38 ms·

Y Combinator company “skip the interview” reaches top ten of r/recruitinghell

223 points by millzlane 5y ago

hardwaresofton 5y ago
How does an idea like this get through YC? Do we know who greenlit it or what the basis on which they did so was? Is this a symptom of YC having such large batches now?
- the_cat_kittles 5y ago
  because YC is not special, simple as that
- yourcousinbilly 5y ago
  The way I think about it, YC funds founders very early with their current idea and traction as their resume. Founders pivoting and iterating through several ideas during and after the batch is very common. So just because something is a YC company doesn't mean its actually a good idea that was "greenlit".
jorblumesea 5y ago
https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1445902596653260800 https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1445902596653260800
moneywoes 5y ago
What's YC's rationale for investing in this?
- m_ke 5y ago
  Getting $3K from people who switch jobs every 1-2 years can add up to a lot of money. How do you make money? We take a 30% fee of the amount paid out to either your backers or the company. EDIT: make that $6K, the payout for the hire was 2x of the 10K
  - shaggyfrog 5y ago
    It's the most crass, base form of rent-seeking I've seen from a YC company. No wonder they got funded...
- dang 5y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873159
sen 5y ago
I don't even have words for how much of a dystopian idea this is. How do you even come up with this idea and think it's worth following through in any way. It's like a parody idea I'd expect to see on the Silicon Valley show. Then for YC to back this and basically give their stamp of validation that it's worth continuing? THIS is what we're pouring money and resources into?
- tindals 5y ago
  Nothing new though. Check the recent batches of YC. They have been funding meaningless, ridiculous products/companies like these because the people involved in these "startups" have a "diverse" background. I am not making this up to create outrage, you will find it yourself once you start looking at the compaines and the founders and people involved.
  - dbingham 5y ago
    Is there any evidence that the "startups" that we should be frustrated are getting funded are the ones started by people from diverse backgrounds? Chris Evans, the founder of the startup in the OP, doesn't sound like someone from a diverse background.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
      - tindals 5y ago
        It's in plain sight. YC even highlights it in their website. I'm not making it up. See this page of the list of YC funded compaines https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ It explicitly lists "Black founded companies", "Latinx founded companies", "Women founded companies" At this point in America everything is a meaningless social cause/outrage driven thing. Diversity, renaming things even if those names have proper meaning in their current used context. It's all now a complete outrage and drama driven society.
    - 5y ago
bcrosby95 5y ago
So not only do you have pressure to perform because you don't want to lose your job, you also have pressure to perform because you don't want friends/coworkers/etc to lose money.
inostia 5y ago
For those out of the loop, it shut down for now: https://www.protocol.com/site-allowing-you-to-skip-the-interview-launches-promptly-shuts-down https://www.protocol.com/site-allowing-you-to-skip-the-inter... On that link there's a screenshot of the homepage for the service. It looks about as awful as you'd expect. How this even got past the elevator pitch is entirely perplexing.
- unityByFreedom 5y ago
  > How this even got past the elevator pitch is entirely perplexing. "How is this not a bribe?" "Bribe is such a loaded word, these are references who put their money where their mouths are!"
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
I had this happen to me once when applying to a major defense contractor. The recruiters claimed that they were too busy to interview me and I'd have the job if I wanted it. It smelled too much like a scam and I was suspicious about this particular operation because these jobs were perpetually posted so I bailed on their game.
eganist 5y ago
(I'm not in favor of this concept at all, but read on for a few thoughts) --- I can see one exceptionally limited use case for this: Recruiting influencers into related (influence-y) roles. Example: eSports player Taylor Jackson wants sponsorship with league Team Plasma. Team Plasma's application/recruiting process entails an invite-only process where players are contracted based on metrics derived from common streaming platforms like stream size, stream demographics, gameplay, an arbitrary "hype" measurement, etc., but Team Plasma decides to offer a secondary route for players capable of crowdfunding a certain total. Taylor fulfills the crowdfunding goal due to their reach on platforms not monitored by Team Plasma (e.g clubhouse for the sake of this contrived example). Another example could include influencers for promotional gigs, like those gigs where someone tends to a paradise island for a year. --- I don't foresee this model scaling all that well without shoehorning it into places where it doesn't belong, and the communication of the model (and the model itself) very deservedly got incinerated.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
version_five 5y ago
