[VeXocide]

Two years ago when the "Ask HN: Who wants to be hired?" thread appeared for the first time I wasn't quite happy where I was at, and posted my details. I was located in the Netherlands at the time and literally one of hundreds posting, thus I didn't have too high a hopes, but why not.

A few local companies reached out, and I interviewed with one or two, but for whatever reason neither ended up working out. At that point I wrote it off and went on with life.

Two months after the post someone from RethinkDB reached out explicitly mentioning it. It later turned out he had gone back through all the posts. After two phone interviews they flew me in, had a the hardest interview in my life to date, but ended up with an offer which I happily accepted.

The rest is history as they say. I had a great time at RethinkDB until about two months ago when we unfortunately had to shut down.

[jaz46]

I'm the guy from RethinkDB who found and hired Jeroen!

I will say it's pretty rare, but when searching for a very particular skill set "Who wants to be hired" can totally work for finding new to mid-level devs.

[thaumasiotes]

Why are you looking for "a very particular skill set" in "new-level" devs?

[noescape]

And, what is this particular skill set?

[fencepost]

Well, at the time something in the list of "C++ (Boost, STL), Python, SQL (PostgreSQL, SQLite), git" caught his eye.

Since it was RethinkDB I suspect the combination of C++ (which RethinkDB is written in), Python (one of the 4 languages for which there are/were "official" libraries), experience with 2 different DBMSs and an interest in "a challenge as a backend enginer to further hone my C++ skills" were probably all factors.