Ask HN: Who wants to be hired? (November 2025)

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall Shape of the Thread

  • The thread is almost entirely people advertising themselves for hire rather than debating anything.
  • Profiles span senior principal engineers, mid-level devs, juniors, interns, designers, PMs, data people, and a few non-technical roles (talent, customer success, product marketing).
  • A handful of short reply chains appear (e.g., “wrong thread”, follow-ups on contact attempts, light banter), but there’s very little argument or extended discussion.

Candidate Profiles & Experience

  • Many candidates have 10–20+ years’ experience, often ex-CTO, staff/principal, or founders with exits.
  • Strong presence of backend/platform engineers, infrastructure/DevOps, security engineers, embedded/low-level systems, graphics/game dev, and data/ML specialists.
  • Also represented: product managers, technical product leaders, UX/UI and brand designers, DevRel, technical writers, project/program managers, and recruiting/people leaders.
  • A noticeable number of students and new grads explicitly seeking internships, co-ops, or junior roles.

Technologies & Domains

  • Dominant stacks: Python, TypeScript/JavaScript (React/Next/Node), Go, Rust, C/C++, Java, C#, and Ruby/Rails.
  • Many mention cloud and infra: AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform, Docker, observability stacks.
  • Domains frequently cited: fintech and payments, healthcare and bioinformatics, security, data platforms/ETL, DevTools, gaming/graphics, IoT, robotics, and geospatial.

AI/ML and LLM Work

  • Very large subset focus on AI/ML, especially LLMs, RAG, agents, MLOps, and applied ML in production.
  • Several describe concrete systems: LLM-assisted pipelines, interview simulators, fraud detection, AI copilots, voice AI, diarization, and agentic orchestration frameworks.
  • A minority explicitly say they are not interested in AI or blockchain, pushing back against hype and “AI cycle” roles.

Work Preferences & Geography

  • Remote work is overwhelmingly preferred; many are “remote only”, some OK with hybrid/on-site locally.
  • Time zones: heavy representation from US, Canada, and Europe, with additional candidates from Latin America, Africa, Middle East, and Asia; many are flexible on overlap.
  • Relocation stances vary: some very open (especially within EU/US), others firmly no-relocate.

Meta & Miscellany

  • Occasional corrections (e.g., someone posting in the wrong monthly thread; freelancer-thread question).
  • One stray remark about a Postgres article and PG vectors appears off-topic relative to the hiring focus.