I think it's a stupid idea, would never use it as an employer or job seeker, and if it's as dumb as I and others feel, it won't go far (and in fact it seems to have shut down). That said, I don't understand the outrage. It's an ostensibly dumb idea, maybe even with an upside down some we dont see. It's not a personal attack on anyone. Make fun of it, sure, don't use it sure, but no need for outrage, "I dont have words" etc
- satellites 5y ago
  I think people are defensive and outraged because if something like this ever caught on among tech companies and became a normalized practice, it would make the process of job seeking much more frustrating than it already is. It's basically institutionalized, monetized nepotism, with all the toxicity of an MLM scheme. A professional world where this was a common practice would be an awful one for a lot of people. The intense reaction might be a bit of overkill, but it's worth sending a strong message that this is not okay.
  - joe_the_user 5y ago
    Plus, the people who essentially bought their jobs would be hell to work with for those who were competent (and that's not saying standard interviews aren't themselves dystopian in many ways but just selling a job, if possible, would be a magnet for the utterly incompetent).
    - proofbygazing 5y ago
      This is literally not buying a job, otherwise there wouldn't be a 2x payout after two months. It's betting that you would be good at a job.
  - tylerhou 5y ago
    I don't understand why people think this is nepotistic. If you're bad at the job, you won't make it past the first month or two. So you're really "buying" a (presumably paid) internship that has the potential to turn into a full time job if you're decent. If it turns out that you're good at the job, nobody loses any money (except the company, who has to pay a recruiting fee, but that's expected). If you're bad, well, hopefully that won't happen.... Granted I don't think it's a great idea for other reasons, but the nepotism angle just doesn't make sense in my opinion. I guess you could argue that skilled people with the ability to afford payment have a higher chance of being hired, and that's probably not a great thing, but even then it's not like every company who uses this will be filled with incompetent people who paid for their jobs--that just makes absolutely no sense from the company's perspective.
smoldesu 5y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/q7mice/a_new_level_of_hell_has_been_reached/hgjorsg https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/q7mice/a_ne... CEO's response is above
seaknoll 5y ago
From the website - > Out of the people I had hired at my last startup: > 12% of hires where exceptional hires (I would instantly hire again) > 42% of Hire were good hires. (I wouldn’t hire again but they did a fine job) > 29% of hires were bad hires. (They didn’t do a good job and were eventually let go) > 17% of hires were very bad hires (They had a negative effect on the company culture and other staff) These seem like extremely poor numbers. I haven't hired a ton of people but all of them have been excellent, though some that I was peripherally involved in hiring have been just good. I'm curious what other people feel that their ratio is.
- version_five 5y ago
  This could roughly be saying half of hires are below average, and the distribution is bell shaped (or triangular to a first approximation). For many jobs, below average can be equivalent to bad. If you have money to spend, or can wait to hire, you can beat the averages. I've hired a fair amount and done well too, but only by refusing to hire anyone if there are not suitable candidates that applied, which can burn a lot of political capital (your boss sees you've spend x time and money and had y applicant and z interviews and you refuse to hire anyone). Good, cheap, available, pick two.
- zitterbewegung 5y ago
  The percentiles seem to fit the Pareto distribution exactly. People seem to use it to describe intelligence or performance at a task https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution?wprov=sfti...
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Employees aren’t scratch tickets. The on-boarding, training, engineering culture and practices all contribute strongly to whether the prospective employee will turn out to be excellent or not. (I leave it to your judgment to guess how a place where 42% “were good hires, did a fine job, but I wouldn’t hire them again” falls on that spectrum.)
- shaggyfrog 5y ago
  > (I wouldn’t hire again but they did a fine job) This alone makes no sense to me. It's a contradiction. So I assume the website/author thinks they're a kind of mega-hustler 1000x developer or something.
oa335 5y ago
The backers get 100% return after 2 months if employee stays on? That doesn’t sound bad to me, if I was convinced of the company’s trustworthiness there are a number of former coworkers I would definitely “bet on” to last more than 2 months.
- satellites 5y ago
  Picture the inverse. Would you really email an old boss from 2 years ago asking for $50 so you can buy yourself a new job? I would not, nor would I want coworkers asking me for money. Imagine if someone asks you and for whatever reason you don't want to bet on them - how will that conversation go? How will that affect your professional relationship with that person? This is more or less a proposal for nepotism-based gambling.
  - exporectomy 5y ago
    That's kind of how it already works with recommendation letters. The result of nobody wanting to say no is that every letter is positive but the number of adverbs chained together signals their true opinion of the candidate rather than the number of dollars.
    - cutemonster 5y ago
      Is many adverbs better? I like being concise; maybe better not ask concise people for recommendation letters
