YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
sfstandard.com
sfstandard.com
Rich people using their financial prowess to subjugate others who are in a much weaker position in order to let them engage in unhinged behavior for their amusement and benefit.
This is a very annoying line. Risk for the sake of risk is self-destructive. The risk-reward profile is what matters, and people respect risk taking with large upside.
Having your company’s logo tattooed on a bunch of random people is zero or negative upside.
So really, they are just boring and derivative. Probably an analog to be drawn here for modern SV.
The first, in 1999-2001, was a bit more subtle. There was a general trend for small, colourful corporate logo tattoos, almost cyberpunk-inspired - think airlines, pizzas, soft drinks. Dot coms with VC-inflated marketing budgets jumped on the back of that, which inevitably ended with those companies being amongst the first to implode when the bubble burst. Discussed as a new form of the Bladerunner Curse on forums like Fucked Company.
The second, in 2006-2008, was the opposite - big, crude, prominently displayed blatant cash grabs. Porn, online casinos, domain squatting registrars, 2nd rate auction sites, e-gold style finance scams. Heavily publicised, but far fewer people actually did it. Died off in the Great Financial Crisis.
A small sample size, but it does seem to be a harbinger of an imminent economic crisis...
So, demonstrating there's no risk too outlandish for you becomes a form of social signaling to investors.
But they know they don't have what it takes for that.
"We need to find smart people who will work 100 hours a week like Musk"
"How do we do that?"
"Let's ask them to tattoo our logo before we'll consider interviewing them"
"brilliant. That shows the kind of commitment we need"
"The press will be fantastic as well"
"lets do it"I'm wonder if there are lefty geek Tesla lovers that branded themselves and then regretting the image shift.
Certainly I've seen plenty of tattoos that have become sadly dated (by me).
I can think of several purposes someone might claim that this has. All of them seem pretty dubious to me though, so if you think it's obvious, I would be interested in hearing what you think it is.
If the actual argument is "I'm fairly confident that the founders of this startup believe that the publicity from this will be more beneficial than harmful", that seems like a defensible but arguable view, and I would find it interesting to dig more into the assumptions around that. Is it based solely on expectations of how the founders would think, or on how the general perception of other people in the industry (job applicants, potential investors, etc.) tend to view things like this? Or even a more broad statement about human psychology (e.g. society as a whole ends up acting in ways that benefit actors who are well-known even if it's not for good reasons)?
Maybe I'm too naive or not smart enough to know what everyone else thinks about this, but none of this seems particularly obvious to me! I would expect a lot of people to have very different views on all of it, and those types of discussions are among the type that I come to HN for.
In a different market with a serious business where long term reputation matters, maybe bad publicity could be a factor. But this startup is likely to go under within a year and the founder will shed it like a skin and move on it it does. So they don't have a strong reason to care about negative press if any (and I still think this article is probably worth the cost of one tattoo artist for them).
I've never seen this, but I don't live in the Bay Area, so maybe I'm just out of the loop. All of this is useful context though, and the type of thing I was looking for when I asked!
Seems like the valley is getting there and dropping all pretense pretty rapidly.
Now being a founder is such a valuable status that it's attracting people who thinking that ghoulish worshipful body art (on the bodies of people afflicted with the same status envy, it needs to be pointed out) is a great idea.
Do the nerds even have a home anymore?
This article provides more examples. They wanted to stand out in a community that has become known for its excesses.
2 freaks, at the very very very least.
People who haven't even been interviewed let alone hired getting a company brand is one thing. But coworkers (and likely friends) getting a company tattoo after getting hired seems completely plausible, especially if it has grown successful into a unicorn.
unless he had exactly 3 employees, I'd say it's freakish.
That show was created by the creator of Office Space. They were both fictional and satire. Just because it was popular and there were some nuggets of truth in the jokes doesn't mean that every startup in Silicon Valley is as extreme of a cult as WeWork was.
What I can’t understand is how in a whole executive team, no one thought bringing a tattoo artist to tattoo potential interviewees with was a stupid idea. This wasn’t an accident, or surprise, like a tattoo artist just happened to be there and things got wild. They specifically brought a tattoo artist to do this. What the fuck.
If I were that CEO I'd avoid that person because of their very poor judgement, lack of boundaries, and questionable self respect.
That you think it's even on the edge of normal describes the current balance of power in the tech job market in a nutshell, though.
Also, you did the counterfactual wrong. You can't simply say "if I were that CEO" and then change the ethics of the situation and of the person and who has agency in the situation.
Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't want to work for this guy. But that doesn't mean I'm going to shit on people who would consider it, even if they have to do something I would consider degrading.
The people who work at a company all were filtered from the hiring process of the founder. If his filter included sycophants and suck-ups, he filtered out any dissent or critical thinking that could challenge his decisions. It's easy to get an exec team who doesn't diverge from decisions of the guy at the top, but obviously that much homogeneity / thought alignment comes with a cost.
Anyway, I'm glad this was publicized. Some rumored or one bad GlassDoor review can be easily overlooked; this will be a stain on the CEO's reputation for a while.
I so yearn for "the good ol' days" when "tinfoil hatters" were ridiculed and statements like yours were still proper humor and not almost logical and halfway believable reality. I mean, lizards are cold-blooded and might benefit from a hotter Earth like we're currently "terraforming" towards after all...
Ummm... Excuse me while I run out and buy another roll or two of tinfoil...
> About the role
> "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Low wages, bitter cold, long hours of complete darkness. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in event of success"
> You gotta be in founder mode.
> Next.js web / React Native app. / Supabase, firebase, and Prisma. / Nest.js for WhatsApp / Open AI and Anthropic APIs for agents / Solidity and web3.js for Smart contracts. / A lot of Typescript.
It is a reference, but seemingly also sincere, at least to a non-trivial extent.
Edit: I do not mean this to imply the same company as in the OP
how about build for the customer / end user?
it’s not that big of a deal.
But it's kinda accurate. It is a pseudo-bank using crypto/ stablecoins to bring banking to Latin America. And it's 10 years late to the crypto game. It likely will be a cold dark road with a high chance of failure in an industry of gambling where mostly men are.
That said, the CEO is Venezuelan (who previously built a microlending platform for Venezuelans), so if I had to guess the job listing and the company party with tattoo is less cringe if you are trying to bring financial stability to people who live with hyperinflation.
Rollerball.
Tattoo yourself if you want to be interviewed.
Ouch
This was a local professional tattoo artist from San Francisco doing a pop up shop at their company party, not some prisoner with a sewing needle. Professional Tattoo artists know how to minimize risks. They aren't taking pointers about how to do their job from some stablecoin microfinance startup tween.