Y Combinator company “skip the interview” reaches top ten of r/recruitinghell
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Somebody job seeking after a 2 year long recovery from serious illness wouldn't have the connections to their old co-workers or bosses to crowd fund this, and wouldn't have the liquid cash flow to do it themselves.
It unbalances access to jobs by family wealth and creates yet another:tm: skip annoying thing if you are rich enough and/or have enough friends who are rich enough.
The return on investment aspect would just get gamed by companies being excessively selective on which candidates they allow to stay past 2 months.
And finally it extends the worse thing that exists in our society: "It's easier to make money if you have money."
This is what creates and enforces our class system, this is what makes it harder for historically disadvantaged groups to get a head, and such a product would just extend this, while benefiting the company.
The anger is justified, such systems can not be allowed to exist.
The reaction seems a bit overblown to me but maybe that's helpful in a way, since it might not have been as clear a signal otherwise (I mean to the startup, not YC).
It's a redundant array of inexpensive dangs.
Thanks for explaining, and thanks for working so hard to shepherd HN :)
Maybe. But hiring is hard and I doubt many decent companies would throw away a good SWE for less than $100k
Comments like this exemplify how entitled and outside reality the tech industry exists. Consider how much it costs to break into the medical or legal fields. It costs thousands of dollars to become a truck driver, though this is often fronted by a prospective employer. Same with becoming a police officer.
Consider instead screen acting where potential employment is often a pipe dream and costs thousands of dollars for a headshot and agent.
Seriously, what other professional career doesn't require some financial investment and personal connections to break in?
That financial barrier is a problem in those other fields too, and it does disproportionately affect people from disadvantaged backgrounds in those fields. Your argument is basically "well it's tough for the poors to become a doctor, so it would be okay if it's tough for them to become a software engineer too!"
EDIT: also, the costs incurred by becoming a doctor or nurse are debts to educational institutions and licensing boards which, ostensibly, are doing good by educating and regulating. This is a proposal for a financial barrier imposed by your employer, and paid for by your social or professional networks. It's not the same.
But, if you want to go down that tangent the tech industry would benefit from a set of standard minimum qualifications. Such would reduce employer liability and result in higher quality products pushed to market in shorter time at lower expense. That last sentence is technobabble really meaning employers could more easily discern candidate maturity and thus require a lower headcount for an equivalent task. The great discriminator there isn’t financial but the time and cognition required.
But, if a testing system were proposed that could demonstrably add value to the industry and wouldn't select for privilege, then I'd be for it. I'm just very skeptical, and I think lots of licensing programs are onerous and only exist to enrich the licensing organization without adding real value to society.
The big difference is that a licensing process is objective in a way an interview can never be. That alone adds value in a way you cannot possibly imagine until you have worked in a different industry.
There is no greater institutional barrier or discriminator than implicit bias.
And, a less worse problem: it's bad for the companies too
Also, if you make it two months, you double your money. It's not just a fee.
Just because someone in a wheelchair can’t drive a Ferrari doesn’t mean a Ferrari isn’t fun for huge base.
The expression “don’t let great be the enemy of good” comes to mind. Whether this is good or not is besides the point, that it’s not good for everyone and therefore not allowed to exist is the problem.
The problem of hiring is accurately signaling fitness for a job. Job hunters should have a variety of ways to do this - interviewing, credible vouches (like this company), and hopefully more in the future.
Founder should've stuck to his guns imo
On that link there's a screenshot of the homepage for the service. It looks about as awful as you'd expect. How this even got past the elevator pitch is entirely perplexing.
"How is this not a bribe?"
"Bribe is such a loaded word, these are references who put their money where their mouths are!"
Having said that, I once tried something vaguely analogous and it backfired. I had left my job and was freelancing, looking into businesses to start for myself, but nothing solid yet, and a fairly senior job opening came bouncing around that I thought would give me useful experience even though in the long term I was set on entrepreneurship. it was clear the company wasn't quite sure about me. So I essentially offered them a free trial - I'd come in and just start working for a few weeks for free for us all to see if it was a good fit, no commitments.
Ironically, I think that seemed so bizarre to them at a senior level (or they read it as signalling that I was desperate, which I wasn't) that they passed.
In the end it was all for the best - I started a business, etc.
The old-employer incentives there are the opposite of what is trying to be achieved by the reward aspect, and the existence of the reward is not sufficient to mend that, though.