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    To me that was the point of it. You want to find those people who the boss/co-workers thought were so good and amazing that they would put down $50 for. I have had colleagues refer people they privately referred to as a "codebase wrecking monkey" to avoid telling that person no. But they would be willing to put down $50 for far fewer people. Is it uncomfortable for the people asked? Probably. But that seemed to be the point, as those uncomfortable people would give a positive reference for free otherwise.
pavlov 5y ago
This company’s mistake was that they didn’t implement this pay-to-play setup as an Ethereum smart contract and create NFTs to represent the employees. With that kind of scheme they’d ascend to the crypto parallel universe where they can raise millions and it doesn’t matter if nobody ever uses their platform for its intended purpose.
- exdsq 5y ago
  You may joke but that really could make millions by the end of the year if you built that
encoderer 5y ago
I haven’t seen any well articulated arguments about why this is so evil. I think it’s not likely to succeed because it’s a complicated 3-party transaction but I can’t understand why it’s evil.
- MrStonedOne 5y ago
  It unbalances access to jobs by family wealth and creates yet another:tm: skip annoying thing if you are rich enough and/or have enough friends who are rich enough. Somebody coming out of a life hiccup like family issues or health issues is gonna have a harder time skipping the interview while also having a harder time interviewing. it extends the worse thing that exists in our society: "It's easier to make money if you have money." This is what creates and enforces our class system, this is what makes it harder for historically disadvantaged groups to get ahead, and such a product would just extend this.
- jorblumesea 5y ago
  Incredibly discriminatory as it favors those with lots of spare cash. Completely elitist, almost Neo-feudalist in nature. Pretty solid take on all of this: https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1445902596653260800 https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1445902596653260800
- shaggyfrog 5y ago
  Asking for money from candidates as a pay-to-get-hired scheme is evil for the same idea that unpaid internships are evil. Taking it to the next level, it's offering jobs to people with wealth who have networks with wealth. Hyper-discriminatory. There used to be a time when companies saw employees as long-term assets, to be invested in, educated and trained, given space to grow and learn. Here, they're seen as such liabilities that they need to mitigate the financial risk a company could possibly take, but still ultimately be as disposable as ever.
- aluminum96 5y ago
  1) This turns professional networks, which operate on the basis of reputation and goodwill, into toxic and exploitative MLM-style cash grabs. 2) This reinforces the already prevalent social phenomenon in which well-connected people with rich friends get all the opportunities.
ALittleLight 5y ago
This reminds me of why I don't use reddit. I can see not liking this idea, but a subreddit dedicated to recognizing how terrible hiring is should also recognize people working to improve it - even if they aren't at a workable solution yet. Instead, it's just toxic insults, dunks, and preaching to the choir. On top of this, the criticism from reddit is mostly unfounded and suggests they didn't even bother to read the company's landing page. Multiple redditors say things like "I'd never pay fifty dollars to refer a colleague. What's in it for me?" The landing page clearly states you double your money if they get hired. Another complaint is that it's racist because black people have black friends and apparently black people can't afford to refer their friends. This complaint relies on a racist argument "black people in general have less money, therefore the black software engineers doing the referrals will have less money." I don't think that's how it works. In the company's model you'd need referrals not from your random friends and acquaintances, but from coworkers who knew you and would be willing to be on you. Presumably your coworkers can come up with fifty dollars. I think this is a poor idea because it would be awkward to bet on people like this. I'd have to tell my colleagues I didn't think they were good enough to bet on, or bet the minimum, or would I get mad at them if they blew an interview? It's not a good system, but the idea that referrals are broken because they cost nothing to give seems right and it's worthwhile to try and fix important things that are broken.
- jmull 5y ago
  > The landing page clearly states you double your money if they get hired. That should be a warning sign to you that this is a scam.
  - Xisiqomelir 5y ago
    If he used reddit he’d have access to r/antiMLM
- baby 5y ago
  > should also recognize people working to improve it are you talking about this "skip the interview" thing? If so, what?
- 5y ago
EMM_386 5y ago
Absolute madness. CEO left feedback here: https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/q7mice/a_new_level_of_hell_has_been_reached/hgjorsg/?context=3&utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=SubredditDrama&utm_content=t3_q80h7h https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/q7mice/a_ne...
Wowfunhappy 5y ago
I think this company is interesting (not in a good way), but could we please get a less inflammatory link? I don't feel that it fits the site guidelines in its current state...
turminal 5y ago
