I always took those posts to be a form of (dark pattern) undisclosed advertisement masquerading as content offered as a perk to YC companies. The last thing those advertisers (and YC) want is comments that are similar to what you might read on glassdoor, criticizing the company, management or work culture.
And, it's also possible that they are used as plain-old "brand recognition advertisements", and no one really gets hired. Unless of course Smarking is hiring dozens of "head of engineering" positions (or turnover is that ridiculously high) [0]
Edited to add: I see it as a dark pattern because it is not explicitly stated as an "Ad" or "Sponsored", and relies on us navigating somewhere else to determine if this is some kind of special post, or for us to have the experience to recognize it as something different than an organic post.
I.E. If today were your first visit to this site, would you recognize them specifically as promoted / sponsored content?
Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down and fall steadily. Only one is on the front page at a time. The rest are listed at jobs.
I don't know where else they would disclose it, the fact that you can't vote or comment on it clearly shows you it's different. It's way preferable to e.g. astroturfing, and is not a dark pattern a la Amazon tricking you into prime
How is it a dark pattern or undisclosed advertising? I thought it was one of the perks of being a YC company. There is very little advertising on this site, and what is here, e.g. jobs for YC companies, is labeled and on topic.
We as a community have trouble remaining courteous in normal posts. Allowing us to comment on hiring posts would be a nightmare for the moderators, as well as force them into a rock-and-hard-place scenario where moderating ill-behaved commenters leads to claims of bias and conspiracy.
And: it already does that for the open-access posts on the Who's Hiring threads, where the mods donate a bunch of time every month scrubbing tendentious comments off of posts from non-YC companies.
Yes, and that's exactly why you can't comment on them. They're one of the payoffs for YC of running Hacker News and those posts historically sometimes became mudslinging contests instead of the recruitment post they were intended to be.
There was such a post recently with the title “OlaClick (YC W21) first LaTam startup to raise from Facebook, Google; now hiring”¹, which I thought was particularly sneaky, adding extra ad copy in the title of an impossible-to-criticize post.
They shouldn't have done that, though it was almost certainly an innocent mistake*. If I'd seen it, I would have edited it.
You can see the guidelines for YC startups posting job ads here: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobguide.html. As you can see there are 6 paragraphs dedicated to neutral titles.
* Founders don't post like that for nefarious reasons. It's just that many of them don't spend much time on HN and have no idea of the finicky conventions of this community.
I get this, but it's also antithetical to hackernews to post something and not be able to comment. It's as if job postings should stay in https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs and never show on the front page.
The other question is "why can we comment on 'X wants to be hired' posts?"
Nothing quite like hanging out your shingle, putting your professional foot forward, so you promote yourself in the best light possible to potential employers, only for someone to make a snarky comment about your skill set or name. There's at least a few of those each month under various comments from people looking for a new job.
Yes, those are much harder to deal with because we can't simply switch them off—other than disabling replies, which I don't want to do because most replies are good faith questions.
I've even written code to specifically monitor all the replies that get posted in those threads, but it still requires moderator review energy—a scarce commodity if ever there was one.
At a guess, such threads (which AFAIK are offered to YC companies only) would otherwise tend to degrade in to opine regarding compensation and the relative merits of various early-stage ventures in a sector plus function as a guaranteed time sink and PR nightmare for early stage businesses who could better focus their attentions elsewhere.
You can't really comment on job posts on the (open-access) "Who's Hiring" threads, either. Every month, the mods have to waste a bunch of time zapping people who want to debate the merits of different companies that post there. If there was an easy way, without changing the UX of the site (something that happens very rarely here) to eliminate comments on those threads, so all you could do is post job ads, HN would probably do that too.
I've followed other forums where company representatives can post, and I think it takes a person with an exceptional skill set to handle the comments and discussions that result. It's not a "normal" skill that I'd expect of any normal job duty, even HR or PR. So I think the proscription of comments is necessary to avoid frightening those people away. I've seen otherwise competent and articulate people get baited into losing their composure or taking the low road. Forum interaction is, for better or worse, a performance art.
Anyway, somebody can always start a thread about the same company.
I often see problems with these postings. The link doesn't work, an error in the wording, etc, and a comment would be a nice way to tell them their post needs to be fixed somehow.
I've not seen any evidence of that. Have you? If that's really happening, we'd take away job posting privileges, but it's important not to be cavalier with accusations of abuse.
What rot. Any HN story comment is subject to "libel claims" in jurisdictions with poor free speech protections (e.g. Britain), not only "X is hiring stories".
Commentary is the night torch of liberty, shining a critical light on propaganda. YC libertarianism should be eating its own dog food
Things would get awkward for the more exploitative or otherwise "bad" companies. Having the top comment be "Your entire business model is a dystopian nightmare" would probably hurt some feelings.
Most of them aren't really hiring, but instead using the thread as covert advertisement for brand. In fact, HN largely exists in general to promote YC companies. Why would they allow comments on these threads, of which a large majority are likely to be negative, given this agenda?
> Most of them aren't really hiring, but instead using the thread as covert advertisement for brand.
