I’ve been hiring in anger since 2018, applied for 1 job (sent about 10 applications) and hired over three companies. First was an 800 person company that grew to 2000 while I was there, second I was hire number 2 for a startup and I hired the full 15 person engineering team, and a decent chunk of the non engineering product/test roles into. 50 person company . Third (current role) I’ve been involved in hiring about 8 people in the last 6 months that I’ve been here. It’s a 45 person company, but a subsidiary of a 30k multinational whose hiring practices we use.

> but what you are saying is definitely the exception to the common narrative nor does it match what I've seen.

As an anecdote, I posted on who’s hiring here, and we used a separate job requisition for HN, (this was my last job where we went from 2 -> 15 people). We got about 30 applications in the 7 days following that on that req, and of those 30, only one came even remotely close to meeting the requirements on the JD - we were looking for someone with a few years experience in a Java like language, in a Europe/US time zone. Most of the candidates failed both of those criteria, hard. My point being that people who are frustrated with their situation are likely to be more vocal than someone who isn’t.

I’ve spent enough time on HN reading about topics I know a lot about, and seeing people confidently claim how X is easy or if they just Y, and they’re totally wrong. I know a decent amount about working on the hiring side - it’s been a core component of my job for the last 6 years. I’ve worked with recruiters both internal and external, spent far more time with greenhouse than any engineer should ever have to do.

My feeling is that there’s far less sophistication going on, and the dearth of human responses (which is problematic) lets people make up their own reasons as to why it’s not working when the reality is that there’s just a hell of a lot of applicants for every single job.