That's basically what the 90 day probationary period is, where they can fire you for no reason. You might've done better if you offered to work for minimum wage for your first X weeks, with the expectation they'll bump you up to a normal salary before the period is over.
> Out of the people I had hired at my last startup:
> 12% of hires where exceptional hires (I would instantly hire again)
> 42% of Hire were good hires. (I wouldn’t hire again but they did a fine job)
> 29% of hires were bad hires. (They didn’t do a good job and were eventually let go)
> 17% of hires were very bad hires (They had a negative effect on the company culture and other staff)
These seem like extremely poor numbers. I haven't hired a ton of people but all of them have been excellent, though some that I was peripherally involved in hiring have been just good. I'm curious what other people feel that their ratio is.
If you have money to spend, or can wait to hire, you can beat the averages. I've hired a fair amount and done well too, but only by refusing to hire anyone if there are not suitable candidates that applied, which can burn a lot of political capital (your boss sees you've spend x time and money and had y applicant and z interviews and you refuse to hire anyone).
Good, cheap, available, pick two.
This alone makes no sense to me. It's a contradiction.
So I assume the website/author thinks they're a kind of mega-hustler 1000x developer or something.
[0] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/news/is-everyone-replaceable-a...
I would not, nor would I want coworkers asking me for money. Imagine if someone asks you and for whatever reason you don't want to bet on them - how will that conversation go? How will that affect your professional relationship with that person?
This is more or less a proposal for nepotism-based gambling.
I like being concise; maybe better not ask concise people for recommendation letters
You want to find those people who the boss/co-workers thought were so good and amazing that they would put down $50 for.
I have had colleagues refer people they privately referred to as a "codebase wrecking monkey" to avoid telling that person no. But they would be willing to put down $50 for far fewer people.
Is it uncomfortable for the people asked? Probably. But that seemed to be the point, as those uncomfortable people would give a positive reference for free otherwise.
But even then, how often does that happen? Maybe one job in 5? You are still ahead if you are referring great candidates consistently.
I would feel embarrassed for both of us if a coworker reached out asking for me to put down $50 so they can get a job.
Not to mention I would never do it (as either party) because it feels very slimy.
This is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever seen on this site. Reminds me that even 'elites' like YCombinator (or at least as I've built them in my mind) are just humans who do stupid things sometimes too though, so that's cool.
Recently a friend of mine dealt with a dev who was hired without their input who didn't know anything meaningful, couldn't communicate well, and was hired without a tech interview when the department was in transition between managers. They were extremely painful to work with, and didn't seem to absorb any information or do anything helpful, but other devs tried to give him the benefit of the doubt, thinking it might be a communication issue.
The guy's resume, though, showed job after job of only 3 to 4 month stints, and glowing recommendations from coworkers at each of those jobs. My bet is that each one didn't have the heart to say he wasn't a good developer, so they passed him on from place to place like the Christmas fruitcake no one wants and just mails to the next sucker. I'm guessing a lot of devs would've happily paid 50 bucks if it meant he went and worked somewhere else without anyone having to get him laid off.
It only expands income inequality and is frankly disgusting.
In fact, for anyone I would really recommend, and for a company like Google who I don’t think would be capricious, I’d do $100k. I want the money to be 3x though since this money will count as income and I can’t deduct the first bit, it’s just not worth it if I have to put in 1x and then get back 2x which is taxed at 48% meaning I start with x and end with 1.04x. That’s a 4% return? Not enough.
The problem is that the employer can’t afford my recommendation.
At $100k in, $300k out (which is $150k out, 50% gains) sure, I’ll play this game easy. But no less than that.
It’s still probably worth it though.
A professional world where this was a common practice would be an awful one for a lot of people. The intense reaction might be a bit of overkill, but it's worth sending a strong message that this is not okay.
It's betting that you would be good at a job.
If it turns out that you're good at the job, nobody loses any money (except the company, who has to pay a recruiting fee, but that's expected). If you're bad, well, hopefully that won't happen....
Granted I don't think it's a great idea for other reasons, but the nepotism angle just doesn't make sense in my opinion.
I guess you could argue that skilled people with the ability to afford payment have a higher chance of being hired, and that's probably not a great thing, but even then it's not like every company who uses this will be filled with incompetent people who paid for their jobs--that just makes absolutely no sense from the company's perspective.
