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Comment by ryankicks | Hacker News Reader

Hi Grustaf,

Ryan here at YC. I help build YC’s workatastartup.com, and also work with companies to help them find great people for their teams. Part of that includes teaching them to hire well -- communicating clear expectations, having fair/reasonable questions, paying for the interviewee's time, and hiring when they’re in a good position to do so.

What you experienced sounds incredibly frustrating. Sorry that you went through that. I don’t know the details on the company side, and the market is obviously pretty bad. But that still shouldn’t be a catch-all excuse for you having a bad experience.

If you’re open to it, would love to connect live and learn more about what happened. And I’m also happy to make intros to founders/companies that might be a better fit -- especially ones that are in a strong economic position to do so.

My email is ryan AT ycombinator.com if you’d like to connect. Hope to hear from you, and help if I can.

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Thanks for your reply, I just emailed you!

I got a chance to connect with OP -- thank you again for your thoughtfulness and balance.

While I (and YC) am trying to help founders create postive interview experiences for candidates, there's clearly more work to be done. As I mentioned previously, I give hiring/interview training for our founders. From our conversation (and this broader thread), I need to reiterate/add points to my training around:

- More education to founders around who should/shouldn't be hiring. This market is (and will continue to be) tricky to navigate, but that's not an excuse for rescinding an offer. (We actually do a lot of training -- and our partners repeatedly tell our founders not to overhire, but we can do more here, especially now.)

- Paid trials are good. From my conversation with job seekers -- and with OP -- this is a good practice to respect an interviewee for their time, and more founders should do this.

- Keep trial periods short. 1-2 weeks is a good amount of time; any longer and you risk wasting the candidate's time, which a founder/hiring team should be respectful of, always.

Again, there's more to do, and I'll try to work more closely with our startups to really dig into their hiring plans for 2023. I don't want job seekers to be experiencing this kind of thing (on workatastartup.com or otherwise), so we'll do what we can within our network to prevent it.

Completely agree with the paid trials/projects point. The typical hiring process is so broken and one sided, with the interviewers wasting candidate’s time with no consideration whatsoever that it’s utterly disgusting.

This is another incredible value that YC provides. In the same way YC helps prevent investor bad behavior, it also prevents company bad behavior on behalf of candidates. Not saying it was intentional from the companies, but just makes sure everyone keeps candidate experience top of mind.

Does it work well if two YC companies failed OP in the same manner?

My understanding is that YC is very opt-in to everything they offer. There is no requirement to seek them out for advice or recommendation.

I think the parents point was along the line of, when YC companies do slip, there’s someone around willing to step up and take responsibility and likely behind the scenes push those companies to do better.

exactly this

"hi, it's me. i'm the problem it's me."

but in seriousness, i'm one of the people here trying to uplevel hiring at YC startups, and at startups more broadly.

this thread is helpful for me to know what we can do to make startup hiring (and working at a startup) better. i'm appreciative for the comments/voices here so i can keep learning.

> "hi, it's me. i'm the problem it's me."

thank you very nice PR man. u r doing a very good job of preventing founders from experiencing discomfort and making the meat feel cared for.

> but in seriousness, i'm one of the people here trying to uplevel hiring at YC startups, and at startups more broadly.

That's cool, but what pressure is there actually against practices like this if the companies aren't even named? Am I supposed to believe you call up a founder and go: 'uh hey, can you get your churn under control? We're getting complaints'.

What does this conversation sound like? Is it like: 'Oh, is negative word getting out publicly?' 'nah, they didn't name you, its under control' 'ah good. Well Ryan, we want the best, the absolute best and that requires trying lots of candidates I just don't see a problem, OP was nice person but just not a good fit for us' 'ok, makes sense, thanks founder, you guys are doing great, keep up the good work'

I wonder if this would have been swept under the rug if it didn’t get to this point in public.

I mean, it actually completely failed in this instance to prevent bad behavior, so...?

I think you are meaning to say that it can bring accountability to these companies, in which case I'd agree.

If you’re willing to give some inexperienced companies the benifit of the doubt, you can reasonably assume they just might not have it together yet. I doubt there was mal-intent, it sounds like budgets and headcount got yanked back, which sucks for both the candidate and the team that is trying to hire.

In a larger company I’ve worked at (and have hired for), they had a process where if the candidate passed the first 2 interviews, you basically get a formal “intent to hire” process started which reserves money for the position that cannot be withdrawn except for VP-level intervention.

Wasn't there a YC newsletter email where they told companies to tighten their belts so to speak? I feel like them not being able to hire due to money issues could be down to YC telling people to calm down with their spending.

Yea, I'm pretty sure a bunch of investors changed their guidance on managing runway this summer to extend the runways as future rounds may be harder. Something like where guidance for many would be 2 years, now to target 4. Although at least one company I talked to earlier in the year didn't have this memo.

I think lots of companies are seeing a longer/harder sales cycle as well, so they're still growing, but at a reduced rate, which when combined with that investor advice can lead to reqs the company thought they had, not really being available when it comes to deciding on making an offer.

What I don't know about, is if there's a bit more slack in the job market, where a year ago if you completed the interview you would get an offer, instead companies now have the ability to select among multiple good candidates.

In May 2022 [updated], YC did tell their startups to better control their spend. It wasn't intended for public consumption, but it did get on TC:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/19/yc-advises-founders-to-pla...

We did see a lot of our YC startups stop/slow down hiring at that time and throughout the summer. It has picked up since, as a function of 1.) a new batch of YC startups graduating, 2.) raising a healthy seed round and 3.) hiring a few early employees.

OP told me his experience was more recent, and that's a big time gap between the memo and now. I can't speak to any specifics, but I do think all startups (and definitely YC ones) are continually re-evaluating their business position: revenue, projected growth and corresponding headcount. And with a pull-back in industry spending during a downturn (and more expected going into 2023), vendors/sellers/startups will all have to re-adjust their 2023 plans pretty quickly.

Poor fiscal planning isn't an excuse for what happened to OP. It does shed light on how some companies (including YC startups) are continually trying to adapt during this downturn.

Note: The above comments about industry spend isn't from anything in particular I'm seeing from our YC startups, but rather from having worked at B2B startups twice previously during downturns -- and personally being on both sides of the equation (as seller and buyer of SaaS software).

This May. It was 2022.

Maybe YC should take over The initial interviews. I’m not sure how to non technically evaluate candidates but I’m sure it would be on the basic stuff like dress, communication, and narrative on experience. This would give firms some assurance and less need for extensive multiple interview sessions. I mean you already took over the application portal. So maybe also take over the initial interview upon first selection by YC firm.

Could be very beneficial in hiring a founding engineer/team. YC could be a leader is busting the mold that is a broken tech hiring cycle.

Our hiring portal is a start, and we see lots of YC companies hire first employees/founding engineers on it. But any additional insights you have -- especially from the candidate's side -- is welcome. We'd love to get a better sense of what more we could do here.

I don't think YCombinator is supposed to be a megacorp with that much control over the startups it's founded, and I don't think that a few slipups like what happend to OP warrant adding all that red tape in the long run

I was not thinking in terms of startups losing control but rather startups sharing and getting YC’s insights into candidates. Plus startups not being bogged down with terrible candidates if YC were to filter it for them. It’s Efficiency in scale all around honestly.

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