6 ms·

Something very similar happened to me. When I was at university studying CS I was running a Arduino fansite and a fansite for a videogame - both of whom made m

Something very similar happened to me. When I was at university studying CS I was running a Arduino fansite and a fansite for a videogame - both of whom made most of their money from affiliate revenue (a couple hundred bucks per month). I thought it would be cool to work at Reddit (was close to graduating), and I had read blog posts from here and various other sites and IRC about how hiring managers liked projects. I took to it to build a JS library that converted links to affiliate links, for example amazon and some other small retailers I had used. Basically you just parse any URL you embed in the page with this library and it would convert the existing (non-affiliate) links to affiliate links with your signature attached so you got a revenue share. In addition to this, I had done research on Reddit's traffics and crawled reddit to see how many affiliate-capable links existed. I talked about this in the interview and suggested they could make around 2 million per month if they hired me and used my script. --> I was rejected after the interview, but a couple months later Reddit announced it was experimenting with a new feature that would re-write links as affiliate. They ended up implementing this feature that I am 95% sure I came up with and someone else stole. It was one of the shittiest experiences I have ever had interviewing, especially since I didn't get a job out of it but I believe they have made millions off of this idea so far. I huge put off, but I've learned since then backstabbing and stealing ideas is a big part of politics in most corporations. What a bummer.

nl 8y ago
Here's my HN submission of a demo I wrote of something in the same space back in 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1908283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1908283 It wasn't a new idea then either. The founder of VigLink reached out to me then to share what they were working on.
anilgulecha 8y ago
On the specific idea: The idea is not unique, and really low hanging fruit for a mass site.
- CryoLogic 8y ago
  At the time, I could not find a single social media site that was using link-rewriting to make affiliate money. Blogs and fan sites for niche products had been using this to make money for a while, social media sites had not yet tried it. The close proximity with the announcement and my interview is what really bothered me. I have a strong feeling (but cannot prove) that someone I interviewed with took the idea and ran with it. I had done a lot of research into how much money Reddit would make off of this and how to implement it at scale without breaking existing affiliate links and such. I had literally planned it as my pitch for what I wanted to work on and why they should hire me.
  - spullara 8y ago
    We did that at Bagcheck in 2010. It was super common. They may have taken your idea and ran with it but it wasn't a novel idea. Generally though, at scale, you run into problems with the affiliate programs and they cut you off.
    - StudentStuff 8y ago
      Is affiliate stuffing adding any value? In most cases, it doesn't seem to drive more customers towards the business paying the affiliate commission.
      - spullara 8y ago
        It might. For example, it was one of the potential revenue sources for Bagcheck to keep it running such that people could post their product reviews to the service. Without that revenue it is possible it isn't feasible to run the service and that would decrease the number of reviews pointing to them which could reduce the number of sales they get.
  - dkfmn 8y ago
    I believe you independently derived a very old, but lurcrative, idea. Kontera started off back in 2003 although I don't recall when they actually got to double-underline links. Viglink has been doing this more subtly as a commercial service since 2009, and AOL actually had a flavor of this built into Instant Messenger. There were also a number of affiliate networks that built this infrastructure to parse the Commission Junction offers database and update their networks with match/near-match products & services.
kotapi 8y ago
Really sorry to hear that. I understood patenting can be a pain and takes an inventor to get it done, but it seems like the thieves are more interested in getting patented than the inventors themselves. I guess the best thing for you to do it in such a situation is to open source it so the whole community can benefit from it, not just one big evil company that steals ideas. At least you'd go down as a hero.
ronilan 8y ago
Prior art VigLink (2010): https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/viglink-affiliate-programs/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/viglink-affiliate-programs... Reddit partners with VigLink (2016): https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4mv578/affiliate_links_on_reddit/#ampf=undefined https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/announcements/... Hope this helps you move on.
avalaunch 8y ago
Alternatively maybe they had been working on the idea for awhile and it was just a coincidence. Bringing an idea to the table that they were already working on might also hurt your chances of getting a job there.
- arduinomancer 8y ago
  Why would that hurt your chances? Wouldn't they see that as a good thing?
WalterBright 8y ago
It's not just corporations, it's companies and individuals in general. It has happened to me a lot. Ironically, making my stuff open source has cut down a lot on that. (Github leaves a clear provenance trail.)
thejosh 8y ago
This is not a new idea, and Reddit would have tried it eventually. Giving up your ideas during a job interview is also pretty stupid. If you had a "$2 million month" idea, would you have been happy no matter what they paid you?
SquareWheel 8y ago
In addition to what others have said, Reddit abandoned the idea of skimming affiliates shortly after announcing the plan. They have certainly not made millions.
usrusr 8y ago
> I talked about this in the interview and suggested they could make around 2 million per month if they hired me and used my script. Obviously I don't know how the rest of the interview went, but the way you put it in the retelling makes it sound a lot like it was distracting from all the other reasons to hire you. "How about that two million guy?" - "We hire developers, not libraries" It might have been that they not only picked up the idea from the interview, but on top of that also did not hire you because of misplaced conditions. If that part came over more like "you can't if you don't", then it would be seen as a challenge: "sure we can". I think that just telling them that you have previously worked on link monetization and wrote a library about it would have been a much better interview strategy than dangling some made up number in front of their faces. As an interviewer I would fear that a candidate arguing like that would be prone to taking their regular salary as granted and renegotiate something on top for every quantifiable contribution.
- hedvig 8y ago
  Oh god forbid an potential employee feels he has some power in this transaction.
  - usrusr 8y ago
    The power a candidate has and should be aware of is walking away, not withholding a trivial js library. Feeling powerful for demonstrably wrong reasons will put you in a terrible light.

