Ask HN: What your experience with the monthly "who wants to be hired" thread? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What your experience with the monthly "who wants to be hired" thread?

51 pointsnewswangerd43 comments

I recently commented on the "who wants to be hired" this month and so far have only received spam. Has anyone had any success with this, or is it just a way to subscribe to junk mail and automated marketing?

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The number of posts there is skyrocketing while the number of posts to “who is hiring” is flatlined https://micjm.github.io/hn-hiring-index/

This more or less confirms all my fears about the job market for software.

Yeah, looking for a job in software at this time is pretty much a fool's errand.

Cool graphs. What does the top one show?

Posts on who wants to be hired divided by posts on who is hiring

It has never been useful to me, so I stopped posting after a few tries

I have been hired twice from it, but not very recently. I have to assume posting anything up there these days earns a hiring manager a few thousand AI nonsense responses peppered with actual people trying to get placed, and no real way to distinguish the two without exhausting effort.

I've found work and contracts in the past. But recently I'm just getting very occasional tire kickers, and spam.

I just got spam (which I keep getting to this day), plus one actual offer that was probably lost in their spam folder.

I put some screenshots in an old blog post in case you're interested: https://7c0h.com/blog/new/who_wants_to_be_spammed.html

Edit: Hey, 195.178.110.247, fix your crawler!

I found some fantastic people through this mechanism. Highly recommended.

What made the successful comments stand out to you?

People showing up in person.

So I'm sitting outside the cafe on a chair, having what is essentially a job interview with somebody I met through hacker news (jacquesm), and this old guy from inside the cafe walks up and interrupts us.

Then he not so politely explains to me that my butt crack is showing!

I tucked my shirt in, and said that was the best complement I'd had all day!

Jacques was not in the least bit phased. ;)

I just created 25 charts for what's happening across 8 years of "Who's Hiring?" threads... if anyone's interested:

https://hn-hiring-2019-2026.lancecj.chatgpt.site/?view=1

I've received two full time roles via that feature, one in 2016 and one in 2025. It's generally a very high signal route, and my first choice when venturing outside of existing contacts/network and onto the wider internet.

I was contracted once to do some freelance work and they ghosted me. Later I found out from other comments here that they have a reputation for being a flake.

I'm getting a lot more E-mails referring back to the content of my posts recently. I've been using ChatGPT to help me figure them out.

I got hired off of it, the company was a shambles, I ended up going back to a previous employer rather than waiting for the inevitable (they folded about 6 months later). Overall I appreciate the experience, they were good people but they didn't know how to build software and they wouldn't let people who did know get anything done.

Got one or two nice interviews which made me realize I like visual design and music much more than coding, which was helpful.

I got a handful of inquiries from crypto/gambling companies. But mostly just spam. Not worth it.

I hired someone from the thread about six years ago. So it worked for someone at least once.

It used to be a great source of work for me, so much so I still post occasionally. But unfortunately I get nothing but absurdly low effort spam out of it these days.

In years past I had one success, but just spam and garbage now

I have had the same email address continuously since 1994 - pre-dating the PIR database of domain registration dates. At a rough estimate I receive about half of the spam email that exists on the internet. Some of it is pretty funny or helps narrow down data leaks to the source. I have been able to connect a few targeted campaigns to the HN hiring threads:

  - Business development spam (finance, lead generation, marketing, staffing), all of it addressed entities unrelated to me personally.
  - Stalking from estranged family members, leading to restraining orders.
  - Multi-level-recruiter referral pyramid schemes
  - Fake sextortion threats from third-world spammers
  - Grand total of Zero actual recruiters or hiring managers.

Still worth it for me for the interesting reading.

1994? that's pretty amazing

what's the email "category"? an edu? I don't want to dox you but curious about what sort of institution has had that sort of stability enough to have kept your spot in place.

GP links their wevsite with email and home (?!) address in their bio here, so I don't think doxxing is much of a concern! I'm seeing a creation date of 1998 on that domain as well, which is farther back than my knowledge of internet history goes, so I am guessing that is the domain/email address in question.