> people with the ability to afford payment have a higher chance of being hired
That's the other very valid reason that this idea sucks. People from disadvantaged communities now not only have the existing hurdles to face in entering the tech world; now trust fund kids with rich friends can continually skip the line and buy the jobs that others are applying for. And a company is going to take the pay-to-play candidate, because it's easier than running an interview process.
I would say this is an accurate description of the current system. What do we always hear, that going to an Ivy League is all about the connections, not the education?
Also, at least Ivy League schools have financial aid programs to help gifted kids from disadvantaged backgrounds still be able to attend.
Is this sustainable, though? Why do you assume that there would be no system to detect people who abuse the system by continually churning companies? Can’t the same thing happen right now with people who have connections to headhunter/recruiting agencies?
Also, if the system has no abuse detection, many people who work in tech for more than a few years should be able to afford gaming a system like this — not just those from rich backgrounds. $10k is not too much money to find if you know you’re guaranteed a 2x return in 60 days.
> And a company is going to take the pay-to-play candidate, because it's easier than running an interview process.
If the pay-to-play system is really producing only “mediocre” hires who churn earlier than candidates hired through the normal interview process, why would a company prefer the pay-to-play process in the long run?
Again, not saying that the platform is good, but I just don’t think your arguments hold up.
Easily. Few people stay at a software engineering job for more than a year or two as it is. I went almost 4 years without staying at one job for more than a year, and not a single recruiter batted an eye the whole time. Hopping jobs with a network of friends buying each other's jobs for big returns would be trivial.
> Can’t the same thing happen right now with people who have connections to headhunter/recruiting agencies?
Yes. But right now it still requires social skills, conversations, and interviews. Skills that anyone can acquire with practice. Turning it into a pay-to-play system doesn't improve anything, it just makes it easier for people with disposable income to skip the line. Or it will make people harass their professional network for money to skip the line. How is that an improved system over just getting to know some recruiters?
> Also, if the system has no abuse detection, many people who work in tech for more than a few years should be able to afford gaming a system like this — not just those from rich backgrounds. $10k is not too much money to find if you know you’re guaranteed a 2x return in 60 days.
You're proving my point. The system as described is ripe for abuse, and what kind of abuse detection mechanism would catch things like this? They didn't describe one, and I can't picture one that isn't extremely invasive. Mild nepotism is already the de facto way that a lot of companies recruit people even though they're not supposed to - add a gambling mechanic into the mix and you can guarantee people will be trying to game it left and right. There's no way they'd be able to crack down on it at scale.
things can only catch on if it is truly beneficial in some way, and the people doing it is finding it useful to continue.
It could catch on because companies and bosses like it, but it could harm workers for all kinds of reasons. Thus, workers need to loudly voice their concerns, so that companies will be discouraged from adopting it.
My guess is that it comes from the fact that it's a YC Company.
The return on investment aspect could just get gamed by companies being excessively selective on which candidates they allow to stay past 2 months.
And finally it extends the worse thing that exists in our society: "It's easier to make money if you have money."
This is what creates and enforces our class system, this is what makes it harder for historically disadvantaged groups to get ahead, and such a product would just extend this.
Think about how it would work in practice. It's not going to always be a cool professional interaction: "Hey, I was wondering, could you give $50 to my crowdfund?" You: "Nah, sorry." Them: "Okay, thanks for your time."
It'll be more like "Contribute $50 to my crowdfund. Pleeaasseee I need this job. I'm having a tough time, I won't be able to make my rent if I don't get this job, and my wife's about to have our second child. Come on, man." It's really hard to refuse, but you'll also be resentful. You don't go around hitting up your former coworkers for money.
It turns a social relationship into an extractive one. Which gives people the heebie-jeebies. You're basically being told "Give me money, or I'll kill our friendship." It's approximately as appealing as someone who says "Give me money, or I'll kill your dog."
I certainly understand having a seething hatred for a company that makes money by encouraging my friends to act that way toward me.
Also, a lot of SWE's are introverts. I'd like to think I'm pretty good at what I do, but I don't know that I have contact information for 20 former coworkers, let alone be able to put together 20 people who know me well enough that I think they'd put $50 on me.
As to YC would have funded this: For founders and VC's, the line between social and business might be pretty blurry. It might be a cultural blind spot, if you're deep in the VC world, you're probably an extrovert with hundreds of business contacts, and you've maybe forgotten how taboo it is to pitch your acquaintances for money as a normal person.
