If find it unfair that you put YC startups job ads between the stories, but do not allow the rest to do the same. Shame on you!
I always thought pg's solution was pretty tasteful. It doesn't disrupt the site too much, it's transparent (albeit in a minimalist way), it's strictly limited. But that's obviously a matter of opinion. What's not a matter of opinion is that HN has worked this way nearly since the beginning, so whatever may be wrong with the status quo, it at least hasn't prevented the site and community from flourishing.
This site serves the startup community, and it's warped by the wants/needs of YC because of its genesis.
Bringing in moderators like dang has helped a lot - the site definitely got too cultish around pg and YC, and it seems like things have improved since then, both content and attitudes of people on the site. There seems to be more of a chinese wall between decision making for YC and HN now.
I would hope/think over time that the remaining unfairness will drift away, like the fact that YC founders see each other highlighted, so they can form a casual voting rings around YC stories (and the job ads I agree are unfair and bad for the community too). It's not even healthy for HN/YC long term - the community will go elsewhere if the values of the site don't lead to good content/community.
If for no other reason, job postings for YC companies is useful for reminding the HN community that HN is a business asset not Usenet. The reason it is useful is to rationalize a set of standards somewhat similar to a workplace.
No the site serves YC that it happens to have some overlap with serving the general startup scene and hacker crowd is a good thing but it's not the primary thing.
> the community will go elsewhere if the values of the site don't lead to good content/community.
Only if a threshold is reached and there is a consensus that it's time to move on, there appears to be no sign of that, realistic people realise that HN while a valuable resource belongs to YC.
YC founders are actually subject to voting rings as well, and often get dinged.
I get that there is a knee-jerk anti-authoritarian kind of sentiment here, but in this case, the tone and attitude is undeserved.
* That YC founders can see each other differently on the site (colored names).
* This naturally leads to more upvotes for YC stories.
* These upvotes would be unlikely to trigger voting rings.
* This provides a non-transparent (unfair?) advantage for YC startups, and a false signal about the interest in these startups overall for people unware.
2) The job listings thing I have less to harp on, but I still find it a little weird that there is a hugely popular job board reserved for a few hundred companies.
3) The comment wasn't intended as an attack on pg, and I understand the YC is from the top down well-meaning and full of good people. But the site is better, more transparent, and more fair under the new management, at least it seems that way to me.
I imagine the cultishness is recognized and unwanted... hence pg not being on the leaderboard: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders (and totally withdrawing from the site overall)
When something is not working for you, what are your options ? You can try to blame someone else, or you can take responsibility and create improvements yourself. In this case it appears you are trying to blame YC for what is not working for you. What comes of this trying to blame someone else? Well, you get to pretend that they are wrong, and therefore, by implication, you get to feel “right”. This is a compelling fake pay off because, without ever doing anything, you get to feel you are “right”. So that is what can come of trying to blame someone else.
If you goal is to effect change, this choice is self-defeating. Since the only thing that changes is your perspective of yourself. Nothing in the world changes. Now, you may believe that by shaming other people and saying things are unfair, things may alter in the world. Well, maybe they will, and yet still you are expecting other people to alter them for you.
This attitude is the very antithesis of the founder, or hacker, or startup attitude, which is the belief, that a small group of committed individuals can change the world. If that small group of individuals had instead sat around complaining about what wasn’t working for them, well, then they wouldn’t have been the ones who changed the world.
Now, let’s look at what you can do besides this. How can you take responsibility for what is not working for you and choose to create improvements ?
There could be a number of reasons that only posting YC companies’ jobs is not working for you. Perhaps you applied to YC and were declined. Perhaps you have a startup, and didn’t apply to YC, and are looking to hire, and would like to access the HN audience.
Let’s just take the latter as an example. Now what can you do to access the HN audience for your hiring in this case ? How about writing a blog post about the opportunity your startup is meeting, and at the end of the blog post, have a link that says, if you read this far and you’re interested in working on stuff like this, we’re hiring!
Hope that was of help to you.