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Ask HN: Is SXSW a valuable event for recruiting developers?
8 points by conorgil145 on Feb 4, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 7 comments
My company, Virtru, is actively hiring for several developer positions [1] and we recently found out that we are a finalist for the SXSW Interactive Innovation Award in the Privacy & Security category [2].

I have never attended SXSW before and I am hoping to get some input from developers who have attended in the past on whether it is a good venue for networking and meeting other talented developers who are interested in working for a new company.

I have read lots of posts/opinions over the years talking about how exciting SXSW is and all of the startup announcements, cool events, and other activities that go on there. I have no doubt that it would be incredibly fun. However, we are encountering first hand the difficulties of hiring talented developers for our open positions and I have that specific goal in mind as one main reason for attending SXSW.

Culture fit is extremely important to our team and candidates who already have strong opinions and passions about privacy tend to be more of a fit. My thought is that we might have some name recognition with developers at the event who are already interested in the Privacy & Security category and leverage that to network.

What are your thoughts on the benefits of attending SXSW to recruit? Are there any specific events or Meet Ups at SXSW which you would recommend attending? Are there any specific bars which developers tend to gather at to chat over a beer?

I appreciate any and all suggestions/insights from folks who have attended SXSW in the past.

[1] https://www.virtru.com/careers [2] http://sxsw.com/interactive/news/2015/2015-interactive-innovation-awards-finalists-unveiled



I'm not sure how it is now, but I lived in Austin 1998-2011, often volunteered at Interactive, and stayed through the music festival. Most of the people I met there were either:

1) Marketing and throwing parties to promote their own startup/product

2) There to drink and hang out at above parties

3) Marketing their book and trying to meet influential bloggers to write about their book

4) Attending because their company paid for them to attend some talks

It seems like it would be hard to stand out as a recruiter at SXSWi given how big it is now. You'll see a company with a huge budget have The Roots or Foo Fighters play at their party or something over the top. I think sponsoring local meetups for specific languages/interest groups would work better.


Great to get some advice from someone who was involved with the event for so long.

Alas, we do not have the finances to hire the Foo Fighters for a private party concert. Kind of hard to compete with that by offering a beer at a bar and some free T-Shirts.

Thanks for your thoughts.


SWSW is a bacchanal masquerading as a conference - 95% of the people there are there to get sloppy. That's not to say it's useless - fast friends are made through the social lubricant of alcohol, and these friends can then be leveraged later, when they've returned to both home and sobriety.

A recruiter doing traditional recruiting, in my opinion, would have little success. People don't want to be recruited, they want to have fun and enjoy Texas. If you're targeting specific individuals, on the other hand, you could send a couple of developers and telling them 'hey, there's no need for the hard sell, but if you can, go have some drinks with recruiting targets X, Y, and Z.' That could end up working well.


I was planning to just tweet out something like "Come by X bar at Y time to hang out with the Virtru engineers. First beer is on us!" and use that as an opportunity to start a conversation with some smart engineers. Ideally, at least one of those relationships would evolve into an eventual hire over time.


Echoing what others have said, tech was kind of tacked on, and SXSWi itself is more of an industry conference than a tech conference if that makes sense. Not that you couldn't find people (anything is possible), but imnsho you're more likely to find a bunch of social media strategists getting shitfaced and attending talks like "knitting a tag cloud for grandma"* than people who know what the fuck a copy constructor is. In other words, if you want Shingies, come on down, if you want Bjarne Stroustrups, stay away.

Source: long-time Austinite and SXSW-avoider; developer-type :)

*not a joke: I think this was at the 2006 SXSWi.


Holy shit you were right, that was a legit session title! https://innovationeye.wordpress.com/2006/03/22/sxsw-notes-be...


I don't think so. SXSW is more for launching and networking with VCs, marketing folks, and doing business development.

Developers largely avoid it. I would stick to security and privacy focused conferences that cater to developers.




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