It seems the Internet quickly gave the company a taste of the public's reaction when they started showing off their "brilliant" idea. And to their credit, they went offline more or less immediately.
Also, MLMs are actual scams, where in this case you'll actually get your money back if they're a good hire.
This idea has real flaws in how it's been implemented, like how the hard limit at which point you get the job (no questions asked?) encourages that begging behaviour to get over the limit, but if it were just another source of information among many used in hiring, like it is with actual referrals, then it wouldn't be so bad.
Is this a symptom of YC having such large batches now?
Let someone else fail upwards at another company for less than the price of the party you throw once you get rid of them!
CEO left feedback here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/q7mice/a_ne...
Old reheated idea.
Also, this seems like it'd be illegal many places due to laws against demanding payment for a job.
It’s hard to distinguish between radical ideas and truly stupid ideas.
There needs to be a better filter to get rid of bad ideas because some are horrible (ie, this one).
I think it’s funny that people assume that all radical ideas are worth trying and that change can only be good.
Nobody thinks that.
Also, it's disingenuous to say that all the responses are just performative words. Tons of people on Reddit and HN have thoroughly laid bare all the problems with this proposal. Just read through the threads.
Trying radical ideas does not equate turning off your critical thinking.
Also, if you are the one with radical idea, do not look for a group of people that will approve anything. It is pretty poor way to test your idea.
> Anyone who claims to definitively know that this idea would have problematic (...) results is kidding themselves.
Oh, let me think about it. Pay couple thousand to skip couple of hours of interview to get a job that pays many times more per month.
Definitely nobody will want to exploit that.
It feels as one of those things that will deffinitely work, but the current culture won't allow it. Similarly to how if someone today invented "firefighting" as a social good, people would be outraged of having to pay to extinguish somebody else's fire.
Firefighting: a public good, paid for with public tax dollars, so that you don't have to worry about paying out of pocket for fire defense. They just show up when you need them, it comes out of your taxes, done deal.
Skip the Interview: a private company which turns job openings into pay-to-play gambling and takes a cut. People with networks of friends and family that have disposable income (i.e. "rich kids") are disproportionately advantaged. People from poor backgrounds, whose friends and family can't afford to put up $50 to buy them a job, are disadvantaged. Networks of friends can easily game the system over the course of a few years and buy each other several good jobs. The existing systems of class and privilege are reinforced, and on and on.
The people who would be opposed to firefighters if they were proposed today are not the same people saying this is a stupid idea. People who would oppose firefighters now would be the financial hawk conservatives who think all public funding for anything is bad. The people saying this is a stupid idea fall into two camps; they either see how impractical, toxic, and easily gamed this system would be, or they recognize that it would entrench class and privilege even further and they don't want a new business to contribute to such a world.
/end rant
Also:
1) unless you think it will be very common that people with money will take up sponsoring minorities for jobs, the fact that you personally would do it doesn't counteract the disadvantage of minorities in general through this system, and
2) if you want to pay to help people from underrepresented groups get jobs, there are already plenty of ways to do so, from sponsoring education to hiring interview coaches, and more.
To your 1): I think it's at least plausible that this would become common; many crazier-sounding ideas have succeeded. There's a big disconnect between talent identification/development industries and hirers, and something like this could help to bridge that gap.
To your 2): Trust me, I have done all of that. It helps, but it is far from a panacea. That is the conventional shit that has resulted in the tech industry barely making a dent in its diversity numbers for well over a decade now. There are so many people for whom I would have so much rather just invested money in them getting a job immediately than spend yet another hour walking through their latest interview experience and explaining why something innocuous they said or did was probably incorrectly treated as a red flag by their interviewer.
It's not about whether ideas are good or bad (I think this idea is bad), there are now mental gymnastics about why it never even should have been considered in the first place - see the comments about how we need a filter to identify things that should never be tried. This is the same idea as people who think there are ideas that should never be questioned, or concepts we shouldn't be allowed to talk about.
(Also, as I reread many of the responses, there also seems to be a healthy dose of people just not having read and understood the concept)
From my point of view (someone who has had to interview and hire people for the last 10 years) the main idea doesn't sound completely broken. Here in HN we have discussed countless times how the interview process is broken, how it sucks for everyone (both interviewer and interviewee), etc. This person is trying a completely different angle, and that's good. I am happy to give it a chance.
