Prophet Town LLC | Full-Stack Software Engineer | REMOTE (US) and Hybrid | English fluency required | Full-time | $190K-$305K annual total comp (multiple)
UPDATE: we had 72 submissions by April 7. We have currently processed resumes for everyone who submitted up through April 4, and are a little behind schedule on reaching out to folks with results. If you submitted and haven't heard from us, we are hoping to be in touch ASAP! Thank you. And yes, meanwhile, we are still accepting submissions.
I’m the founder, trying to do “enlightened business.” We are a small, worker-first, fully-remote, SF-based, boutique indie tech agency. Our leadership staff are ex-Fortune 100; everybody codes. Notable recent projects: internal tools for Anduril, and voltagepark.com.
We are looking for Full-Stack Software Engineers with proficiency in React development, database design, and third-party API integration. Tier3 roles are typically 5-10 y/o/e with $190-$270k annual total comp. Tier4 roles are 7-20 y/o/e, $240-$305k annual total comp. Higher tiers exist, and we welcome exceptional applications. Fully remote positions available.
Please apply using this Google Form: https://forms.gle/KRmgZCiLgCMqoXhr7. Applicants who submit before April 7 will receive a reply by April 11.
Applicants must meet a high bar; in return, I pledge my personal commitment to finding you interesting work and getting you good pay. You are free to submit again even if you have already done so in the past.
Thanks! Prophet Town's 2nd-in-command (Ian) is helping me comb responses and he's out camping through Saturday; we're going to start going through responses this weekend.
Prophet Town LLC | Platform Engineer, Full-Stack Engineer, Data Scientist | USA-ONLY, REMOTE and Hybrid (west-coast) | Full-time | $200K-$320K annual total comp (multiple) | English fluency required
I’m the founder, trying to do “enlightened business.” We are a small, worker-first, fully-remote, SF-based, boutique indie tech agency. Our leadership staff are ex-Fortune 100; everybody codes. Notable recent projects: voltagepark.com and a Slackbot for Anduril’s employees.
We are looking for Platform Engineers, Data Scientists, and Software Engineers at Tier3 and Tier4 levels. Tier3 are 5-10 y/o/e, $200k-$280k annual total comp. Tier4 are 7-20 y/o/e, $260-$320k annual total comp. Higher tiers exist, and we welcome exceptional applications. Fully remote positions available.
Applicants must meet a high bar; in return, I pledge my personal commitment to finding you interesting work and getting you good pay. You are free to submit again even if you have already done so in the past.
You are never getting back. Each time it is just an excuse email that you had a lot of candidates etc, but then you are not reaching out and repost this again.
I agree with ArtemZ — I get the rule but it's a shame because it prevents calling out companies posting the same job over and over, who don't have basic decency to respond, let alone give feedback, to applicants.
I'm sorry you feel misprocessed ArtemZ. It looks like, based on downvotes, a few others feel the same way. If anybody submitted to one of my older job postings, and feels misprocessed, please email me, james at ptown.tech, with your name and which month(s) you submitted for, and the subject “HN Hiring Override Inquiry”, and I’ll respond - even if only briefly. (If you submitted to February, though, please give me at least another week, we’re only just getting ready to do initial mail outs to folks who submitted since last Monday.)
In the meantime, I'm going to try to cover a lot for some folks with a longer explanation.
First, I have personally looked at _every single resume_ that has come in since October 1st. Including ArtemZ's (which I won't comment on publicly here). I am responding to people - we have done initial calls with nearly a hundred candidates in the last few months, and some have even been hired. I just had somebody who responded to the December posting sign and start last week. If I have not reached out to you personally yet, and it’s been more than a few weeks since your submission, your resume did not win out against the competition for openings we had at the time (at least, to get scheduled for an initial screen); but was not so bad that I wanted to turn you down yet either.
I have admittedly been bad about turning down the folks in the December and January job postings. If you haven't gotten an email scheduling an interview, and you submitted to one of those, you're very soon going to get a mass rejection email. I really hate telling people "no", and even worse, not being able to explain to them individually what we would have needed to see for them to be more competitive. I’m slow to adjust what I want (everyone to get a bespoke and considerate response) with reality (at best we have time to mass reject most).
For those who haven’t gotten to talk to me in a phone screen, some general feedback:
- You're in the middle of a multi-quarter tech labor recession, with all of the majors constantly firing quarter-over-quarter, and there is a butt-ton of literally amazing competition for any single job opening.
