<story><title>Ask HN: Who&apos;s been hired through Hacker News?</title><text>Please comment here if you&amp;#x27;ve ever gotten hired through HN and what your experience was like.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>atum47</author><text>I was working for a big bank, facing moral harassment almost every day from a shitty manager. The thing with moral harassment is it don&amp;#x27;t happen out of nothing, it is gradual. The manager was testing the waters, every day making the insult a bit harder than the day before. One day he actually cursed me in a meeting with 14 other people and I decided I had enough. Reported him to HR and quit. After that I was working on a game, that I was going to try to make a living out of. I was decided not to go back to work for a while. Then, on HN I saw those to topics - who wants to be hired and who is hiring. I selected 6 openings that seems interesting to me and send an email. 4 wrote me back. 3 gave me a coding challenge. 1 Hired me. Been working with them for almost 3 years now. Great company. Really nice people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>piloto_ciego</author><text>There was another post in this thread that basically said, “toughen up buttercup” that I can no longer find. While I agree that this is a dickish thing to say, I can’t help but somewhat agree with the sentiment that tech workers are perhaps a little bit better off than the average person and don’t have a lot of perspective here about how bad it can get.  Not saying that it’s ok, rather that when you can easily find another job it’s pretty easy to take a principled stand.&lt;p&gt;I flew for a living for a long time and was verbally harassed at many jobs by a superior.  I remember talking on the radio once during a checkride - “do you have shit in your mouth? Because you sound like it.”&lt;p&gt;He was just being an asshole to rile me up, but it remains an asshole thing to say, and you have to deal with it because he literally holds your career in his hands.  Personally, in that moment I vowed I’d never do that to anyone - but it doesn’t mean it isn’t widespread and it doesn’t mean quitting was an option.&lt;p&gt;Other times in my career I was expressedly told violate regulations or do legal but wildly unsafe things; because I had massive student loan debt at the time (I paid all that shit off eventually greatest feeling in the world), rent to pay, I had to make a lot of compromises I’m not proud of retrospectively because I did not want to be homeless or laid off looking for a flying job in 2009.&lt;p&gt;To act as though everyone can quit if their ego gets bruised by some jackass is the height of privilege.  Many many other careers do not have that option.  Not saying it is right in the least, but I feel a lot of people would really benefit from an understanding that how principled a person can be often practically changed by exterior circumstances.&lt;p&gt;That’s the thing I want people to take away from all this - a sort of “dialectical materialism” sort of view - that being able to quit without worse consequences than a bruised ego is unto itself a sort of prosperity many many people do not have.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Who&apos;s been hired through Hacker News?</title><text>Please comment here if you&amp;#x27;ve ever gotten hired through HN and what your experience was like.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>atum47</author><text>I was working for a big bank, facing moral harassment almost every day from a shitty manager. The thing with moral harassment is it don&amp;#x27;t happen out of nothing, it is gradual. The manager was testing the waters, every day making the insult a bit harder than the day before. One day he actually cursed me in a meeting with 14 other people and I decided I had enough. Reported him to HR and quit. After that I was working on a game, that I was going to try to make a living out of. I was decided not to go back to work for a while. Then, on HN I saw those to topics - who wants to be hired and who is hiring. I selected 6 openings that seems interesting to me and send an email. 4 wrote me back. 3 gave me a coding challenge. 1 Hired me. Been working with them for almost 3 years now. Great company. Really nice people.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mylastattempt</author><text>This is my first time hearing of &amp;#x27;moral harassment&amp;#x27;. Is that an actual phrase or is English not your native language? Reading the rest of your comment it seems the manager was just a bully, but please elaborate if that understanding is incorrect!</text></comment>