The way I would implement it is more like this:
1. Hiring Company defines, they would spend $X for a Mid level FullStack dev.
2. Hiring company provides SkipTheInterview $X + fee.
3. SkipTheInterview opens the Position"bounty" .
4. If a candidate wants to be hired for the position, they apply and have to get enough _backers_ to get to the $X amount.
5. Once the candidate gets enough backer money, they get hired.
6. After a "trial" period (where the candidate is paid normally as he has bin hired), SkipTheInterview gives back the bounty money to the backers *doubled*, and only keeps the fee.> I've worked with and mentored a lot of minority candidates (who often have trouble with the cultural test that is getting and passing interviews)
Maybe have an open, empathetic mind for those people that are so upset? Or ask a minority friend of yours what they think?
From my personal XP: Many black and brown friends of mine think that entrepreneurship is a rich kid’s game because the common first step of raising a “friends and family round” is an absurd notion to them. Most of their friends and family barely have enough money to pay the bills, so the idea of raising $100k+ from them is silly. When I read the angry responses in this thread (and see a price tag like $10k) I think about those friends. I’m sure they’d laugh at the idea of asking friends/colleagues to help them raise $10k to “skip the interview” for similar reasons.
Empathy is hard, especially over the internet and across socioeconomic bubbles, but it’s essential when seeing outrage that you don’t understand.
Your explanation is a great example -- if you want to look at the idea exclusively in those terms, that sure sounds problematic. But do you really think that's the only way it could have played out? Keep in mind, we are living in a system that causes massive aggregate harm to underrepresented people on a daily basis. And I'm just referring to the tech industry and particularly its hiring practices, let alone society as a whole.
Killing a new idea just because you can conceive of scenarios where it might be harmful (though I would argue not even that much more harmful than the status quo in this case) is probably unwise in general, but is almost certainly so in a space where the status quo is already so fraught. I work in this space, we need more/better ideas (among many other things), and I think this idea actually had a plausible chance of putting a dent in some of the problems at the core of these systemic issues. Sure, it's a small chance, but to just throw it away? That bums me out.
Edit just to be clear: I have no idea who the people behind this site are and had never heard of it before day. I just work on some of the same problems and would love to see the system improve more quickly.
I’m truly sorry you feel that way. My intent was sincerely to provide another point of view.
The people crying about this "idea" being racist or "enabling racism" are wrong.
At the same time, you expect that this system will provide benefit to the underrepresented from the good hearts of their supposed rich benefactors (ie. you). To me, this comes off similar to expecting developing countries to rise out of poverty through donations from western billionaires. For every underrepresented person you know, there are a thousand others who don't have such a rich benefactor.
>Anyone who claims to definitively know that this idea would have problematic/racist results is kidding themselves.
This system exclusively favors wealthy connections. Which groups are least likely to have wealthy connections?
In my opinion, in your argument, you only consider your personal position and social bubble rather than society at large. It comes off similar to a president advocating for dictatorship to do more good.
I genuinely don't mean this as a personal attack; I just find your position baffling.
CEO's response is above
---
I can see one exceptionally limited use case for this:
Recruiting influencers into related (influence-y) roles.
Example: eSports player Taylor Jackson wants sponsorship with league Team Plasma. Team Plasma's application/recruiting process entails an invite-only process where players are contracted based on metrics derived from common streaming platforms like stream size, stream demographics, gameplay, an arbitrary "hype" measurement, etc., but Team Plasma decides to offer a secondary route for players capable of crowdfunding a certain total. Taylor fulfills the crowdfunding goal due to their reach on platforms not monitored by Team Plasma (e.g clubhouse for the sake of this contrived example).
Another example could include influencers for promotional gigs, like those gigs where someone tends to a paradise island for a year.
---
I don't foresee this model scaling all that well without shoehorning it into places where it doesn't belong, and the communication of the model (and the model itself) very deservedly got incinerated.
1) Professional networks operate on the basis of reputation and goodwill. This company seeks to make them into exploitative MLM-style cash grabs.
2) Well-connected people with rich friends already get opportunities disproportionately. This company would exacerbate that social problem.
Wouldn't that be an interview of sorts?
Likely some of the same HN crowd who hang out in the same bubble with the founders and VCs who backed this.
I know what site I'm on and who funded this.
I guess the only thing I'd ask is step out of this delusional bubble where the money flows like water and you can toss your coin in all these stupid wishing wells and wait for the one that works.
it extends the worse thing that exists in our society: "It's easier to make money if you have money."
