www.workatastartup.com/ and so YC companies are posting
| less on HN.
| jibe wrote:
| Or companies are cutting spending in anticipation of a
| recession.
| mountainriver wrote:
| This is the obvious answer
| earthscienceman wrote:
| No. It's the answer that fulfills your own confirmation
| bias. "Obvious" is never a word you should use when you can
| quantify the truth.
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, it's the obvious answer, so it's less interesting to
| speculate about than alternative, less obvious answers.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Perhaps _too_ obvious.
| CabSauce wrote:
| Or HN traffic is down. Or people don't hire into the
| holiday season, or tech is down. There are countless things
| that could drive that number. We can't tell from a few
| monthly counts.
| water-your-self wrote:
| Most of the titans are in a hiring freeze or have choked non
| essential hiring.
| MisterSandman wrote:
| I don't think those titans posted for jobs on here anyway.
| pc86 wrote:
| Most of the Who's Hiring posts are non-YC companies
| andyjsong wrote:
| I've been seeing the YC software team disaggregate HN features
| to make it easier for founders to run their startups:
|
| Ask HN is now sort of part of YC Startup School where founders
| can ask people in the community about their startup issues.
|
| Show HN is now Launch YC: https://www.ycombinator.com/launches
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