Is this Chris from https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-the-technical-interview https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-the-technical-interview trying to save himself and others from Haskell types?
CosmicShadow 5y ago
Imagine you and a bunch of other people at your company can all chip in and convince that person no one can stand that you can get them a better job guaranteed at another company as long as they apply. Would you? How much would you pay to get rid of that bad apple that seems to stick around? Let someone else fail upwards at another company for less than the price of the party you throw once you get rid of them!
MrStonedOne 5y ago
This is such a tone deaf idea its kinda disappointing YC incubated it. Somebody coming from a poor (or absent) family would have a harder time breaking into the tech fields with this added on compared to somebody coming from a rich or even middle class family. Somebody job seeking after a 2 year long recovery from serious illness wouldn't have the connections to their old co-workers or bosses to crowd fund this, and wouldn't have the liquid cash flow to do it themselves. It unbalances access to jobs by family wealth and creates yet another:tm: skip annoying thing if you are rich enough and/or have enough friends who are rich enough. The return on investment aspect would just get gamed by companies being excessively selective on which candidates they allow to stay past 2 months. And finally it extends the worse thing that exists in our society: "It's easier to make money if you have money." This is what creates and enforces our class system, this is what makes it harder for historically disadvantaged groups to get a head, and such a product would just extend this, while benefiting the company. The anger is justified, such systems can not be allowed to exist.
- dang 5y ago
  AFAIK YC didn't incubate that idea - it was a later development. The reaction seems a bit overblown to me but maybe that's helpful in a way, since it might not have been as clear a signal otherwise (I mean to the startup, not YC).
  - dbingham 5y ago
    Just out of curiosity, what's your relationship to YC? I (and I'm guessing others here) only know you as HN's moderator.
    - peterthehacker 5y ago
      According to this article https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hacker-news/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hac... dang has worked for YC full time since 2014, so I’d assume that dang is “in the know.” But sometimes I wonder if dang is more than one person.
gjs278 5y ago
great company and idea, can we get this pinned as top thread? i’ll throw $50 on it
alanlammiman 5y ago
The concept of having colleagues essentially pay for your salary during a probation period is inane. But if it were your former employer, it could essentially be a type of severance / outplacement benefit. The 'skip the interview' bit is also silly. You'd still interview, but the hiring company would have an extra incentive to give you a chance if they aren't 100% sure. Having said that, I once tried something vaguely analogous and it backfired. I had left my job and was freelancing, looking into businesses to start for myself, but nothing solid yet, and a fairly senior job opening came bouncing around that I thought would give me useful experience even though in the long term I was set on entrepreneurship. it was clear the company wasn't quite sure about me. So I essentially offered them a free trial - I'd come in and just start working for a few weeks for free for us all to see if it was a good fit, no commitments. Ironically, I think that seemed so bizarre to them at a senior level (or they read it as signalling that I was desperate, which I wasn't) that they passed. In the end it was all for the best - I started a business, etc.
- vincentmarle 5y ago
  It’s a legal thing: unpaid work is illegal. So they probably didn’t want to risk it and carry the liability.
  - alanlammiman 5y ago
    That varies by jurisdiction and this wasn't in the US. Even if free were illegal it could have been minimum wage. But I think you're right in that it doesn't fit in well with established processes (HR, etc)
  - csense 5y ago
    Also, copyright. If you're not paid, they don't fully own the code in any product you've worked on.
    - alanlammiman 5y ago
      True, but in this specific case I wouldn't be programming or creating content. It was management.
rootusrootus 5y ago
My initial reaction is disgust. But I'm trying to give the idea the benefit of the doubt, and I can see the appeal -- abstractly. But it definitely seems like one of those utopian concepts that completely fails to account for what would happen in real life.
version_five 5y ago
As others have posted, the CEO replied to the reddit mob: > This is the CEO. We actually launched just to get feedback and clearly the feedback was not positive, so we are definitely going to talk to a lot more people before moving forward. We really were not aiming for something discriminatory and actually had long discussions about it with quite a few people, but we didn't get close to the right outcome, so we will talk to a lot more people before moving ahead. > Thanks for the feedback. He had ~-1000 points when I checked (I dont know how voting on reddit works) I'd like to think there would be some respect for the attempt, apparent failure, and explanation - this is exactly what should be happening as companies take risks and try to build something valuable. Reverting to feigned indignation that someone could even propose a new way of hiring is not helpful. Like i said in my other post, I think it's a bad idea too. That's no reason to act like they're committing a major transgression.
