How I got a job from a Hacker News post

http://bostinno.com/channels/a-little-bit-of-luck-and-a-whole-lot-of-backend-as-a-service/

by kmccarth • 14 years ago

179 21 14 years ago

lutorm2• 14 years ago

"Given enough exposure, the impossibly lucky becomes the inevitable."

Nice story, but I don't know if I would go that far. You don't have an unbiased sample, so you don't know how many do exactly the same thing and nothing comes of it. It's the classic "what do successful people have in common" fallacy. An equally justified conclusion, based on "the hundred ways I failed leading up to this moment" might be "the chances of success are about 1%".

baddox• 14 years ago

The "what do successful people have in common" fallacy is more commonly referred to as survivor bias.

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

lutorm2• 14 years ago

Ah, right, thanks for that.

davewasmer2• 14 years ago

I agree that survivorship bias is something to watch out for. Stories that tend to do well on HN are the ones that end well.

However, I don't think that should hold back someone who is in the same position I was (a longtime lurker trying to break out). For me, a primary takeaway from this experience was the small downside compared to the large upside of each of my decisions.

Worst case: your post goes nowhere on HN, the person you reach out to ignores you, or your conversation turns up nothing fruitful.

Best Case: your post pins it on HN, the CEO agrees to meet, and it turns into a job offer.

For 30 minutes of effort - that calculation is a no brainer to me. It just takes getting over that lurker inertia, and a lot of patience for failure!

kylemaxwell• 14 years ago

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." Edison was kind of a jerk in a lot of ways, but he was spot on with this.

davewasmer2• 14 years ago

A far better quote than the one I used in the article - thanks for this one, I'll be hanging on it!

kls• 14 years ago

Congratulation this is a great bored for people to discover each other and cool projects. I actually learned about another provider in that post who supports a technology stack that I have been looking for a BaaS provider that supports it. The company you got the job from was contributing to it too and seemed like a great bunch of guys, I would have definitely used their product if it supported what I am trying to do. I love reading the win-win storied on HN.

mikeyur• 14 years ago

My last full time job I got by leaving a comment on Fred Wilson's blog. He shared my info with a bunch of investors in my area and they connected me with people in their portfolio who were hiring. About 3 weeks from comment to my first day on the job.

maayank• 14 years ago

can you tell more about it? sounds like a story.

patio112• 14 years ago

This is Networking 2.0. Good on you, but hypothetically if you hadn't gotten "lucky" by having the predictable consequences of directed effort come to pass, you (and similarly situated geeks) still had options.

1) What if big names in your space hadn't retweeted you? Well, since you know who the big names in the space are, you take an hour or two to lookup their email addresses. Then, you send a one-paragraph email:

Hiya Bob,

My name is $NAME and I really like your work on backends as a service at $COMPANY. In particular, your post on the blog last year about $TOPIC was really insightful. I was able to apply a few ideas from it to my work.

I just wrote a post on BaaS myself. $LINK

I'd appreciate any thoughts you had on it.

Regards,

Anyone who writes you back is no longer a stranger. Instead, they think you're intelligent about a field where they currently cannot hire for love or money. You can then followup with "As it happens, I'm looking for opportunities to put further my interest in BaaS professionally. Do you happen to know anyone who is hiring?"

2) What if he wasn't really close for coffee?

Planes, we've got them. I am totally serious. A day off and a few hundred bucks versus a career upgrade, which has the higher NPV? "I will be in Boston for one day only on XX/YY (or, alternately, week of XX/YY). Would you let me buy you breakfast to talk about this?" is a very compelling offer psychologically. Your time is scarce, and hence valuable, plus you've already demonstrated three things they'll get out of saying "Yes." (Food, interesting conversation, and "the ability to get to know someone whose comportment suggests that he is going places.") Note that that is the only decision they need to make - after you have yes, then you can schedule the details.

3). What if he wasn't hiring?

He knows someone who is. Get warm intro.

solutionyogi• 14 years ago

Patrick, this is great for our field where there are tons of influential folks blogging and/or tweeting. But what if you don't work in IT industry?

My very dear friend works as an Internal Auditor. She earlier worked for KPMG and now she is working for a Fortune 50 company. She is looking for other opportunities as she feels that she is not growing in her current position. Now, there aren't that many Internal Audit bloggers and certainly no hiring manager is blogging/tweeting. What approach should she take to get noticed by the right people?

patio112• 14 years ago

There's so many possible answers to this question but the easiest possible one is to go to a conference in the industry, on your company's nickel if possible (trivial), and start making friends. Or you can use existing contacts in your Fortune 50 network and get warm intros to the right sort of people at peer firms, clients, vendors, etc. Or, since I'm guessing one does not become an Internal Auditor the first day out of high school, you work the alumni network at your college.

Also, even if nobody in your industry blogs, doesn't mean you can't start to generate a portfolio for yourself. How many blogs have you ever read by Japanese salarymen who do Enterprise Java development? Can you think of any which had an article or two that suggest maybe the author is smart enough to take out for coffee? (You can totally do this without bringing down the wrath of God on yourself for spilling company secrets. Just talk in very general terms about challenges in Internal Auditing and how one could overcome those, optionally with heavily anonymized anecdotes.)

camz• 14 years ago

As someone from this field who's had a number of friends in management and executive positions in accounting and taxation. Getting into these positions is something that is really only reserved for people with

(1) Proven experience in the position (2) A number of years experience in public accounting firms (3) A peer recognizing and hiring you outright.

Finance positions are usually different because accounting, law and etc are very structured and getting into these positions requires authorization by various levels ranging from executive to board members.

But, you should definitely network because it's where everything starts. Just dont expect it to get you a job overnight - ever.

mistermann• 14 years ago

sounds like an interesting article, wish i could have read it, but the floating social toolbar on the left side covered a quarter of the article on my phone.

bherms• 14 years ago

I too got my current job from a HN post. I posted about Bay Area salaries as I was flying out here for an interview. I included some of my background information and got a reply saying if I wasn't gonna be making X, they would love to meet and talk while I was in town. Later that night I had an offer. I love Hacker News.

loeschg• 14 years ago

Would you like to meet up? I will buy you some breakfast.

jeffool• 14 years ago

After reading a monthly job post a while back, I had a couple of phone interviews with factual.com. While I didn't get that job, I can tell you that Ron, their recruiter, is still the nicest and most down to Earth guy I've met in my job hunt.

A month or two later, I actually got a cold email from someone who apparently really liked the way I replied in a thread. (I never found out which.) Sadly it didn't happen either; the person assumed that I could program simply because I was here. I went to school for it years ago, but can not with any proficiency whatsoever.

For all the talk that occassionally pops up about community quality, as I see it, this place is doing all right. Better than the profession my experience resides in anyway; journalism. Then again, I'm the genius that didn't see visiting 4chan as a big deal, in search of a direction to find an irc for Anonymous talk. Be warned, your boss may think differently!

(Yes, that last sentence was slightly tongue in cheek. I realize most would take theobscene material seriously rather than as childish outlashes. But I didn't think a journalist would.)

mpeg• 14 years ago

I got my job from a reddit post I made (a year ago), and we were acquired two days ago ! high five from a fellow 'employee from the internet' :)

EnderMB• 14 years ago

I was at one point skeptical that frequent activity on the Internet would ever amount to anything worthwhile. I was offered an informal interview for my current job through a follower I occasionally talked to on Twitter.

I knew about the opening a few weeks before. What surprises some is that if I wasn't asked to interview I probably would have never applied for the role.

How I got a job from a Hacker News post

Related Stories