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

350 pointsjpadvo12y ago68 comments

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.

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

68 comments

pearjuice12y ago

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.

dylangs103012y ago

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.

minimaxir12y ago

There's a popular growth hacking strategy which I like to call the "what the hell" strategy: The content lead-in is deliberately vague but still gives you an idea of what it's about and it makes the reader go "what the hell?" and check it out of morbid curiosity. It's the inverse of link-baiting.

biot12y ago

What about this objection?

"We A/B tested the copy and we got far better results with custom, quirky copy than we did with a standard format. Why should we purposely use a version that people find boring and has been proven to be less effective? If you don't like our job postings, then the job isn't for you anyways."