- jmull 5y ago
  I don't really agree with internet outrage, but the proposed plan is a scam.
peripitea 5y ago
I'm (perhaps naively) shocked at how opposed to this people are on Reddit, but especially on HN. This community was founded on startup ideals of trying radical ideas, knowing that most wouldn't succeed but some would go on to have outsized positive impact. Anyone who claims to definitively know that this idea would have problematic/racist results is kidding themselves. I've worked with and mentored a lot of minority candidates (who often have trouble with the cultural test that is getting and passing interviews), and my first thought on reading this idea was: "Sweet, I could start a little fund getting under-represented people I know jobs; I think I could probably even make it profitable. This could be transformative." Of course I don't know for sure that it would work, but to just confidently dismiss it out of hand seems about as stupid as the people who, upon first hearing about Lambda School ISAs, insisted that it was morally akin to slavery.
- prepend 5y ago
  > ideals of trying radical ideas It’s hard to distinguish between radical ideas and truly stupid ideas. There needs to be a better filter to get rid of bad ideas because some are horrible (ie, this one). I think it’s funny that people assume that all radical ideas are worth trying and that change can only be good.
  - peripitea 5y ago
    >I think it’s funny that people assume that all radical ideas are worth trying and that change can only be good. Nobody thinks that.
- brown9-2 5y ago
  if you want to be free to try radical ideas, you should also be open to the feedback when they’re terrible and foolish ideas
  - version_five 5y ago
    Feedback that's of any use is constructive, or at least "this will not work because" not silly directed outrage
stale2002 5y ago
Nah, sorry, people are looking at this all wrong. Compare this to services that allow you to pay for practice interviews. 50$ for a garenteed tech interview sounds cheap.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
aluminum96 5y ago
This is transparently awful. I cannot believe how many people are in the comments above defending this. Surely it's obvious why so many people find the idea of paying to get a job viscerally offensive?
- EMM_386 5y ago
  > I cannot believe how many people are in the comments above defending this. Likely some of the same HN crowd who hang out in the same bubble with the founders and VCs who backed this. I know what site I'm on and who funded this. I guess the only thing I'd ask is step out of this delusional bubble where the money flows like water and you can toss your coin in all these stupid wishing wells and wait for the one that works.
robocat 5y ago
Purchase of commissions in the British Army — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_of_commissions_in_the_British_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_of_commissions_in_the... Old reheated idea.
aluminum96 5y ago
Reasons why this company's business model is unethical and deserves outrage: 1) Professional networks operate on the basis of reputation and goodwill. This company seeks to make them into exploitative MLM-style cash grabs. 2) Well-connected people with rich friends already get opportunities disproportionately. This company would exacerbate that social problem.
IntFee588 5y ago
I understand the business case and problem it's supposed to solve (onboarding is costly), but it's so utterly distasteful.
yuppie_scum 5y ago
There’s a subreddit that narrates other subreddits now?
nitwit005 5y ago
If this became a real thing, people would just pay their former boss or coworkers to transfer the needed amount. People will apparently give referrals for quite cheap, so it wouldn't cost much: https://www.rooftopslushie.com/referral https://www.rooftopslushie.com/referral Also, this seems like it'd be illegal many places due to laws against demanding payment for a job.
dave333 5y ago
Someone should start an employment scheme where employers and employees both sign up to a broad pool eg "javascript developers" and then employees are assigned to employers arbitrarily but everybody gets hired once before anyone is hired twice and so on. Employers can opt to trade someone back to the pool as can employees after a minimum hire period say a month. Employees that are good enough will stick and the others will get experience and training and will hopefully improve, and will get paid something at least. Employers get immediate employees without having to bother with interviews. If the pool is swamped with unqualified people then the service could implement some minimal qualification process such as a multiple choice test for entry into the employee pool.
- dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv 5y ago
  > If the pool is swamped with unqualified people then the service could implement some minimal qualification process Wouldn't that be an interview of sorts?
  - dave333 5y ago
    No - it would be a standardized subject matter test without any of the personal baggage that sinks most interviews, that an applicant can take online at minimal time and expense.
alasdair_ 5y ago
This reminds me of the East India Company requiring a deposit of 100 pounds from the friends of a new recruit to ensure their good behaviour.
lokedhs 5y ago
I am honestly surprised that this isn't implemented on a blockchain, with the payouts being smart contracts. It's the only way this this could have been made any worse