Do you have any evidence of that? If that's actually true, we would stop those companies from posting job ads. As I said elsewhere, though (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32587596), you really shouldn't be cavalier with allegations of abuse.
> HN largely exists in general to promote YC companies
That's definitely not true, or at least a huge overstatement. I've written a lot about this in the past if anyone wants explanations of how we think about this:
It would be closer to the truth to say that HN exists to help new YC companies come into existence, since the biggest benefit is more startups getting started, applying to YC, and getting funded by YC. Even one large such success would pay for hundreds of years of HN.
Yeah, a company that routinely posts gives a “referral” link but it just leads to their normal career page and there’s nothing I can tell that actually makes your application a referral. It’s disappointing because this is a company I’ve been trying to interview at for nearly 4 years now.
[+] [-] UmYeahNo|3 years ago|reply
And, it's also possible that they are used as plain-old "brand recognition advertisements", and no one really gets hired. Unless of course Smarking is hiring dozens of "head of engineering" positions (or turnover is that ridiculously high) [0]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27294446
Edited to add: I see it as a dark pattern because it is not explicitly stated as an "Ad" or "Sponsored", and relies on us navigating somewhere else to determine if this is some kind of special post, or for us to have the experience to recognize it as something different than an organic post.
I.E. If today were your first visit to this site, would you recognize them specifically as promoted / sponsored content?
[+] [-] version_five|3 years ago|reply
To be fair, it is disclosed on the FAQ page:
I don't know where else they would disclose it, the fact that you can't vote or comment on it clearly shows you it's different. It's way preferable to e.g. astroturfing, and is not a dark pattern a la Amazon tricking you into prime[+] [-] ALittleLight|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] __s|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yaseer|3 years ago|reply
The system and rationale are explained in the HN FAQ and repeatedly reiterated by the mods.
i.e This is one of the things HN gives back to YC, for funding it.
Compared to online advertising, jobs posts targeted at a technical audience seems like a reasonable trade.
[+] [-] ss108|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] altairprime|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] mongol|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] agluszak|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teddyh|3 years ago|reply
1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31523852
[+] [-] dang|3 years ago|reply
You can see the guidelines for YC startups posting job ads here: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobguide.html. As you can see there are 6 paragraphs dedicated to neutral titles.
* Founders don't post like that for nefarious reasons. It's just that many of them don't spend much time on HN and have no idea of the finicky conventions of this community.
[+] [-] jacquesm|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstx1|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] willio58|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinlloyd|3 years ago|reply
Nothing quite like hanging out your shingle, putting your professional foot forward, so you promote yourself in the best light possible to potential employers, only for someone to make a snarky comment about your skill set or name. There's at least a few of those each month under various comments from people looking for a new job.
[+] [-] dang|3 years ago|reply
I've even written code to specifically monitor all the replies that get posted in those threads, but it still requires moderator review energy—a scarce commodity if ever there was one.
[+] [-] contingencies|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ehlesmes|3 years ago|reply
Companies might decide it’s worth to take a risk, and hope that engaging will differentiate them from others, and generate engagement/good will/hype…
Like a sponsored Show HN
[+] [-] tptacek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bergenty|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://github.com/cheeaun/awesome-hacker-news
[+] [-] brudgers|3 years ago|reply
The interview process aeems like the appropriate context for asking questions.
And the context in which it is productive for the company to answer them.
In this regard it is just like other job postings everywhere on the internet.
[+] [-] analog31|3 years ago|reply
Anyway, somebody can always start a thread about the same company.
[+] [-] aryamaan|3 years ago|reply
Reddit AMAs-- which I suppose are heavily moderated by the mods and up/down votes-- would be an outlier of this rule.
[+] [-] nhumrich|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NHQ|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] moritonal|3 years ago|reply
Moreover, it couldn't even be offered as an optional thing given how bad it would look on any company that didn't.
What I would love is the ability for an Ad to be associated with a user account.
[+] [-] abeppu|3 years ago|reply
Why is the libel issue more a problem with job ads than with any other kind of post that people comment on?
[+] [-] waynesonfire|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leg100|3 years ago|reply
What rot. Any HN story comment is subject to "libel claims" in jurisdictions with poor free speech protections (e.g. Britain), not only "X is hiring stories".
Commentary is the night torch of liberty, shining a critical light on propaganda. YC libertarianism should be eating its own dog food
[+] [-] causality0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timbit42|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pyrrhotech|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|3 years ago|reply
Do you have any evidence of that? If that's actually true, we would stop those companies from posting job ads. As I said elsewhere, though (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32587596), you really shouldn't be cavalier with allegations of abuse.
> HN largely exists in general to promote YC companies
That's definitely not true, or at least a huge overstatement. I've written a lot about this in the past if anyone wants explanations of how we think about this:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
It would be closer to the truth to say that HN exists to help new YC companies come into existence, since the biggest benefit is more startups getting started, applying to YC, and getting funded by YC. Even one large such success would pay for hundreds of years of HN.
[+] [-] azemetre|3 years ago|reply