Hacker News Reader

Comment by tptacek | Hacker News Reader

If HN allowed comments on YC job posts, people would use the comments to post job ads for their own companies ("we're doing something similar, &c &c, contact us at &c &c"). This would significantly dilute the value of the YC job ads.

The inevitable discussion about how we could just have an etiquette of not doing that, or a guideline for not doing that, or a new kind of flag button for that, or or or, will just serve to illustrate how much simpler a solution just not allowing comments on those posts is.

These posts aren't hurting you. My bet is most HN people actully think they're a benefit of HN --- early access to YC jobs! This is a fake controversy. Can we think about tolerating the YC job ads in terms of "least we can do for running HN"?

View on HN

I think they are a benefit to HN, and I think that allowing comments would be even more beneficial as I stated in my comment below. You may be right, but the people wanting comments may also be right but we'll never know unless the experiment is actually run and I thought a large part of HN was experimentation.

This most recent case suggests another problem with adding comments to jobs, at least for startups that hadn't launched yet: a few jerks would make a game of trying to out them. Which would mean such startups couldn't be as specific in job posts, lest they give away something that identified them.

I don't think whether comments are allowed will make a difference when there is suitable mystery/curiosity. The recent case also illustrates this: other posts in this forum or others will be spawned to try to reason an identity out.

A posting anywhere with enough specific info to prompt applicant interest will prompt other observers to fill in the details. It's true for Google, Apple, Facebook etc. – so it will be true for self-identified YC startups who tout their impressive metrics as well.

I don't think it's reasonable to conclude that people who endeavor to figure out and post the identities of startups who post jobs are jerks. You make a fair point about why they shouldn't do it, and I think you're right to discourage it. Curiosity, however seems like a more probable motivation than malice.

I posted the thread on asking what the startup was and I certainly didn't mean to be a jerk towards the new company. I was mostly curious because they got so much traction so fast and was willing to learn on how they achieved it. I apologize pg and YC W11 startup.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com