- There's also a lot of unbelievably good people facing RTO mandates that are trying to jump ship to a quality remote-friendly shop like mine. Like, imagine running a boutique science research shop, and getting resumes from Einstein and Bohr.
- The guys and gals who tend to get hired, hop to the top of everybody's queue, and for the same reason - we hirers know they're going to get sucked up in days, not weeks, and we have to act to be the one who gets them. (This is also some of why I continue to post to HN Who's Hiring even when I'm not done processing from earlier months.) That doesn't mean others don't have a chance; but it can explain why weeks go by and some people don't hear back; they’re getting bypassed.
- I used to post one of these a year or two ago and it would get 15 responses. These days we are getting 100-200 a month, and I can usually do about 5 calls a week. There's a lot of LLM-generated fraud. I like to give everybody a very bespoke, human touch - I do most of the opening phone screens personally. But I am the head of this company, and I have a lot of other things to do besides hiring; I'm simply having a hard time getting to everything and everybody.
- y/o/e is “Years of Experience”. If you just got out of college and you’re submitting for T3 or T4, you’re not qualified. If you’re a VP of engineering or have been coding for 20+ years, and you submit for a T3 or T4 position, you’re likely overqualified. To be clear, there are some good college grads and some good VPs that have written in, and I get greedy and want to see if I can pull them for something else - but they’re not, strictly speaking, the best match for the job posted.
- I put a lot of weight on people following instructions. If I say upload a .pdf somewhere I can wget it, and people link their LinkedIn or a Google Doc - and heaven help you if I would need to “request permission” - it’s just an instant reject. If they take the .pdf down before I can get to it, I have nothing to read. (We usually wait for several submissions to come in, and then wget everything all at once.) Yes I could require everybody to sign in to gmail and then get the ability to make them upload their .pdf in the Google Form, and maybe I should do that; but I know some really talented folks who are really anti-Google, and I don’t want to lose out meeting really qualified people just because of that.
- I also value resume conventions - even if the candidate is unconventional. One page, max two. Focus on the techs and techniques, not the “achievements” - I want a match between the job I’ve posted, and the tech on your resume, with proof you aren’t just buzzword stuffing, have been using the tech for years, and that your experience in the tech isn’t dated or superficial. Schools and employers I know stand out, especially if we know someone in common who can vouch for you. If you have a habit of changing jobs every 12 months, that starts to be a concern for most hirers.
Also, a nit, I'm not "reposting" - there are material changes from one month to the next:
- In October, PM, engineers, and infra/devops. We filled PM quickly.
- In November, swamped, no posting.
- In December, engineers and devops, mildly different tech stack description. Our first attempt with a Google Form. We’ve actively closed/redirected this posting.
- In January, -”devlops/infra”, +”platform engineer”, in an attempt to better describe the open hole. Folks that can orchestrate microservices but can’t code don’t tend to do well here. New questions in our Google Form. We've closed the form/posting.
- In February, completely new role: +"data scientist". Also still more improvements to the Google Form. The need for T3 and T4 engineers is perennial; we’re still looking to fill that platform engineer role.
Put another way - if we just had one gigantic evergreen Google Form that we never shut down, and left it running for months at a time, the chaos would be even worse, especially considering changing descriptions and needs of the jobs we're trying to fill.
I am sincerely sorry that folks feel neglected, and that I don't have the time to meet and help each of you. I want to help as many of you as I can, but it sounds like swift rejection would actually be the better blessing, based on the feedback here. See the top of this mega-comment for my email if you want to reach out.
You are complaining a lot about LLM-generated fraud, underqualified people, overqualified people, yet continue to repost this position despite admitting there is a huge pool of real candidates (like me) already. You are just mining data and wasting everyone's time.
I'm not going to email you, you already have my CV and my phone number. If you are interested you can call me.
Prophet Town LLC | Platform Engineer and Full-Stack Engineer | USA-ONLY REMOTE | Full-time | $220K-$350K annual total comp (multiple) | English fluency required
UPDATE: there's a newer, active job posting here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42921551. The below google form is closed, and we're leaving the posting only to communicate with people who responded already.
I’m the founder, trying to do “enlightened business.” We are a small, worker-first, fully-remote, SF-based, boutique indie tech agency. Our leadership staff are ex-Fortune 100; everybody codes. Notable recent projects: voltagepark.com and a Slackbot for Anduril’s employees.
