What is the origin and history of the monthly 'Who is hiring?' and 'Who wants to be hired?' threads on Hacker News?

The monthly Hacker News hiring threads are a pair of regular posts—one for employers, one for job seekers—that have grown into a well‑known institution on the site. Here is what the evidence tells us about how they began and evolved.

Who runs the threads today

Both threads are posted by the automated whoishiring account:

• Who is hiring? – companies post job openings.
• Who wants to be hired? – job seekers post profiles about themselves.

The second thread is a “sibling” to the main hiring thread [3]. The whoishiring account was created specifically to handle these posts automatically, so regular users no longer had to post the question each month [5]. The threads are mentioned in the Hacker News FAQ and fill a real need for the community [6].

The “Who is hiring?” thread

The exact start date of the hiring thread is not clear from the available evidence. An index of “Who is hiring?” posts contains job ads going back to January 2018, so the thread has certainly been active since then [2]. There is a very brief hint that it may have begun as something related to “language” or “system administration”, but the snippet is too fragmentary to build a reliable origin story [7].

Before the whoishiring account was created, the question was presumably posted manually – the account simply automated a tradition that was already underway [5].

The “Who wants to be hired?” thread

The reverse‑perspective thread has a clearer personal history:

• Started by user jader201 – they launched the “Who wants to be hired?” threads over five years ago (from the time of their comment) after getting moderator dang’s blessing [8][10]. That places the origin roughly in 2014 or earlier.
• Became an official sibling – the thread eventually joined the monthly rotation run by the whoishiring account, alongside the main “Who is hiring?” post [3].
• Real‑world success – the creator themselves found a job through their own thread and, as of their comment, still happily worked there [8]. The threads work well if users actively follow up on emails and stay diligent [9][11].

Ripple effect on other communities

The idea has spread: other career‑focused online spaces see calls to start similar monthly “Who’s hiring?” threads, showing the cultural influence of the Hacker News tradition [4].

In short, the “Who is hiring?” thread grew organically and was eventually automated through the whoishiring account, while the “Who wants to be hired?” thread was a deliberate addition by a community member, approved by the moderation team, and later folded into the same automation. Both have been running reliably for well over half a decade.