Y Combinator deletes posts after a startup's demo goes viral
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'Hey Number 17 ' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43175023 - Feb 2025 (122 comments)
Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170850 - Feb 2025 (160 comments)
I'd be interested to know what he original pitch to YC was by this company.
YC companies often pivot - it may be that their initial pitch was not this at all.
Not saying I support this product, the demo is some horrific soulless behavior, but I’m not surprised either.
I think to the personality type most sought after for startup jobs, the discussion here is net encouraging.
Being discouraging to others is a side benefit. (Note that I am not in the group to whom it is encouraging.)
But such effects need to be measured over years, not weeks. So a company won't know until it's too late.
If these are the supposed sins of modern late stage capitalism I say let's have more of it and less of the various types of socialism which the entitled always seem to be pushing as a replacement. I'd rather ignore annoying banner ads and refrain from buying merchandising than stand in a line in a street to a shop selling something, anything, no idea what but there's a shop which has something to sell so people stand in line like they used to do in the worker's and farmer's paradise which was to lead the world revolution to the glorious victory of socialism.
I'll even take the entitled brats kvetching about the sins of the economical order which allows them both the means as well as the free time and freedom to do so. They'd be standing in some line to a shop somewhere, no fruitPhone in their pockets and no way to use it even if they had without having the state come down on them for their sins against the glorious revolution if their purported ideal order were to come to pass because the revolution always eats its own.
BTW, I don't consider slavery to be a form of modern late stage capitalism, it is more related to the primitive origins from which the different *-isms arose. Slavery used to be the norm rather than the exception and in some places in the world it still thrives. It is in the much-maligned West where the strongest movements to abolish it were and are to be found.
(Hint, it's potential for profit, not ethics.)
Wanting to maximize profits by squeezing work out of less-fortunate people, efficiently, and at scale.
Not even that. Measuring output makes a certain amount of sense. This just measures "looking busy". It's practically an admission that they don't care about actual production, they just enjoy hassling people.
Wagging your finger at that “bad” employee who is “slacking” that’s a very desirable and I think almost primal motivation for some folks….
Then again these are precisely the types of "poverty studies" that have been done in India for years. "Should we fine nurses who are late to work? If so, how much?" "Should web publicly shame and harass office workers who leave early? If so, how much?" Lookin' at you, "Poverty Action Lab."
This looks like the logical extension to what we've been putting this country through for years.
I would tend to read that as saying more about the skill level (or lack thereof) of the people doing the measuring than about that their goals are
The fact it didn't cross their minds that maybe this is a bad idea to release in the US really shows the cultural difference between the West and other countries like India. There are plenty of things wrong with the US but blatant treating of lesser-privileged people like animals is something that isn't well tolerated here.
It’s not clear to me that their software, actually does what it says… I feel like that wasn’t entirely clear from the demo. It’s not like a short demo proves much.
They're YC-backed. Was there no one to advise them on the "cultural difference"?
When they talk about money, the "cultural difference" doesn't matter. /s
Eh, that's flattering, but there are many ways of treating lesser privileged people like animals that are socially acceptable in the US, e.g. homelessness, prison slave labor, healthcare, immigrants, the whole "tough on crime" schtick, just off the top of my head.
This is just what-about-ism.
Clearly what the person was talking about was how PEOPLE tend to treat others, in vast numbers, so that it’s common to be an offender and even more common to be on the receiving end.
There are not 100 million people in the US actively poorly treating 250 million others like cattle.
>There are not 100 million people in the US actively poorly treating 250 million others like cattle.
So it's okay when it's maybe 10,000 people treating 320 million others like cattle?
This is such a fallacy of "If it is evil, it must be competent". Did you actually look at the software? In no universe can you confidently infer that it's a "really great implementation", it's childish at best. You're just assuming it so you can make the rest of your argument.
I'm only assuming its somewhat competence because it still got funded by Y Combinator in a pretty stiff time to make pitches.
McDonalds and Amazon are American companies that micromanage workers - the only difference is that their software is inhouse. The next time you're at any fast-food drive through, have a look at the monitors they have up, you'll likely see a timer and stats about rate they are serving customers.