This month, we’re hiring two types of technical staff: platform engineers, and software engineers. We are currently filling “Tier 3” (5-10 y/o/e, $220K-$300K annual comp) and “Tier 4” (7-20 y/o/e, $280K-$350K annual total comp) roles.
Platform Engineers (devops/SRE specialist, but with full stack application engineering experience):
* JS/TS heavy (SQL/NextJS/Node/React, React+ReactNative), gen-ai nice-to-have, AWS deployments.
Culturally, we look for self-driven individuals, who exhibit high integrity, who are able to articulate their aspirations, and who pursue “everybody wins” business.
Applicants must meet a high bar; in return, I pledge my personal commitment to finding you interesting work and getting you good pay. You are free to submit again even if you have already done so in the past.
I’m the founder, trying to do “enlightened business.” We are a small, fully-remote, sf-bay-area-based, boutique indie tech agency. Our leadership staff are all ex-Fortune 100; everybody codes. Notable recent projects: voltagepark.com and a slackbot for Anduril’s employees.
Unlike earlier HN Who's Hiring posts, we have specific existing clients in mind: total comp is not flexible hourly, but full-time salary with client-tied equity compensation. We are currently filling “Tier 3” (5-10 y/o/e, $240K-$320K annual comp) and "Tier 4" (7-20 y/o/e, $300K-$370K annual total comp) roles:
Engineers: Full stack polyglot but JS/TS heavy (SQL/NextJS/Node/React, Remix+ReactNative and gen-ai nice-to-have), AWS deployments.
Infra+Devops: Kubernetes/Docker, Terraform, AWS service set, common CI/CD options.
We’re a worker-first operation. Applicants must meet a high bar; in return, I pledge my personal commitment to finding you interesting work and getting you good pay.
We tend to get swamped with resumes lately; we're doing something new and trying a Google Form to collect application submissions (https://forms.gle/1Kknc1EPrQ6jyCNd6). If you submit by Friday night (December 6th, Pacific time) we plan to at least confirm those submissions on Saturday. You are free to submit again even if you have in the past.
You can ping me at hn-hiring@ptown.tech too, though a form submission above will actually get priority (there's a lot of submission spam to emails in HN posts...).
Update: as promised, we sent an initial email to everyone who had submitted to our Google Form up through approximately this afternoon. Unfortunately it looks like all newlines got stripped by the mass mailer we used, so it looks atrocious, and a few of you may have had your email systems flag it as spam; if you didn't get an email from me (James) just now, and had submitted, please reach out to hn-hiring@ptown.tech.
Meanwhile, others are still welcome to submit to the form, and we'll do another pass for new submissions in about a week.
Prophet Town | Full-Stack Engineer + PM + DevOps/Infra | USA-ONLY REMOTE | Full-time | $240K-$370K annual total comp | English fluency required
I’m the founder, trying to do “enlightened business.” We are a small, fully-remote, sf-bay-area-based, boutique indie tech agency. Our leadership staff are all ex-Fortune 100; everybody codes. Notable recent projects: voltagepark.com and a slackbot for Anduril’s employees.
Unlike earlier HN Who's Hiring posts, we have specific existing clients in mind: total comp is not flexible hourly, but full-time salary with client-tied equity compensation. We are currently filling “Tier 3” (5-10 y/o/e, $240K-$320K annual comp) and "Tier 4" (7-20 y/o/e, $300K-$370K annual total comp) roles:
Engineers: Full stack polyglot but JS/TS heavy (SQL/NextJS/Node/React/Remix), AWS deployments.
Infra+Devops: Kubernetes/Docker, Terraform, AWS service set, common CI/CD options.
PMs: JIRA/Trello, stakeholder wrangling, proof of winning engineer trust and surviving big-org politics.
We’re a worker-first operation. Applicants must meet a high bar; in return, I pledge my personal commitment to finding you interesting work and getting you good pay.
Contact James: hn-hiring@ptown.tech. We are a small shop and can get swamped; nonetheless if you send us something by Friday Oct 4, you will hear something by Saturday Oct 5. Please make sure to include a resume in pdf format, and clarify which of the three positions you are interested in.
UPDATE: we took a snapshot of all responses we had received by 10 pm Pacific on Oct 4, and have sent out an initial email to all applicants. There are quite a lot of you :). Additional applicants may still respond, but we will prioritize first responding to those who had already submitted by our snapshot time.
