

Ask HN: Why are there two Job Ads at the top? - tomp

I&#x27;ve noticed earlier today that a Job Ad posted on HN front-page started higher than usual and moved down much more slowly. Now, it&#x27;s back at the top, along with another Job Ad. Is this the new normal or just a result of live development?<p>Also, I&#x27;d like to remind all the startups posting Job Ads to HN that this is an international website and that not all its visitors live in &lt;your city&gt; or come from &lt;your country&gt;. Quite often I read Job Ads that don&#x27;t mention the location at all. For example, while the boostedboards.com Job Ad currently on the front-page prominently displays the location above the job description, the information is absent in the polleverywhere.com description and only visible in the sidebar below the link to the same Job Ad.
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dang
It's a bug. We'll fix it.

Edit: Fixed. Sorry! This was a side-effect of a change I made foolishly late
last night. I forgot that jobs aren't ranked the way stories are, so the code
that normally pushes them down was temporarily disabled. There wasn't any
(intended) change to how job posts work.

------
minimaxir
It should be noted that HN's job ranking typically algorithm works by starting
the job ad at #4, and using linear decay at about -1 rank every 15 minutes to
have the job ad gradually fall off the front page (can't find the source
unfortunately; it was said months ago)

The fact that 1) the ads appear at #1/#2 and 2) the ads are not falling down
the front-page rankings leads me to believe that the issue is a bug in HN and
not an intentional implementation.

EDIT: As of now, the two job ads have disappeared from the top of HN, which
gives an indication that it was a bug. Software QA skills at work! :)

~~~
danso
Or maybe _part_ of it is an intentional implementation? If HN is interested in
monetization (or at least, boosting YC-affiliated companies), maybe the change
is to allow job ads at the top position...and this change in code broke the
linear decay model.

OT: I don't see why job ads _shouldn 't_ be at the top...in fact, I'd almost
prefer that, in the way that Reddit anchors ads to the top...so that user who
don't care can quickly get used to the top item being a job ad...as opposed to
having to filter out job ad vs. posting in the rest of the list.

OTOH, that would make it difficult to figure out how to let job ads slide off
of the page via linear decay, if the policy was to affix job ads at the top
and show them nowhere else (aside from the jobs link).

~~~
ampersandy
Personally, I'm totally ok with more prominent job postings from affiliated
startups. As long as there aren't, say, more than 3 posts at a time I'm fine
with them sitting at the top of the front page.

------
dreamweapon
If they're going to blast these ads into the backs of our eyeballs, we should
at least get a chance to discuss back at them. For example, about the fact
that one of them presents the following as a "perk":

 _1.1 mile [sic] from Mt. View Caltrain_

Which makes for like, what, a 90-minute commute[1] from your $3300 crashpad in
the Mission? On good days? That's some life they're trying to dangle in front
of us.

[1] Door-to-door, not counting time spent picking up your $6 artisan latte
and/or dropping off your fancy dog at the dog cleaning shop.

~~~
jrockway
Native speakers of English will say "one point one mile from XXX", so I'm not
sure a [sic] is warranted there. It's weird and inconsistent, but welcome to
English.

You can Caltrain from Santa Clara or something and ride your bike the
remaining 1.1 mile if you feel like it. Doesn't sound too terrible, as bay
area commutes go.

(You know the world is fucked up when an apartment in Manhattan is cheaper
than an apartment in Mountain View though! Though Mountain View does have
nicer weather. And mountains to view, if you have a telescope.)

~~~
jarek
Ah, Santa Clara: all the affordability of Bay Area and all the excitement of a
suburban business park

~~~
jrockway
There's also some big venue built entirely from denim, I heard.

------
pavlov
Job ads that don't mention the location are a pet peeve of mine too.

It's not uncommon to see ads where you have to infer it from the description
of perks: "We offer the unique chance to sit in an amazing chair in our hip
shared office in the fashionable dungeons below Moscone Center".

~~~
zhte415
A peeve, but also a positive: A job ad which does not thoroughly think out the
initial questions a potential applicant may have is cut in half (arbitrary) by
any potential applicant. Likewise a multitude of other simple factors.

Good job descriptions are... descriptive, and one that isn't is one easily
dismissed.

Take away: If it if full of fuzz, avoid it, or ask huge amounts of questions.

------
danielweber
_Quite often I read Job Ads that don 't mention the location at all_

Please, please, please, please, please, a million times, please, _tell us the
location of the job_.

Not everyone lives in SF or wants to move there. Maybe some people think that
saying "YC14" ought to tell us all the location, but it doesn't.

Or make it explicit policy that YC jobs are always in SF unless said
otherwise, so those of us who live someplace else can just categorically
ignore them.

------
DanBC
> Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us
> questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If
> you want to say something to us, please send it to hn@ycombinator.com.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
zo1
How does this submission/question not fit the description of the news
guidelines as you posted:

 _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity. _

And seeing as it's gotten 86 points, I'd say there are at least _some_ people
that find it interesting.

~~~
DanBC
> How does this submission/question not fit the description of the news
> guidelines as you posted:

Because the answer is obviously along the lines of "they were tweaking
something and they broke something but now it's fixed".

~~~
zo1
Sure, perhaps to you, or people that have been here longer. However, I had
absolutely no idea. I didn't even know that HN was taking paid advertisements
for job postings, and putting them "somewhere" on the top.

~~~
DanBC
These are not paid advertisements. These are ads for YC companies.

Perhaps the small mention of job advert posts in the faq should be expanded?
It's not particularly clar at the moment.

~~~
dang
> Perhaps the small mention of job advert posts in the faq should be expanded?

Sure, we'll do that.

Edit: We did that.

------
unreal37
Y-Combinator companies have always had the ability to post jobs to Hacker
News. 2 side-by-side may be rare but not unheard of.

~~~
minimaxir
The job ads have a linear decay applied to them (I think it's -1 rank every 15
minutes) to keep things fair. The fact that the two ads have held for #1 and
#2 spots for hours is very unusual.

------
ojbyrne
Hacker News is run by YCombinator (you notice there are no ads in general -
i.e. no obvious monetization?). YC companies get to run job listings. The fact
that are 2 near the top is probably due to yesterday's Demo Day.

~~~
capex
The point is their unusual ranking at the top, as users can't vote on these
links.