More broadly, Hell, mouse-jigglers became a thing, and most American retail outlets won't let their cashiers sit (no chairs!) - talk about treating workers like animals.
It really makes me think. Honestly the Manna system has only just since the LLM discovery been possible, whereas it seemed a bit farfetched to me 15 years ago when I first read it. It would be pretty easy to roll today’s “AI” into a product to replace fast food managers like in that story.
Which is different from chattel slavery, of course. But it's still an extant theory that gets discussed widely. It would seem an AI company to be a labor panopticon would align with the critiques raised by the concept of wage slavery.
Don't imply or wink and nudge. Say what you mean to say. Your example is either a non sequiter like mine, or it's implying something while avoiding saying the actual thing you are trying to convey.
Slaves didn't have freedom to move jobs or to have agency in their lives. At the base level, let alone all the abuses they faced which varied in places and times throughout history.
But a lot of these workers don't have some things that even slaves had. Like room and board.
e.g this article from six years ago about Amazon’s practices then: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516004/amazon-warehouse...
(In reference to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon )
What do you mean you’ve been working all day? I've got over 500 million power in “Rise of Kingdoms” and
-GATTACA
Because if it is a fully fledged product, I'm not sure what that says about the many people at YC and elsewhere that gave it a pass. Seriously wtf material.
Remember they are not even paid minimum wage by the hour. They are paid by how many punnets they pick. And this founder thought it was a great idea.
American Ag is more exploitative than any third world/developing country because the really desperate work here. It is sorely in need of automation.
Nobody wants to actually invest in Ag automation..not really…there is a lot of BS floating but everything grown locally and on our shelves relies on low paid manual labour.
I wish.. so very much..that Americans see how their food is grown.
This isn't just run of the mill capitalism bad, this is truly exceptionally vile and staining.
My friend, they’re one and the same.
Challenge: Impossible
Life imitates art, https://theyesmen.org/project/finland
In reality this sounds to me like a play to eliminate the manager jobs, not to materially change working conditions for the rank and file, who are monitored for output one way or another, even in Western countries. Nobody employs workers unconditionally and for life.
”Optifye says it’s building software to help factory owners know who’s working — and who isn’t — in “real-time” thanks to AI-powered security cameras it places on assembly lines, according to its YC profile.”
What are Universities doing to curb this?
I wouldn't bring this particular product to market. But I think people have weird ideas about the level of intentionality that exists inside of YC with respect to its portfolio companies.
Relative to an ordinary VC fund, YC admits absurd numbers of companies every year (always has!). It deliberately admits companies that are nothing but pairs of impressive founders and an idea. Those teams get some office hours advice from some subset of YC partners, but are left alone to build their companies --- YC takes a small amount of equity, nothing resembling control. By the time Demo Day or "Launch HN" happens, many of those companies are working on totally different things from their applications.
I don't really understand why anyone would expect YC to keep a durable record of a Launch post that was working against the startup that put it together. They're not a journalism outlet, and it looks like journalism did just fine keeping a record of what happened here.
Is it really surprising that people might expect "Hacker News" to follow the basic standards of respectable news outlets?
seems like bad business since the endgame was full automation robot factory
France fining Amazon for similar surveillance based on scanner data: https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2024/employee-...
Germany issung a 10 million fine to a small (<1000 employees) company: https://www.dataprotectionreport.com/2021/01/new-german-fine...
That was "just" CCTV, not an AI panopticon. I think the law (and nearly-guaranteed consequences) are so clear in Germany that few larger companies would be stupid enough to seriously consider something like this, and if they did, any serious Betriebsrat (works council) would put a quick end to it even before the privacy authority could bring the hammer down.
Switzerland has laws against behavioral surveillance too, although I'm not sure how the enforcement mechanisms look in practice. But I expect something like this to be too blatant for employers to get away with it. (https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/en/video-surveillance-in-the-work..., "The use of video surveillance systems for the targeted monitoring of employee behaviour is prohibited".) These rules are explicitly considered health & safety rules due to the psychological harm (stress etc.) that this kind of surveillance causes.
https://legalitgroup.com/en/employee-monitoring-what-employe...