Hacker News Hiring Trends

Big gains for remote workers; bubble trouble?

1 in 5 postings are for remote positions

Hacker News Hiring trends began as a way to discover emerging technolgies used to develop software. But, it has become useful for tracking non-technical aspects of technical hiring as well. The first non-technical focus was on the use of "passionate" after Avdi wrote about the Passion Gospel. Then came examining experience level (Senior vs Junior) a couple months ago. Now, we see the full force of the non-technical terms this month with the addition of "onsite" which we can use to compare with "remote."

Before diving into the data, a quick backstory on why these terms are just now being added to the trends. Prior to June, 2015, there was no standard for indicating a position was remote or onsite. In many cases positions would indicate "no remote" but that made searching for remote positions difficult. So, in June, the standard became to write "onsite" when remote was not possible and "remote" then stood out and could be identified easier and thus studied in the trends.

Most compelling for May though, even though "onsite" is by far still more common, is that remote positions made up 20% of all postings. Let that sink in a moment.... 1 in 5 postings was ok with a remote employee!? As a full-time remote worker myself, this really shouldn't be that surprising. However, Hacker News "who is hiring" is typically the domain of small to mid-size companies in big cities like San Francisco and New York. These companies have tended to prefer onsite employees. Plus, not only was "remote" a top term for May, it's up to 20% in May from below 15% in April, a significant increase.

Along with the growing acceptance of remote workers, I also wonder if conern about bay area housing prices has started to show up here. Are company policies becoming more liberal about remote workers to meet hiring goals. This is one I'll definitely be watching in the months to come. Do you have any hiring stories of remote positions being opened up due to the housing costs?

Bubble trouble?

While May was great news for remote workers, one area of conern is that this month is the second straight month with a year-over-year decrease in total postings as you can see in the total postings trend. Perhaps HN peaked as job posting platform in March or earlier. Alexa and Google trends do show some drop-off in HN popularity. But, the other explanation is that there are fewer jobs available, perhaps in part because of the claims that this tech bubble is bursting.

Now, onto the tech...

Programming Languages

Compare JavaScript, Python, Ruby and Java
Compare C++, Scala, Clojure and Go

Python retains its spot as the top Programming language this month, edging out JavaScript. Elixir seems to be the next one up to join these top 8, bu it is not there yet.

Server-side Frameworks

Compare Rails, node.js, PHP and Django

Rails and node.js, still neck and neck this month.

JavaScript Frameworks

Compare AngularJS, Backbone, Ember and React

After a couple of months of flatness, React and Angular both edged upward.

SQL Databases

Compare Postgresql, MySQL and SQL Server

Postgresql is separating a bit, can it run away?

NoSQL Databases

Compare Mongodb, Elasticsearch, Cassandra and Riak

Big Data

Compare Storm, Hadoop and Spark

Messaging

Compare Kafka, RabbitMQ and ActiveMQ

DevOps Tools

Compare Chef, Puppet, Ansible and the DevOps term itself

Virtualization and Container Tools

Compare Docker, Kubernetes, Mesos and Vagrant

Docker makes its entrance into the top 20 as it makes a strong case for developement and deployment workflows.

Experience

Compare Senior and Junior engineers

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