Source

The salary-serving job collection currently contains public Hacker News monthly “Ask HN: Who is hiring?” listings dated from June 2024 onward. Each salary page shows the exact source-date range for its own cohort. A separate historical source archive covers standard monthly threads from March 2011 onward and the known 2008 thread; that archive is not the date range of the salary-serving collection. Hiring metrics use top-level employer posts. Replies do not count toward the results.

What we analyze

Salary pages use the eligible, deduplicated listing collection. A listing may describe more than one opening; listing counts are not counts of hires or employees. Company names, role titles, advertised amounts, currencies, remote marks, seniority labels, location text and technology tags are extracted from the posts. These labels can be incomplete or wrong. Separate historical research reports state their own population and unit of analysis.

Normalization

Salary amounts are stored in the currency written in the post. USD figures are approximate comparison estimates. When a validated monthly snapshot is available, comparisons use its ECB reference rates and show the quote date; it is not a historical posting-date rate. The first valid quote snapshot is pinned for that month. When a monthly refresh fails, the last valid snapshot remains in use and is labeled stale after month rollover. Where no usable snapshot is available, pages use stored USD estimates, whose conversion date is not retained. Neither basis adjusts for inflation. Original offer bands and currencies remain visible on each listing. Extracted hourly amounts are annualized; the original post is the authority on its pay period. Recognized technology aliases are normalized and selected non-technology phrases are removed. The remaining tags are not a certified taxonomy, so a tag page means listings carrying that tag, not a validated occupation.

Deduplication

The serving collection matches records by a fingerprint of normalized company name, role title and the USD salary estimate stored at extraction. Matching fingerprints on different Hacker News posts keep the newer source post. This is an approximation: different openings with the same name, title and amount can collapse, while a repost with changed pay can remain separate. Historical charts therefore describe the retained listings, not every original advertisement or vacancy.

Demand and trend definitions

On salary pages, technology pairing and share calculations use the matching eligible listings shown for that cohort. Tags overlap, so their percentages do not form exclusive market shares. Company concentration measures the retained listing share under the recorded company names. Monthly volumes use source-post dates and can change with collection, corrections and deduplication. These are descriptive relationships, not a skill premium, hiring-market share or a causal pay effect. Historical research reports define demand, openings and salary transparency separately; salary-stated listings alone cannot supply the denominator for a market-wide transparency rate.

We show counts beside rates and omit aggregate salary medians unless there are at least 30 valid salary-minimum observations. Recent source months remain provisional because late posts and edits can change the totals. The collection-check date reports when the source refresh was verified; the monthly-review date reports the reviewed cohort. They are separate from each page’s source-post date range and do not indicate that an advertisement is still open. Salary cohort pages include a citation block with the source window, listing and valid-observation counts, conversion basis, measure, and a deterministic data version.

Limitations (read this)

These are advertised ranges from job posts, not verified paid compensation or accepted offers.
Hacker News skews senior, US-heavy, and toward certain stacks. Treat it as "startups that hire on HN", not "all startups".
Small cuts (one technology, company, location mention, or work-mode mark) have small sample sizes; we show the count and withhold aggregate medians below 30 valid salary-minimum observations.

License & citation

Aggregated figures are free to cite under CC BY 4.0. Please attribute: “Source: Hacker News Who is Hiring, aggregated by StartupJobList” with a link. StartupJobList is not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator.

Corrections

StartupJobList checks figures against original source posts before making corrections. Each salary page links to its sources and explains its calculation method.