Ask HN: Why is Optomizely on the frontpage with no voting and no discussion? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why is Optomizely on the frontpage with no voting and no discussion?

12 pointsbumped12 comments

Seriously, why?

YC job post, they fixed the title to reflect this better

Yeah, because it smacks of political nonsense. HN shouldn't (in my view) be used as a political campaign machine. Politics shouldn't be on HN unless it directly relevant to tech or startups, etc.

"Obama uses Optimizely. Help him get re-elected by joining Optimizely". It doesn't look very clear to me that this is a YC-sponsored link.

1) Optimizely is a YC-funded company

2) Has no voting / commenting / flagging so it's a jobs post

3) Has no submitter so it's definitely a jobs post

I don't agree with the wording either. But I guess it's supposed to purposefully provoke. I wouldn't be surprised if they're running an A/B campaign on the page linked right now, or will be later on with a different jobs post or something. If so, kudos to them and smart work. I don't give much a damn about 'helping him get re-elected' however.

I follow, but how can one tell from looking? There is a convenient "[pdf]" tag when a link is a PDF, but no indicator besides missing controls that there is some special arrangement for job postings. I had to check the web to find out that Optimizely is YC-funded, and I had no idea YC jobs had special promotion on HN until I found this post. It's a slightly shady thing to do without any obvious indicator of what's going on.

Check the jobs link at the top and also notice that you can't vote for it / no arrow; therefore it's a jobs posting, which are exclusive to YC companies.

I think it's a very dumb way to advertise. No matter what side of the aisle they are on politically, they alienate a considerable percentage of potential employees/customers with that strategy.

I'm a conservative and I was only offended by the barely descriptive landing page.

Yuck, didn't see it until now, but as a customer, it's enough to make me cancel.

Really?

Yes, because I'm not an Obama fan, and the last thing I want to do is help him get elected. It's not that I want to go out of my way to cause trouble, but I do have my preferences.

It just doesn't feel right to me, and I can easily find a replacement.

Same here. Obama I particularly don't like. But even if they backed a candidate that I liked it would still give me a feeling that it's not a professional company.

If I absolutely needed it then, well, a need is a need, it has to be met. But when you're not sure if you need something small things like that get important and that is going to be most of their customers probably.

Each to his own. I don't like businesses that can be easily associated with a certain personality, views etc. (like Apple).

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