Every month Hacker News has a “Who Is Hiring” thread. I posted a single job for a full-stack software engineer on Nov 2, 2020.

Summary: Most applicants are fresh out of university or a coding school and have 0-2 years experience, are male, and located in the US.

Discussion: The applicants from Hacker News tend to reflect the industry as a whole, and women only made up a small percentage of the group. While I think there could be some great candidates that applied (and I will review them all), the HN audience may not be the first place to go to source a diverse array of candidates.

Other considerations: I only posted the one job description targeting a specific type of engineer (full-stack). I chose to summarize what Craft.co does differently than shown in job descriptions.

Results

Within the first 2 days (and primarily the first 24 hours):

  • 11 emails from candidates, including 9 resumes (all men)
  • 6 LinkedIn connection requests (4 candidates, 1 React consultant, 1 recruiter, or 4 men & 2 women)
  • 2 LinkedIn InMail messages
  • 34 people directly applied to the job (and after 3 days, this increased to 51 people)

A small number of people contacted Craft.co or me in multiple ways (such as emailing me their resume and applying directly to the job).

Of the 34 direct applicants:

  • Men: 29
  • Women: 5

Of 34 direct applicants, roughly 14.7% were female and 85.3% were male.

Of 34 direct applicants, 20 had 0-2 years experience, with the rest distributed mostly between 3-8 years experience.

Raw data: Applicants by years of experience.csv

Most applicants are based in the United States (27 of 34), which makes sense because HackerNews is based in the US.

Raw data: Applicants by country.csv

Reference: The Ad on Hacker News

Craft.co : San Francisco, Seattle, Anywhere USA or Europe, REMOTE : Software Engineer (all levels) : Full-time

If you knew everything about every business, what kinds of questions could you answer? For example, companies that work with other companies (think “supply-chain”) use this to help understand risk, competition, and market segments.

Craft.co is a startup with B2B and Consumer products that help answer these questions with a simple and beautiful UX. We use React, TypeScript, GraphQL, node, Postgres, AWS. We’re a ~73 person team (SF, Seattle, LA, Salt Lake City, London, Minsk, and remote).

I’m hiring 4+ full-stack, front-end, and back-end software engineers at jr/mid/senior levels. This job represents multiple openings https://boards.greenhouse.io/craftco/jobs/4164351003 but please apply and we can tailor to match your background.

I’m really looking for people who are curious, collaborative, and engaged. Specific technical skills can always be learned.

Also hiring PM, Sales, Recruiter, Marketing. See https://craft.co/careers

About me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexdangelo/
I’m a well-rounded software engineering manager. I build collaborative, effective engineering teams and help develop leaders, all in service of making great products people love. I foster a supportive environment, where being open and vulnerable leads to deeper connections, growth from taking risks, and a stronger team overall.