I recently facilitated a hire off of a “who wants to be hired” listing. I’m a consulting engineer and showed a client a couple of ads I thought looked promising. The SWE we hired is excellent and the client saved a chunk of cash that would have otherwise gone to a recruiter.

I tried to explain to my client that even though anyone on the Internet could sign up for and use HN, there is in fact a fair amount of exclusivity just because you have to know about the site.