We're only being dishonest to get your attention. Join us!

[jpadvo]

In response to a story currently on the front page titled "FB is the Only Other Platform Used by 20% of College Students. Join Us!" [1]

Do you actually want to hire people who are going to fall for dishonest linkbait like that?

YC companies, I understand that you get to post job ads on HN and they automatically show up on the front page. Great. But please, show some respect to the people you are trying to recruit, and show some respect for this exclusive privilege PG gives you.

If you read the full post[1] you'll see that what they are referring to is the college students at a single university. At this university, apparently, 20% of students signed up at launch, and 30% of those use it daily. Making it more like 6% of students, at one university, who use their app. Probably a little more if you count weekly or monthly users. But still. That, in comparison to what the headline claims (20% of college students, everywhere) is ridiculously inaccurate.

And also, what about Google? Way, way more than 20% of college students use Gmail, Docs, etc. And what about things like Craigslist? It is even claimed that their app can tell you "exactly what you need to get done every day, with no input". No input is qualitatively different than "very little input, but it's really easy and quick."

You can, and should, do better. In addition to misleading people being a mean thing to do (even when effective), it doesn't do you any good to mislead your own future employees, anyway. Geez.

---

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6269664

[pearjuice]

YC companies always have the worst link-baiting lines to get you to click on their job offers. Just put them in a standard template so we know who is looking for what before clicking on the link. I propose:

{company} ({yc season}) looking for {role}

Role should be the actual function title and if applicable mentioning the language-stack (i.e. RoR, node) the candidate should master.

[dylangs1030]

I second this strongly. I'd pay a lot more attention with a simple format. It's more respectful to the audience and makes you seem more professional.

Common objections:

But we're young and hip, we wanna look different from the big companies! - Doesn't matter. Still bad practice.

But we don't like labels. We want generalists. - Then specify that. Asking for a "ninja" or some other nondescript title is retarded.

But we want to say what we do! - That's what the post is for.

YC companies have the exclusive ability to post job ads on the front page. I highly doubt there's any reasonable justification for posting anything aside from a standard template. It's not like you need more help.

[hkmurakami]

I think it's ironic that the monthly "who's hiring" posts follow such a guideline and try to inform the potential applicant as much as possible, yet these YC jobpostings go the exact opposite route.

[leetrout]

As a newer HN user I was surprised that there are no comments on job postings. I've also noticed some interesting posts and think there could be some constructive conversation around them.

I can appreciate why there are no comments but also I think it would be interesting to allow direct feedback to job postings.

Anyone else ever thought this, too?

[minimaxir]

Reddit allows users to comment on ads.

99% of the time it doesn't go well, especially if they are being dishonest.

[jacquesm]

Comments are off on job postings because they tend to become a running critique of the company or product doing the posting.

[zck]

One reason, iirc, is to prevent stealth companies from being outed.

[quantumpotato_]

What determines a post as a job posting and disables comments?

[argumentum]

It wouldn't have been that bad had they made one simple change .. from (20% of College Students) to (20% of <some big name school>) or (20% of a major public university).

It would have actually been more impressive if they weren't so vague .. now they are probably going to turn off a lot of good prospects.

I say this as a YC alum whose 1st job post was fairly ill-advised (though not dishonest). Believe me, it is quite tempting to play around, so I wouldn't be too hard especially on the smaller teams who haven't been recruiting/employing for too long.

They will learn, soon enough. It's also important to note that many teams consist of 17-22 year olds, and as this app is aimed at college students it seems like it could be one of those teams. So cut them some slack.

[jpadvo]

I figured they would learn by getting called out like this. And since the post was anonymous, it doesn't really hurt them anyway. Free learning experience.

[dylangs1030]

Perhaps, but part of the reason for making a post like this is to bring attention to the format. We can cut them some slack, but being 17-22 doesn't require linkbait job posts. Plus, it's not like it requires so much experience to understand why linkbait is not in your favor on Hacker News. Some of the linkbaitiest titles are the ones I see consistently reposted - it doesn't work and it's somewhat annoying.

A really good format would be, as another commenter said:

{YC Company} {Season Number} is looking for {Job Title}. Join us!

Bam. Doesn't that just look better? Sexier? More appealing and respectful? You don't have to be 25+ to get that, it just has to be introduced.

So, now that it's the top story on HN, and has been introduced, let's maybe try to codify it for future job postings?

[balsam]

well what if it's 20% of the National University of Singapore? That's not exactly a big name school in the Bay Area. (By now I have an idea which company this is)

[joeblau]

Thanks for addressing this, I was wondering what was going on with that other post. The content did seem intriguing, but also a little shady at the same time.

[balsam]

FWIW this shows what it takes to get to the front page. There are a lot of interesting links in "new" right now but only stuff with a bit of negative tension gets boosted to the front page (fear & conspiracies work!) Disclaimer: I provided the crucial vote that boosted this here very thread.

[AsymetricCom]

They couldn't be half as shady as Facebook even if they tried.

[lolwutf]

Hats off to that! Lots of the job postings on HN tend to make outlandish requests/offerings just because 'hey we got HN front page'. Some are downright shameful.

Also, in before the HN cabal muzzles this one.

[airnomad]

What is really dishonest is not having an option to downvote a job ad.

[p_campbell]

Looks like they've changed the title and apologized.

[jmgrosen]

The way I saw it was that they only operate at a few universities, and at the ones they do, they have 20% of the student body.

That being said, I agree it was disingenuous at the least and downright misleading at the worst.

[porterhaney]

That's a load off. I thought they were talking about Tumblr.

[csdreamer7]

Thankyou for posting this!

[thegeneralist]

seems like this worked, being at the top of HN and all...

[hydralist]

who cares honestly, everyone talks shit when they are recruiting. if an applicant can't figure that out, what gives?

[icecreampain]

Unfortunately, dishonesty sells. How did all the large megacorporations get to where they are now?

Not by being great programmers and free thinkers, but by being greedy businessmen and, later, buying tons of lobbyists.

This piece of shit company is ... well... just being a normal company.

[RyanZAG]

Dishonesty sells to 95% of the population, sure. That's the part of the population without critical thinking skills or the desire to fact check things they read. If you're selling a hairspray or something, being a bit dishonest is probably highly recommended.

The problem is these companies are trying to hire top notch talent - the 5% of the population that is least likely to be happy about dishonesty. Especially when it comes to a major decision like a new job. It's simply a mistake and the marketing is unneeded - if you're a YC company, the HN crowd has at least read your announcement in techcrunch and knows what you're trying to do.

[aaronbrethorst]

    Unfortunately, dishonesty sells. How did all the
    large megacorporations get to where they are now?

    Not by being great programmers and free thinkers,
    but by being greedy businessmen and, later, buying
    tons of lobbyists.

    This piece of shit company is ... well... just being
    a normal company.

Citation needed.