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Ask HN: Hacker Listing?
20 points by Oompa on Feb 9, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 30 comments
Recently, HN has had an influx of "Where/How to Find Work" posts. There has been some advice offered, but I know that the people that post these have been offered jobs. I was curious if there is any central "Hacker Listing" for people that are looking for work and frequent HN. If so, where?



I've thought of letting profiles be more detailed, e.g. letting people post their resumes, and having them be searchable. Would people like something like that?


Having some more detailed profile is not the main point. What would be great is if people in need of a job could add a little symbol ("*" or whatever else you want) that appears next to my name on each of my posts.

If I'm currently laid off and looking for a job, someone may read a smart comment I make, then notice: "hey, this guy is smart, and he is looking for a job? Let me check his profile".

If you just have the profile part, it's inefficient. When I want to hire someone, I'll keep looking at profiles of plenty of people not looking for jobs, and I'll miss the ones who could use the help. And if I browse resumes, it's not connected to their comments (at least not in context of a thread), so I don't have the impulse to like them.

An alternative would be to sort resumes by karma, but it's kind of orwellian...


Maybe instead of an asterisk we could use orange names.


Excellent points. I like the idea of a * or something by the names.


I can see how this would be very helpful in some cases, but I can't help but worry that there will be an immediate flood of users simply coming to spam their resumes.

The only way I can see to keep this from being abused would be to add a karma barrier. It wouldn't have to be that high (50-100?) to be a pretty good filter.


The karma barrier to entry is a good first pass. Though, if someone wanted to get their resume on the site they could find ways around the karma. (Automated upvoting of a story/comment that they made for example.)

There should be a way for the top 100[0] people to flag the profile as spam which would strip them of the right to post a resume.


Generally, I like more informative profiles, but specifically with resumes, I don't think it's a good idea. I get the feeling that it'll help bump up the noise as individuals come here to post resumes and then try to enter conversations for which they are unqualified to speak.

How about a special "Hacker News" hash that I can hide in the resume along with my profile name? So if anyone cares to find my HN profile and/or my resume, they'll just have to search for that hash+username to bring it up.


Simple solution: require X metric of participation before you can post a resume (or before your resume is searchable, take your pick). That could be owned account for N days or N karma or whatever you like.

(Personally I don't know if "Don't let lurkers solicit opportunities" is desirable but, eh, simple to implement if you decide it is.)


try to enter conversations for which they are unqualified to speak

What makes one qualified?


Don't ask me -- I don't know enough to say.


Yes! This would be a great way to increase opportunities.


That would be great. I'm looking for an internship this summer, and linking my name to my resume would be great. What's the general standard for using HN for finding internships/work anyway? I've only seen one thread for an internship, and while it seemed successful, I'm not wanting troll the very community I'm looking for a job from.


Yes that would be useful. Also, might want to allow an option as to how public people's resumes or profiles are. Maybe an option that only allow logged in users can view other user's resumes.

Also, not everyone wants their resume cached by Google, nor publicly searchable, nor have their opinions or comments traced back to whom they actually are.


Oh, yeah: Gissa job! ;)


I wouldn't. I like minimal profiles. I like seeing what other people link to. I like that here, conversation is all about intelligent conversation and not about the people. I love that people address me as "unalone" rather than by name because that's the handle I use.


It would certainly make for an interesting experiment, but I think it would definitely alter the nature of this site.

I really enjoy the 'minimalist' nature of HN profiles. They are short and sweet. I can see how opening profiles here up for more details or letting people attach resumes could provide benefits (more information being shared about each other, people getting jobs). Ultimately, its really hard to predict what will happen when new features are introduced here, but if people are landing jobs as a result, it can only be a good thing.


It'd be a great way to look for potential partners, as well. A lot of us lone hackers could use one for our startup ideas :-)

But, I am afraid of a sudden influx of people posting resumes and advertising them by posting excessively. I'm not sure it's worth it. If we could prevent that, it's worthwhile. Else not.

Frankly, I'd prefer to see that in a separate site. A marker (or set of markers, for looking-for-job, looking-for-employee, looking-for-partner, etc.) by the username here would be enough. I think it'd be useful without making HN a target.


I like minimal profiles that let the user do whatever they want. No reason you couldn't turn your resume into txt and stick it in your profile.

I'd love to see a form of official "Ask YC" category, with a subcategory of "Review my App" -- make it so it requires n karma to post to [to prevent spam] and then we can easily see what all hackers are upto.

If we can see what other users are working on -- that'll encourage us to click their profile.


can't they already put a link to their resume in the profile?


You can put a URL, I don't believe it automatically links.


It did once, but not anymore. Spammers started using HN profiles as landing pages.


I think this would probably encourage people to use HN for the spammier variety of self-promotion.


I wouldn't mind a link to my blog but I never fill out profiles in any level of detail beyond that.


This would be great, but when Hacker News gets filled with all of the retards from Digg and 4chan, it'll turn into the "casual encounters" page on Craigslist.

Not that I would know what that's like, of course.


I posted on casual encounters that I wanted to meet a chick to get busy in a Burger King bathroom because I love that Humpty Hump song and got a bunch of responses. Some included naked pictures. The only thing I put in my ad was a Burger King logo and a picture of Humpty Hump. True story.


So as an hacker looking for a job I can ask a question about job hunting and get a job? Oh, boy sounds like we're going to get a bunch of those types postings and that PG is going to have his work cut for him modding down a lot of postings! :)

Now I'm going to be like Yosser and say: "Gissa job"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosser_Hughes


http://www.venturewoods.org/index.php/venturetalent/?cp=all#...


Yes it's wonderful to leverage community but the way to get hired is A) find people who are hiring; B) develop skills which are in demand, and/or advertize that you have them; or C) do something interesting that makes hiring people find you.

Looking for work by putting an asterisk next to your name when you post on Hacker News is like saying that your job search consists of watching television.

If you read Hacker News and you have free time, why on earth are you not building some kind of business? Pick some tiny problem and build a tiny, awesome solution. Do some consulting. I gotta tell you, if I were coming here looking for people to hire, it wouldn't be the people who have no hustle and expect jobs to fall out of the sky and land in their lap.


Just because you're reading/posting on HN doesn't mean you're wasting time.

Its nice to have some sort of down time and catch up on news or other things that are interesting, even if only for a few minutes a day.


I read to educate myself. I don't quantify that as waste of time.




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