Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

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Comment by dang | Hacker News Reader

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That could certainly be. The trouble is that we have no way of sorting out which companies are doing what.

Btw I went back and found a bunch of past explanations about this in case anyone finds it helpful:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44770591 (Aug 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44161363 (June 2025)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40239393 (May 2024)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37759361 (Oct 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37759152 (Oct 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37741801 (Oct 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37397355 (Sept 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37354391 (Sept 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36158274 (June 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35818403 (May 2023)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32335600 (Aug 2022)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29408468 (Dec 2021)

I could show you emails and then you would know what this specific company is doing, but I get your busy moderating the rest of HN, which is a monumental task. So that is unlikely to happen. But as it stands the situation is "rules for job seekers, Carte blanche for companies"

I believe you, but the trouble is we'd have to solve the problem in the general case, and we don't have the resources to do that. Also, I imagine it would take over the Who Is Hiring threads, since lots of people would want to comment for and against the different sides in different cases. Also, it's just not the kind of thing that HN is supposed to be for. This is not to deny that the problem is a real one.

> "rules for job seekers, Carte blanche for companies"

I don't think that's quite fair. Rules apply to both. We just (try to) keep the rules scoped to what we can actually determine from what gets posted here.

I do get that solving the general case would cost a huge amount of resources, especially policing people with an axe to grind against a particular company. Is saying Carte blanche too far? perhaps. Maybe better phrasing would be "Rules are written with good intentions and enforced when the general case is solved". Regardless, I think this discussion has run it's course, I got to warn others. Thanks for your time

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