

Show HN: Cilantro - Chat 1:1 with employees at companies you'd like to work at - rtao
http://trycilantro.com

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nmullaney
It's unclear from the post whether or not it's anonymous. I'd be more
comfortable asking (and answering!) if I knew it was anon. Otherwise, it might
be awkward, especially at a smaller company.

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levlandau
one of devs here...it's totally anonymous there's no login anywhere. Thanks
for the feedback! please try it out and let us know :)

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rabino
Any plan to prevent trolling? Honest question... curious about how you plan to
catch me giving crazy answers about a company I don't like.

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ycskyspeak
This is an excellent idea. Kudos! Would love to see this grow and evolve as a
primary way for prospective employees to do their due diligence. Quick
Question - How do you guys ensure that the employees are actually employees at
Zynga etc. once it expands beyond friends and family?

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guyht
I also think this is a fantastic idea but further to your comment, its also
impossible to determine if you are talking to an employee in a position you
may apply for, or someone on the HR department who is trying to attract talent
and so may give you a biased view.

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rtao
Thanks! We definitely want to be able to have more relevant matches in the
future as we scale and grow.

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jpmc
I wouldn't hotlink the logos.

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chasing
Yeah, that's a pretty rude move...

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rtao
hi josh! ah yes my bad :( will update soon. trying to scramble and upgrade a
lot stuff since we hit firebase and server limits.

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rtao
no longer hotlink'd!

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rogerdickey
this is crazy, i'm getting pinged every 5 seconds as a Zynga employee :)

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umsm
So how does this work? How do I know the people you're chatting with are
actual employees of the respective company?

Details are very sparse on the site.

~~~
rtao
We have past/current employees who have agreed to help out on the site for
now. We imagine that we will expose some cred/job status later to indicate
what type of background they have. But the anonymous aspect is something we'd
like to keep since people tend to be more honest. Any feedback about that
would be great!

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com2kid
How do employees sign up? Is that part still not open?

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rtao
You can sign up by clicking the blue button at the top of landing page that
says 'I want to share my experiences'. Sorry we don't call that out more!

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com2kid
Ah ok I was confused, it says "name of your startup" and then you have a lot
of big name companies down below. Are employees of large companies also
welcome?

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dnautics
a very unfortunate name. There's a long un-known, part of the population that
very likely has a genetic aversion to the stuff. It's a really strong
aversion. And it may be up to 5% of the population, if you believe 23andMe.

[http://ihatecilantro.com/](http://ihatecilantro.com/)

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Hovertruck
No offense but I don't see how that matters at all in this context.

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dnautics
because if someone said, hey go to this site "trycilantro" to help find jobs -
I would immediately have an aversion to it and the likelihood of me going
there would be lower. I would also have an aversion to try helping out on that
site.

You've lost ~10% of your client base right there.

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jacalata
Wow, that increased from 5% to 10% in half an hour! Or are you suggesting
either that cilantro aversion is higher among tech workers, or that people who
don't dislike cilantro will also be put off by the name?

I think if Wii and iPad can get past those names then this'll be fine.

~~~
dnautics
5% on one side, 5% on the other side (presumably independent varibables, but
minus a little bit to account for overlap hence ~10% not 10%). "client base"
was the wrong turn of phrase, should have said "traffic potential". I don't
really know what I'm talking about, so I could have done the math wrong.

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jypepin
I LOVE the idea! How does the request function work? Can I put multiple
company names separated by comma, or should I put one request per company I'm
interested in chatting with?

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levlandau
hey @jypepin you can put companies separated by commas! we'll handle parsing
that :) sorry for being unclear.

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rtao
Sorry guys server just crashed! we're adding more dynos now.

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rogerdickey
awesome!

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holychiz
What do you need to implement a website background like that? I want to work
something like it for my website, minus the hairy arms :).

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rtao
[http://dfcb.github.io/BigVideo.js/](http://dfcb.github.io/BigVideo.js/) is
great! That is what we are using with a few modifications :)

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holychiz
thanks, I'll give it a spin.

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fuqua
It's blocked by my work firewall. Oh well!

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tellify
this is awesome guys!

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rtao
thanks! please let me know if there's any general feedback as well.

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fakename
that arm hair

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yan
And now, I can't look past it.