nl 8y ago

Here's my HN submission of a demo I wrote of something in the same space back in 2010: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1908283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1908283 It wasn't a new idea then either. The founder of VigLink reached out to me then to share what they were working on.

anilgulecha 8y ago

On the specific idea: The idea is not unique, and really low hanging fruit for a mass site.

CryoLogic 8y ago
At the time, I could not find a single social media site that was using link-rewriting to make affiliate money. Blogs and fan sites for niche products had been using this to make money for a while, social media sites had not yet tried it. The close proximity with the announcement and my interview is what really bothered me. I have a strong feeling (but cannot prove) that someone I interviewed with took the idea and ran with it. I had done a lot of research into how much money Reddit would make off of this and how to implement it at scale without breaking existing affiliate links and such. I had literally planned it as my pitch for what I wanted to work on and why they should hire me.
- spullara 8y ago
  We did that at Bagcheck in 2010. It was super common. They may have taken your idea and ran with it but it wasn't a novel idea. Generally though, at scale, you run into problems with the affiliate programs and they cut you off.
  - StudentStuff 8y ago
    Is affiliate stuffing adding any value? In most cases, it doesn't seem to drive more customers towards the business paying the affiliate commission.
    - spullara 8y ago
      It might. For example, it was one of the potential revenue sources for Bagcheck to keep it running such that people could post their product reviews to the service. Without that revenue it is possible it isn't feasible to run the service and that would decrease the number of reviews pointing to them which could reduce the number of sales they get.
- dkfmn 8y ago
  I believe you independently derived a very old, but lurcrative, idea. Kontera started off back in 2003 although I don't recall when they actually got to double-underline links. Viglink has been doing this more subtly as a commercial service since 2009, and AOL actually had a flavor of this built into Instant Messenger. There were also a number of affiliate networks that built this infrastructure to parse the Commission Junction offers database and update their networks with match/near-match products & services.

kotapi 8y ago

Really sorry to hear that. I understood patenting can be a pain and takes an inventor to get it done, but it seems like the thieves are more interested in getting patented than the inventors themselves. I guess the best thing for you to do it in such a situation is to open source it so the whole community can benefit from it, not just one big evil company that steals ideas. At least you'd go down as a hero.

ronilan 8y ago

Prior art VigLink (2010): https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/viglink-affiliate-programs/ https://techcrunch.com/2010/01/12/viglink-affiliate-programs... Reddit partners with VigLink (2016): https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/4mv578/affiliate_links_on_reddit/#ampf=undefined https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/announcements/... Hope this helps you move on.

avalaunch 8y ago

Alternatively maybe they had been working on the idea for awhile and it was just a coincidence. Bringing an idea to the table that they were already working on might also hurt your chances of getting a job there.

arduinomancer 8y ago
Why would that hurt your chances? Wouldn't they see that as a good thing?

WalterBright 8y ago

It's not just corporations, it's companies and individuals in general. It has happened to me a lot. Ironically, making my stuff open source has cut down a lot on that. (Github leaves a clear provenance trail.)

thejosh 8y ago

This is not a new idea, and Reddit would have tried it eventually. Giving up your ideas during a job interview is also pretty stupid. If you had a "$2 million month" idea, would you have been happy no matter what they paid you?

SquareWheel 8y ago

In addition to what others have said, Reddit abandoned the idea of skimming affiliates shortly after announcing the plan. They have certainly not made millions.

usrusr 8y ago

> I talked about this in the interview and suggested they could make around 2 million per month if they hired me and used my script. Obviously I don't know how the rest of the interview went, but the way you put it in the retelling makes it sound a lot like it was distracting from all the other reasons to hire you. "How about that two million guy?" - "We hire developers, not libraries" It might have been that they not only picked up the idea from the interview, but on top of that also did not hire you because of misplaced conditions. If that part came over more like "you can't if you don't", then it would be seen as a challenge: "sure we can". I think that just telling them that you have previously worked on link monetization and wrote a library about it would have been a much better interview strategy than dangling some made up number in front of their faces. As an interviewer I would fear that a candidate arguing like that would be prone to taking their regular salary as granted and renegotiate something on top for every quantifiable contribution.

hedvig 8y ago
Oh god forbid an potential employee feels he has some power in this transaction.
- usrusr 8y ago
  The power a candidate has and should be aware of is walking away, not withholding a trivial js library. Feeling powerful for demonstrably wrong reasons will put you in a terrible light.