This is what creates and enforces our class system, this is what makes it harder for historically disadvantaged groups to get ahead, and such a product would just extend this.
Pretty solid take on all of this: https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1445902596653260800
There used to be a time when companies saw employees as long-term assets, to be invested in, educated and trained, given space to grow and learn. Here, they're seen as such liabilities that they need to mitigate the financial risk a company could possibly take, but still ultimately be as disposable as ever.
2) This reinforces the already prevalent social phenomenon in which well-connected people with rich friends get all the opportunities.
How do you make money?
We take a 30% fee of the amount paid out to either your backers or the company.
No wonder they got funded...
Compare this to services that allow you to pay for practice interviews.
50$ for a garenteed tech interview sounds cheap.
Then for YC to back this and basically give their stamp of validation that it's worth continuing? THIS is what we're pouring money and resources into?
and reputation is much stronger signal than leetcode hoops
As someone who thinks that affordable housing is a human right, I wouldn't describe Airbnb as "great in practice".
carpool, but let's call it ride share, because you go there anyway. 5 seconds later it's a billion dollar machine fighting labor laws. while the other one was supposed to be a bit better couch surfing, while you are on a longer vacation, you let someone to vacation at your place, brilliant. 5 minu5 later cities' housing markets are in flames due to tourists due to the induced demand of cheap apartments.
what the fuck.
yeah, hotels and taxi services were awful (both due to fucking NIMBYism of ossified cities that are unable to zone for high density and build transit networks), but the solution should have been something human centered, not startupization of that awfulness and appification of selfishness.
(yes, I used both services.)
Much like I'll never be able to afford a house because of people who think that housing is an investment and not somewhere to live.
Also, there's already a solution for reputation - the standard references system that already exists. This soon-to-be-former CEO is claiming that references are "useless," and then implies that someone being able to buy themselves a job by harassing their former coworkers for money is a better system. It's a ridiculous premise and would create incredibly toxic culture in professional networks.
Dunno what their validation process is, but every so often it reveals some glaring lapses.
As a former colleague I would consider staking somebody.
As a hiring manager, I would not do this. It’s just too weird. Hiring is hard enough.
It is weird now, but my parents also think it is weird to interview 8 times for one job.
Otherwise you look like a scam.
The kid from a rich family will have no problem getting his parents, and family friends to slap $50 down. The kid who grew up in public housing? Not gonna happen.
I want to like the idea. Having a better way to connect likely-qualified candidates and jobs is a good thing. But a set amount of money really isn't a good guarantee of anything.
I feel like many people have judged without really understanding the details.
And if you want to buy an internship, you can just plop your kid at a startup for free. Unpaid internships are how you buy experience already.
The return on investment aspect could just get gamed by companies being excessively selective on which candidates they allow to stay past 2 months.
And finally it extends the worse thing that exists in our society: "It's easier to make money if you have money."
This is what creates and enforces our class system, this is what makes it harder for historically disadvantaged groups to get ahead, and such a product would just extend this.
Edit: s/be/me
This might not seem quite as dystopian from the lens of just high paying silicon valley software jobs for in demand people. But imagine this system applied everywhere - it's horrendous.
E.g. in the US this is usually how we hire the President. The best fundraisers climb the party ranks and get the job. 98% of hired Presidents have been well-connected, rich, white men.
It incentivizes abusive companies to fire people quickly after firing - most companies do it, but some do; and the proposed system would increase that.
It incentivizes behind-the-back deals with ex-coworkers, stressing ethics and relationships.
It incentivizes inequality - it gives an advantage to people with a wealthy "support network" and creates a barrier to people who don't have one, if a company prefers to do hiring this way.
In developing countries, paying to have access to a job is common[0]. Highly sought after jobs for their social reputation (like airline attendent) often require applicants to pay a fee for the opportunity.
You also see this in roles that accept bribes. When police collect cash bribes, their bosses need to see some of that money. One way they do is by requiring people to pay upfront a fee to get access to the role of bribe accepter.
[0] - https://e.vnexpress.net/projects/in-vietnam-a-delicate-dance...
With that kind of scheme they’d ascend to the crypto parallel universe where they can raise millions and it doesn’t matter if nobody ever uses their platform for its intended purpose.
