There's no such thing as a free launch

http://hackerjobs.co.uk/blog/2012/4/13/there-s-no-such-thing-as-a-free-launch

by Peroni • 14 years ago

43 29 14 years ago

hackerjobs.co.uk

inm3• 14 years ago

Jon, Steve's co-founder here and the development side of things.

Always interested in hearing any feedback, good or bad, so have at it!

citricsquid2• 14 years ago

If you're going to be free please have some sort of moderation process. This is not a job: http://hackerjobs.co.uk/jobs/2012/4/11/spamme-tech-co-founde...

Peroni10• 14 years ago

Steve Buckley here.

Depends on your perspective really. The company is legit and the ad is for a technical co-founder. If you apply and are successful then you have a job to do.

rayhano• 14 years ago

Imagine a web plugin called "Ban Hammer" where you can go around banning other people's content! The HN community would go nuts. Woo hoo!

michaelmartin2• 14 years ago

"Once we have a healthy flow of traffic we intend to lay down a few ground rules to help increase the overall standard of jobs that appear on the site."

That statement does seem a little worrying to me. I know it's a chicken-and-egg problem, but how will you keep building traffic unless the quality really is very good?

And if anything, it will be easier to enforce that now than later. The site does seem to have a good number of jobs for being so young already, but it's still at a nice level where you can manually screen every application.

Maybe one way to separate jobs from ownership stakes would be another tab in the "Browse" section for "Equity"? In the same way that a job can be both Freelance & Remote Friendly, this could be a good way to keep certain jobs separate?

Enforcing quality is the best way to stand out I think; there are hundreds of job boards out there.

One thing I like about yours already is that quite a few specify the salary range. That's the sort of information that makes it higher quality to me.

Peroni10• 14 years ago

Jon's gonna give you a decent reply but I wanted to quickly point out that a massive factor in the quality of jobs (including salary transparency) is down to our decision to eliminate recruiter postings. Plus the highly targeted 'Hacker News User' market tends to fly way under the radar of companies that are seeking generic, underpaid code monkey positions.

michaelmartin2• 14 years ago

Thanks for the reply, but isn't that the sort of thing that should be clearer on the site?

After going back and reading the big blurb on the homepage, I can see a mention about the recruiters now, but really, who reads big blurbs like that?

I just think yous need to do more to emphasise the quality angle and stand out from the hundreds of sites that just bought a job board WordPress theme.

sunilnimmagadda• 14 years ago

I am curious whether "remote friendly" means applicants from specific geographic location like Europe/US? I ask to save time for those friendly folks who make time to write to applicants that they couldn't consider the application because of timezone differences and/or other geographic factors.

Peroni10• 14 years ago

Hmmm. Not considered that before.

We want the site to be as clean and as seamless as possible so adding further caveats to 'Remote' positions might be counter-productive.

jakobe• 14 years ago

The quality of the job postings is extremely low. "Looking for an experienced Android developer as an intern". Are you kidding me?

Peroni10• 14 years ago

I beg to differ (obviously).

One job you dislike doesn't imply the overall quality is poor.

The specific role you're referring to is a paid internship and they specify Have you played around with the platform?. Not exactly a high barrier of entry to a company that is known to be one of the better Android publishers out there.

chrisbennet• 14 years ago

Looks good. It will probably never happen, but I would love to see a job board that had the employer rate the quality of candidate they are looking for and (using the same scale) the salary. Something like this:

Applicant Quality: Top 50% 25% 10% 5% 1% 0.5%

Salary for this pos: Top 50% 25% 10% 5% 1% 0.5%

In short, it would be great to call out those companies that want employees in the top 1% but are only willing to pay in the top 50%

Peroni10• 14 years ago

Interesting thought. Now let me explain why that will never happen!

Every single employer values the top 1% differently. Take permanent Ruby Developers for example, I know of a company who's valuation for the top 1% is absolutely spot on. I know of another company in the same area that values the top 1% at about £10k less per annum. The point is, they both genuinely understand what the skill level and experience level of said 1% is, they just significantly disagree on the value of said 1%.

littlegiantcap• 14 years ago

Something like this though could help to make labor a more realistic market. We can comparison shop almost any product via walmart or amazon, etc. Why shouldn't it be that way with employees?

johneth• 14 years ago

It would be useful to be able to search by location (e.g. near a place or postcode or current location). Is that a long term feature plan?

Peroni10• 14 years ago

Short answer: Yes.

Location search is a definite requirement however the site in it's current format is almost entirely in MVP stage and we will roll out features and upgrades over the coming weeks and months.

Right now the only solution is to do a keyword search on your area which isn't ideal but it usually works.

underwater2• 14 years ago

Who codes during a wedding reception? That's pretty disrespectful.

inm3• 14 years ago

Artistic license. I took a few minutes out in between the ceremony and reception to push a few changes to staging and have a quick chat with Steve because they were playing on my mind.

underwater2• 14 years ago

Makes sense.

eriktrautman• 14 years ago

You've done a good job with the design component of the site. It's simple and uncluttered and your choice of using just a couple of colors leads the eye quickly to the important bits of information and the action buttons. As the features grow, keep to that standard as much as possible. It'd be a shame to see that spartan effectiveness replaced by lots of filter fields and buttons and options that just become confusing overkill.

Peroni10• 14 years ago

Thanks for the feedback!

Simplicity & quality was always top priority for us.

One of my biggest bugbears with job boards is the sheer amount of pointless clutter, share buttons, ads, external links, promo fields, etc.

We want to avoid that slippery slope like the plague!

There's no such thing as a free launch

Related Stories