
Tell HN: The next “Who Is Hiring” thread will be on Monday - dang
By popular demand, Who Is Hiring is moving to the first
weekday of each month. The next thread will be on Monday, August 3
at 11 AM EST.<p>Since the Internet abhors a vacuum, this weekend is at risk for an ersatz
who-is-hiring thread stampede. Would you all please flag these? They&#x27;re
unfair to the users who get trapped in them, and figuring out who
eventually found their way to the official thread vs. whose jobs need
to be moved there is a royal pain.<p>Also, we&#x27;ve updated the FAQ to clarify that no one is allowed to submit job ads
as stories to HN. That includes YC startups, since the job ads we let them
post are not stories: they don&#x27;t have points or comments, and come in through
a different mechanism. So if you see a job ad in the form of a story, on
&#x2F;newest or elsewhere, please flag it. Edit: this isn&#x27;t a rule change—we just noticed that not everyone knows what the rule is.
======
PieSquared
To clarify: are interesting blog posts that double as job ads still allowed?
It's fairly common for companies to post good technical blog posts that are
also meant as a "look at this fascinating stuff we're doing – you could be
doing it too!"

~~~
dang
Yes, those have always been ok. If a story is a good HN post in its own right,
there's no problem. Sometimes people push the limit in weird ways and we have
to decide which side of the line a post is on, but that's rare.

------
evan_
I posted an ad last month and got spam saying "I see you're hiring for x, but
instead you could use our product and you wouldn't need a person to do x".

So if you are going to post an ad you should be aware that there ARE people
harvesting them for spam.

~~~
jasim
There is a thin line between cold emails and spam. What you described looks
like a marketing email sent by a human, albeit cold.

~~~
hunvreus
I've received similar emails, some of which showed obvious signs of automation
(wrong name or remaining template variables).

Just flag them as SPAM.

------
mattfrommars
I hope there are vacancies for someone who is learning Python and wants a job
which deals with Python.

------
Randgalt
FYI - it would be so so helpful if the postings mentioned whether or not they
support remote workers.

~~~
dang
Most do, and there are instructions at the top of each thread about it.

~~~
Randgalt
Cool - thanks

------
bliti
Thanks for the heads up, dang.

------
aurelianito
If find it unfair that you put YC startups job ads between the stories, but do
not allow the rest to do the same. Shame on you!

~~~
spicyj
It's supposed to be unfair. This site exists in part to promote YC (and always
has) and the staff can do whatever they want with it.

~~~
andrewljohnson
That's a simplistic view.

This site serves the startup community, and it's warped by the wants/needs of
YC because of its genesis.

Bringing in moderators like dang has helped a lot - the site definitely got
too cultish around pg and YC, and it seems like things have improved since
then, both content and attitudes of people on the site. There seems to be more
of a chinese wall between decision making for YC and HN now.

I would hope/think over time that the remaining unfairness will drift away,
like the fact that YC founders see each other highlighted, so they can form a
casual voting rings around YC stories (and the job ads I agree are unfair and
bad for the community too). It's not even healthy for HN/YC long term - the
community will go elsewhere if the values of the site don't lead to good
content/community.

~~~
garry
This comment is unfair to PG. There's no way for you to know this, but behind
the scenes PG has always been protective of Hacker News and has been aware
that HN exists outside of YC and has utility for the community at large.

YC founders are actually subject to voting rings as well, and often get
dinged.

