I know of no one, but I've applied a few times this year (~15) and only received 4 replies, all "no" because of my salary requirements or the fact I'm not "all-in on AI". I see quite a few of the ones I applied to and never received a response for showing up every month, though.

Reading many of them give me a “we want a $300k developer for $50k a year” vibe. Not even worth applying for.

Indeed.

Even outside of HN, there seems to be a large amount of downward pressure on tech salaries. Like even higher level staff/principal developer positions under $150k.

A few years ago, working remotely outside the hot zones meant you'd probably split the difference between the hot zone and where the dev was... now it's like not even a thought or an argument.

I know one person who got hired through it,but they have a very specific niche skillset.Feels like it works better for standouts profiles than generalists.

Not a response to you but want to plug this here.

I’m a mid-level developer in dire financial straits right now and need to raise about $750 within the next week as a bridge. I’d be willing to dedicate a solid number of hours for the week (40+ if needed) to any programming work in return.

I can jump on bug fixes, small features, backend work, frontend components, or whatever comes up. I’m happy to start with low-stakes tasks and/or open-source side projects.

Email in profile.

Definitely a bot account, careful.

I'm not a bot.

Bot with human in the loop?

What did they/it say?

I applied for a founding engineer with a startup though a "who's hiring" post. Had 3-4 rounds of interviews, met founders, did a project with them. I had competing offers and ultimately didn't work out. But it was a positive experience.

I've found two jobs from that thread, and have been offered a third I turned down. I usually just ctrl-f for the tech I use and apply if I see something interesting that matches my skillset. It's quite targeted. I think I have like a 50% success rate with applying via HN.