You can message in if you think you're a really strong candidate, and we do in fact work with both US citizens and US non-citizens abroad for some of our other projects; but the clients we're focused on right now have a super strong preference for folks who are physically present in the states. Among other things, while the positions are mostly remote, there may be some occasional on-site travel requirements, depending on exact specifics of the engagement.
Prophet Town | Full-Stack Engineer | REMOTE (USA-preferred) | Part-time or Full-time (20-40 hours/week) | $60-$110/hr | English fluency required
I’m the founder, trying to do “enlightened business.” We are a small, fully-remote, sf-bay-area-based, boutique indie tech agency, with significant flexibility on hours, projects, and location. Our leadership staff are all ex-Fortune100; everybody codes. One-half 9-5 engineering; one-half freelancing: freedom, without solo practice risk. Startup/entrepreneur mindset preferred.
Tech stacks and needs are diverse; our motto is “interesting work for interesting workers”. Notable recent projects: auction.voltagepark.com, a slackbot for Anduril’s employees, app.pokercows.com. Polyglot and many-hats preferred. We are currently filling “Tier 3” ($60-70/hr, 5-10 y/o/e) and "Tier 4" ($90-$110, 7-20 y/o/e) roles, a little more focused on frontend (NextJS/React/Remix/React-Native), but backend (Node/Express/Go/Django/SQL) and cloud infra+devops (Kubernetes/Docker, AWS/GCP service set, common CI/CD options) also needed.
Prophet Town | Senior Frontend Engineer | REMOTE | Part-time or Full-time (20-40 hours/week) | $85-$135/hr | English fluency required
I’m the founder, and we are a full-remote team with flexibility on hours and location. Prophet Town is a small, boutique, indie tech agency, based in California; self-funded; trying to avoid either soul-suck corporate or drive-till-drop startup existence. Everybody codes. We have established and growing clients in diverse industries like safety, wellbeing, and entertainment.
Ideally, you are a senior web developer wanting a frontend leadership role. You will be responsible for driving the technical design, building features, reviewing code, mentoring juniors, and helping ensure the success of the product. Nice to haves: server-side coding (Node/Express/Next/Nest); writes maintainable CSS; designs effective automated UX and UI tests.
Our stack: TypeScript, React + React-Native, AWS, Jest
Prophet Town | Software Engineer | Full/Part-time | Full Remote, USA Pacific time zone | All Cash, $25/hr ($50K/year) - $180/hr ($360K/year) (multiple roles) | English fluency
I’m the founder - small, boutique, indie tech agency, all staff remote, different from soul-suck corporate or drive-till-drop startup - a place where engineers can grow and find community, working for friendly clients doing good things in the world, and have some freedom to choose their projects, choose their weekly hours (a few required weekly meetings), and take long breaks if and when they want. Halfway between a 9-5 engineering job and full-on freelancing - Great Resignation freedom, minus solo practice risks. Fully self-funded. Our core team are several ex-Google/Microsoft/Amazon/eBay friends who joined forces and quit our day jobs - everybody codes.
Eclectic mix of existing clients; examples: a poker webapp, healthcare startup solving physician well-being, HR startup pairing mentors and mentees, VR startup doing large virtual concerts.
UPDATE: we had 72 submissions by April 7. We have currently processed resumes for everyone who submitted up through April 4, and are a little behind schedule on reaching out to folks with results. If you submitted and haven't heard from us, we are hoping to be in touch ASAP! Thank you. And yes, meanwhile, we are still accepting submissions.
I’m the founder, trying to do “enlightened business.” We are a small, worker-first, fully-remote, SF-based, boutique indie tech agency. Our leadership staff are ex-Fortune 100; everybody codes. Notable recent projects: internal tools for Anduril, and voltagepark.com.
We are looking for Full-Stack Software Engineers with proficiency in React development, database design, and third-party API integration. Tier3 roles are typically 5-10 y/o/e with $190-$270k annual total comp. Tier4 roles are 7-20 y/o/e, $240-$305k annual total comp. Higher tiers exist, and we welcome exceptional applications. Fully remote positions available.
Please apply using this Google Form: https://forms.gle/KRmgZCiLgCMqoXhr7. Applicants who submit before April 7 will receive a reply by April 11.
Applicants must meet a high bar; in return, I pledge my personal commitment to finding you interesting work and getting you good pay. You are free to submit again even if you have already done so in the past.