How I got a job from a Hacker News post

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.<p>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:<p>Hiya Bob,<p>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.<p>I just wrote a post on BaaS myself. $LINK<p>I'd appreciate any thoughts you had on it.<p>Regards,<p>Anyone who writes you back is <i>no longer a stranger</i>. 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?"<p>2) What if he wasn't really close for coffee?<p>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 <i>he is going places</i>.") Note that that is the only decision they need to make - after you have yes, then you can schedule the details.<p>3). What if he wasn't hiring?<p>He knows someone who is. Get warm intro.

"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.

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.

"Given enough exposure, the impossibly lucky becomes the inevitable."<p>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%".

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.

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.<p>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.<p>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!<p>(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.)

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.

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' :)

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.<p>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.

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

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.