On top of this, the criticism from reddit is mostly unfounded and suggests they didn't even bother to read the company's landing page. Multiple redditors say things like "I'd never pay fifty dollars to refer a colleague. What's in it for me?" The landing page clearly states you double your money if they get hired.
Another complaint is that it's racist because black people have black friends and apparently black people can't afford to refer their friends. This complaint relies on a racist argument "black people in general have less money, therefore the black software engineers doing the referrals will have less money." I don't think that's how it works. In the company's model you'd need referrals not from your random friends and acquaintances, but from coworkers who knew you and would be willing to be on you. Presumably your coworkers can come up with fifty dollars.
I think this is a poor idea because it would be awkward to bet on people like this. I'd have to tell my colleagues I didn't think they were good enough to bet on, or bet the minimum, or would I get mad at them if they blew an interview? It's not a good system, but the idea that referrals are broken because they cost nothing to give seems right and it's worthwhile to try and fix important things that are broken.
The return on investment aspect could just get gamed by companies being excessively selective on which candidates they allow to stay past 2 months.
And finally it extends the worse thing that exists in our society: "It's easier to make money if you have money."
This is what creates and enforces our class system, this is what makes it harder for historically disadvantaged groups to get a head, and such a product would just extend this, while benefiting the company.
The anger is justified, such systems can not be allowed to exist.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disp...
This reminds me of when people use the murder of Emmett Till to argue how evil white people are. He was furtively killed in 1955 - 66 years ago.
When the best latest examples are this old it kind of cuts against the whole accusation. It's like saying Joe is such a jerk, look, he kicked a dog 50 years ago.
The rest of your post doesn't merit a response as it has nothing to do with what I wrote.
Lots of examples:
-Vietnamese boat people arrived in the mid-70's with nothing. They quickly became successful and still are.
-Jews lost so much in WW2, including half their families. They quickly became successful after the war and still are. They didn't sit around in ghettos forever.
-Nigerian immigrants to America often come with little wealth and yet do better than American whites economically.
-Iranian immigrants arrived after the 1979 revolution with nothing. Now they do very well - better than average whites.
If "the long now" was real, none of these would be possible and all immigrant groups who arrived poor in the last 50 years would still be poor.
This is actually a really important thing to learn because it's critical in your mental model of the world. You think some event 50+ years ago will keep families in poverty for literal multiple generations - it's not true at all. Families rise and fall much much quicker than this. If someone is in poverty that long (in the context of a somewhat free society) it is because of internal issues, not circumstances.
Society at large treats slave-descended blacks no worse than African-immigrant blacks (or other nonwhite immigrants); the difference in outcomes comes from their own internal issues. The sooner we can acknowledge the actual source the problem the sooner we can make progress on solving it.
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/09/10/why-bay-area-neighborho...
Imagine you and your coworkers are planning to go out to eat for lunch. One coworker says that you should go to a steakhouse. You say "No, coworker X probably won't be able to afford that because he's black. We should go somewhere cheaper instead." Is that racist? I think so, and I think it's the same logic being used here.
It's not a racist argument, it's factually true.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=average...
https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disp...
are you talking about this "skip the interview" thing? If so, what?
That should be a warning sign to you that this is a scam.
It's nastier than that. It'd be one thing if it was just a handful of references.
There's a link in the Reddit post to a Twitter thread where someone was posting listings. The lowest one from that sample was $3000. If you're trying to get just the $50 minimum out of former colleagues, then you'd need to have 60 of those.
I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't have 60 former colleagues that I know who would be willing to bet $50 that a company hiring this way isn't a den of vipers that will cut me before the payout.
I think the core concept of figuring out a way to get skin in the game for referrals makes sense though. I also don't think the people behind the company should be derided for trying this. And I think it's not racist.
> This is the CEO. We actually launched just to get feedback and clearly the feedback was not positive, so we are definitely going to talk to a lot more people before moving forward. We really were not aiming for something discriminatory and actually had long discussions about it with quite a few people, but we didn't get close to the right outcome, so we will talk to a lot more people before moving ahead.
> Thanks for the feedback.
He had ~-1000 points when I checked (I dont know how voting on reddit works)
I'd like to think there would be some respect for the attempt, apparent failure, and explanation - this is exactly what should be happening as companies take risks and try to build something valuable.
Reverting to feigned indignation that someone could even propose a new way of hiring is not helpful.
Like i said in my other post, I think it's a bad idea too. That's no reason to act like they're committing a major transgression.