I get that there is a knee-jerk anti-authoritarian kind of sentiment here, but
in this case, the tone and attitude is undeserved.

~~~
andrewljohnson
1) I wish you'd dispute the meat of what I said:

* That YC founders can see each other differently on the site (colored names).

* This naturally leads to more upvotes for YC stories.

* These upvotes would be unlikely to trigger voting rings.

* This provides a non-transparent (unfair?) advantage for YC startups, and a false signal about the interest in these startups overall for people unware.

2) The job listings thing I have less to harp on, but I still find it a little
weird that there is a hugely popular job board reserved for a few hundred
companies.

3) The comment wasn't intended as an attack on pg, and I understand the YC is
from the top down well-meaning and full of good people. But the site is
better, more transparent, and more fair under the new management, at least it
seems that way to me.

I imagine the cultishness is recognized and unwanted... hence pg not being on
the leaderboard:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders](https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders)
(and totally withdrawing from the site overall)

------
sillygeese
> _Also, we 've updated the FAQ to clarify that no one is allowed to submit
> job ads as stories to HN. That includes YC startups, since the job ads we
> let them post are not stories_

That's right. The job ads YC companies post here are.. _job ads_. The job ads
any other companies would post here "as stories" would be job ads too! Go
figure.

~~~
detaro
"stories" as in "a normal submission, with votes that can keep it on the front
page and comments" vs the YC job ads that only have a link.

~~~
sillygeese
Yes, but the point is that only YC companies get to advertise jobs here.

They wanted to remind us that other companies can't advertise here, but also
felt obligated to pretend that YC companies don't get any special treatment
because they can't post job ads _" as stories"_ either.

But in reality, rules concerning job ads are about job ads, not what
constitutes a "story submission". Fair rules don't have tailor-made loop-holes
for favoured companies either.

Note that I'm not actually opposed to YC posting job ads for YC companies
here. It's their forum. I _am_ opposed to dishonesty though, and that's why I
commented.

~~~
dang
Posting this sort of thing is like releasing web software. As soon as you do
it, you start seeing the bugs you missed. Writing it late at night makes it
worse. Oh well, at least my copy-paste code (s/whoishiring/dangispostponing/)
to auto-submit at 8 AM didn't fail. I had visions of it making a new post (by
me!) every 2 minutes until I woke up.

Let me try again. There are three rules.

    
    
      1. Anyone can post job ads to Who Is Hiring threads.
    
      2. Only YC startups can post job ads to the front page.
    
      3. No one can post job ads via /submit.
    

Obviously Rule #2 doesn't apply equally to everyone. But Rule #3 does apply to
everyone. That was my point.

Why did I include that? Because we've noticed an uptick in YC startups
mistakenly posting job ads via /submit instead of through the separate
mechanism of #2. I wanted to let everyone know that these should be flagged
just the same as any errant job ad. Otherwise users might see them and think,
"well, YC startups are allowed to," when in fact they're not allowed to do it
that way. The story stream (i.e. /newest) should be kept free of job ads by
anyone.

I used the word "story" in the technical sense of what kind of post gets
created when you post it via /submit. Job ads posted under #1 are comments;
under #2 they're jobs; under #3 they're stories (and shouldn't exist). These
are disjoint types.

I have to run out for a few hours now. I'll come back for the next round of
bug fixes later.

~~~
sillygeese
Thanks for the civil response. I'll keep this brief, because we shouldn't keep
this up anyway.

    
    
        no one is allowed to submit job ads as stories to HN
        --> Alright, a general rule. 
         
        That includes YC startups
        --> The general rule applies to YC companies too.
            That's fair.
    
        since the job ads we let them post are not stories
        --> .. But the only reason it applies is because
            YC job ads circumvent the submission mechanism
            that can't be used for submitting job ads.
    
    

Of course you want _only_ YC companies' job ads on the front page, and that's
fine. It's your forum.

I have a problem with the wording because it's basically all about pretending
that YC companies don't get any special treatment, based on the fact that
they're not actually breaking the rules that apply to all companies.

But the only reason they're not breaking the rules, is that they get to
circumvent them. That's special treatment right there.

Pfft. This took way longer than it should have. I'll just move on now.

~~~
dang
> I have a problem with the wording because it's basically all about
> pretending that YC companies don't get any special treatment

This is false. No one is "pretending" anything of the sort, not now and not
earlier. That ought to be clear from my second post, if not the first.

If we wanted to pretend something, we'd hardly specify its exact opposite in
the FAQ.

~~~
sillygeese
As I said, I'm moving on now :)