1998 is when the registration was transferred from AlterNIC to InterNIC: which is only part of that story. The original WHOIS record history has been lost to time (and ext2 filesystem bit-rot).

I was thinking about reaching out via email to HN support to manually delete my one post there. I've been getting tons of spam referencing it, and it was years ago.

Figure it's all scraped and archived by now, though.

Any email scraped is added to a list that then just gets sold/shared and I highly doubt data ever gets removed from a list like that. So once the post has been scanned, removing it will not provide you the joy you might be hoping for

I used a unique masked email (and account) for my "Who's Hiring post". Some of the spam it's received afterwards is hilarious. The best was a masked email service berating me for posting personal info on the public internet and how the right thing to do is sign up for their masked email service instead.

The thread generated a few leads though, so at least it was more effective than my previous employer's "relocation assistance". I received nothing from that except a bizarre deluge of offers from bodybuilding life coaches and money mule scams.

Only ai responses…the humans who did respond did not assure me they would refrain from using ai in their work

Been posting there every once in a while for last few years.

Few times got a freelance projects from there because people who contacted me been very specificly interested about my game development experience.

I'm generalist without cool looking CV and I honestly tell that last 6 years been mostly gamedev so it can be much less useful for me. No idea.

After last few times it's started to be 10s of AI spam messages and dumb "hire me" ai spam because mailbox is hire@name.com.

Surprisingly out of AI spam there been like 2 actual founders reaching out via AI messages, but unless I manage to find people on Linkedin I just ignore it as potential scam.

PS: If you use AI for initial reach please make it short and to the point. I dont want your fucking AI agent cite experience from my own post.

I was hired once from one of those, in 2019

I never commented there, but I imagine it's as hot or as cold as any given job market. Comment there in 2021 and you'd need to beat all the legitimate offers and enthusiasm off with a stick. Anyone with some basic tech experience and in the right area will at least start some interviews.

Comment in 2024 and we're just yelling into a void. Maybe some truly exceptional personalities can still get calls, but it's just that: the exception (or you're well established in the hot AI field).

I think I've posted to it maybe 3 times. All I ever got was spam.

Re-commenting from a comment written in another post a few moments ago:

~~~

A few minutes ago I just got a third (from a first and second emails that were sent half an hour earlier than that) about a "Business Partnership Invitation" for "AI Training Projects" from "Anthony Harrison" <anthonyharrisonai1989@gmail.com>. No need to say what you're supposed to do in that "business" but later in said email they claim they will get 70% of the earnings and you get 30%. The funny part is that they most probably got my mail from the "Who wants to be hired?" post from here and most probably they're using some sort of ai tool to scan those emails, even those that are "hidden" by a 'please see my portfolio to get my mail' like mine.

It's been the same story for the last few months - I post on HN's "Who wants to be hired?" and a few days later I get no real job offers but scam slop like that.

~~~

Still I'm grateful to HN because it was for it I got the best job I ever had and got to have money to pay for the bills and the beans, but sadly it folded (or so they told me).

It led to one interview once maybe? Not worth the effort.

got more of the same "I made a job board and want you to be listed on it", which I assume are driven by AI

There appears to be an AI biz using an LLM bot to spam me pitching me on a supposedly paying role to help them train their LLM (to better replace me out of my own field), and as part of their "application" process I merely have to email some rando strangers a bunch of critical PII as well as do something which would de facto be helping them to train their LLMs. except unpaid, cuz part of their "application" process

they tweak their names and exact wording each time but pattern/template is consistent

(scumbags)

I still get spam from a 2024 entry.

How this got into the main page having 3 points in 3 minutes only? Hmmm...

You put your email online - you get spam. Easy.

> How are stories ranked?

> The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was submitted. Comments in threads are ranked the same way.

> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software, software which demotes overheated discussions, account or site weighting, and moderator action.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

I wish I had the magic hacker news touch that you're implying I have :)

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