Ask HN: Why does "Who is hiring" always drop so quickly from top ranks?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6310685

43 14 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I sometimes notice it's ranked lower than submissions that are older & have smaller number of points. It's probably flagged a lot, but why would anyone do it?

You can see it happen here with the current post: http://hnrankings.info/6310234/

sker• 13 years ago

As of this moment, it's at position 27, 3 hours old, 86 points.

The article at position 4 is 4 hours old and has 78 points.

Definitely looks like flagging. The only reason I can think of is job seekers trying to hide the thread from other potential job seekers.

It doesn't help that it's posted on a Sunday morning. It should be posted the first Monday of every month.

nonchalance• 13 years ago

"The only reason I can think of is job seekers trying to hide the thread from other potential job seekers."

If the expectation is that it would sink quickly, wouldn't employers stop using the service?

pandemicsyn• 13 years ago

Even if it does sink quickly I still got quite a few inquiries when I put up a job a few months ago. I expect actual job seekers know the post is coming and look for it regardless of whether its on the first page or not.

[edit] Also for what its worth, the quality of the people that reached out via HackerNews was a lot better than I got else where (I even ran an add on reddit's /r/linux)

whichdan2• 13 years ago

The best rebuttal I've heard against posting on Monday morning is that it gives employed job seekers more time to read through and respond to the ads. It doesn't seem like significantly less ads are posted on the weekend, but I'm sure the owner of hnhiring.me (or someone similarly ambitious) could run some quick stats.

jemka• 13 years ago

You think cutting a break to unemployed job seekers that want to sleep in is a good rebuttal?

If you want a job, show some hustle. If you don't have a job and need one, why are you sleeping in on Monday?

To the heart of the discussion, these should come out on a fixed schedule to give everyone a fair chance.

nightcracker• 13 years ago

While I certainly do not agree with practices such as the ones sker mentions, I do feel that Hacker News is a news site, not a job board. Posts about hiring do not belong at the top.

zanny• 13 years ago

It only happens once a month and I find it really useful while I'm job hunting myself. If you aren't in a tech center, you have very few lines of communication into them, and the hn monthly job lists usually get more signal to noise than every other online job board.

digitalnalogika• 13 years ago

I agree, it's not posted so often to be an annoyance, and if it weren't for this HN thread, I probably wouldn't have spent 2 summers out of my small European country as an intern in a Canadian startup.

lazyjones• 13 years ago

Perhaps these posts (4-5 current "ask HN / who's hiring / ask PG") should go in a separate list, for example at the top right corner ...

geofft• 13 years ago

Hacker News is primarily a job board. The reason that it's worth Y Combinator's time and money to run is that it allows YC-funded companies to post hiring ads where normal stories show up.

Of course, in order for those ads to be effective, the rest of the site needs to attract the sorts of people that YC-funded companies want to hire. To that end, it needs to be a decent news site (or something) as well.

thrush• 13 years ago

It's explained in the unofficial hacker news blog (http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ#selfposts).

Basically, it seems that submits that don't include an external link degrade faster than other submissions.

EDIT: So this post too will probably go down the ranks pretty quickly because it fits in the same category.

revelation• 13 years ago

Among the other reasons here, it also gets lots of comments. The ranking algorithm penalizes that since its a sign of a flame-war topic.

Ask HN: Why does "Who is hiring" always drop so quickly from top ranks?

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