April 1, 2026
Paychecks, vibes, and AI bribes
Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2026)
Big pay, bigger vibes: remote dreams vs office rules as AI jobs flood the board
TLDR: High-paying roles from Goody and others lit up April’s hiring thread, but the real fireworks were over remote vs onsite rules and AI-everywhere job pitches. FetLife’s $272k remote role stunned, Shepherd’s “autonomous underwriting” split the room, and pay transparency kept everyone scrolling—because the job market is moving fast.
April’s “Who’s Hiring” thread came in hot: Goody rolled up with $150k–$250k dev jobs, equity, and a “great vibes” promise—cue cheering for clear pay bands and side‑eye for “vibes-based hiring.” Their “ship it the same day” energy split the room between hustle lovers and burnout-watchers, while the “growth engineer” title drew jokes about coding the checkout button until it prints money. Meanwhile, the comments turned into a buffet of drama. PrairieLearn got wholesome love for its open‑source university mission, contrasted by WireScreen’s NYC‑hybrid PM slot at $175k–$215k, which reignited the eternal “PMs vs engineers” pay debate. Then FetLife dropped a remote Head of Eng role at up to $272k, prompting “spicy site, serious salary” quips and hand‑wringing about working on an adult platform versus the sheer scale of 12 million users. AI was the main character: Shepherd’s onsite SF push for “fully autonomous underwriting” had remote‑first folks groaning and AI faithfuls chanting “let the bots quote,” while skeptics asked who’s on the hook when a robot prices your premium. In Berlin, BIT Capital’s “betting big on AI” to chase high returns fueled both moon‑shot hype and “stonks cosplay” snark. TL;DR: money’s up, AI’s everywhere, and the culture wars—remote vs office, mission vs margin—are back in session.
Key Points
- •Goody is hiring multiple remote, full-time full‑stack engineering roles in the US and Canada.
- •Open positions include Staff Software Engineer ($200–250K), Senior Software Engineer, Customer Engineering ($150–200K), and Senior Software Engineer, Growth ($150–200K).
- •Goody’s product is a corporate gifting platform used by companies such as Google, Stripe, Anthropic, Meta, NBCUniversal, and Notion.
- •The tech stack includes Ruby, React, and TypeScript, with flexibility for Python or Node.js on the backend.
- •Goody offers a commerce-focused developer API and seeks engineers who can ship quickly with high attention to detail in a startup environment.