223 points by millzlane 5y ago

How does an idea like this get through YC? Do we know who greenlit it or what the basis on which they did so was? Is this a symptom of YC having such large batches now?

the_cat_kittles 5y ago
because YC is not special, simple as that
yourcousinbilly 5y ago
The way I think about it, YC funds founders very early with their current idea and traction as their resume. Founders pivoting and iterating through several ideas during and after the batch is very common. So just because something is a YC company doesn't mean its actually a good idea that was "greenlit".

jorblumesea 5y ago

https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1445902596653260800 https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1445902596653260800

moneywoes 5y ago

What's YC's rationale for investing in this?

m_ke 5y ago
Getting $3K from people who switch jobs every 1-2 years can add up to a lot of money. How do you make money? We take a 30% fee of the amount paid out to either your backers or the company. EDIT: make that $6K, the payout for the hire was 2x of the 10K
- shaggyfrog 5y ago
  It's the most crass, base form of rent-seeking I've seen from a YC company. No wonder they got funded...
dang 5y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873079 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28873159

sen 5y ago

I don't even have words for how much of a dystopian idea this is. How do you even come up with this idea and think it's worth following through in any way. It's like a parody idea I'd expect to see on the Silicon Valley show. Then for YC to back this and basically give their stamp of validation that it's worth continuing? THIS is what we're pouring money and resources into?

tindals 5y ago
Nothing new though. Check the recent batches of YC. They have been funding meaningless, ridiculous products/companies like these because the people involved in these "startups" have a "diverse" background. I am not making this up to create outrage, you will find it yourself once you start looking at the compaines and the founders and people involved.
- dbingham 5y ago
  Is there any evidence that the "startups" that we should be frustrated are getting funded are the ones started by people from diverse backgrounds? Chris Evans, the founder of the startup in the OP, doesn't sound like someone from a diverse background.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
    - tindals 5y ago
      It's in plain sight. YC even highlights it in their website. I'm not making it up. See this page of the list of YC funded compaines https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/ It explicitly lists "Black founded companies", "Latinx founded companies", "Women founded companies" At this point in America everything is a meaningless social cause/outrage driven thing. Diversity, renaming things even if those names have proper meaning in their current used context. It's all now a complete outrage and drama driven society.
  - 5y ago

bcrosby95 5y ago

So not only do you have pressure to perform because you don't want to lose your job, you also have pressure to perform because you don't want friends/coworkers/etc to lose money.

inostia 5y ago

For those out of the loop, it shut down for now: https://www.protocol.com/site-allowing-you-to-skip-the-interview-launches-promptly-shuts-down https://www.protocol.com/site-allowing-you-to-skip-the-inter... On that link there's a screenshot of the homepage for the service. It looks about as awful as you'd expect. How this even got past the elevator pitch is entirely perplexing.

unityByFreedom 5y ago
> How this even got past the elevator pitch is entirely perplexing. "How is this not a bribe?" "Bribe is such a loaded word, these are references who put their money where their mouths are!"

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

I had this happen to me once when applying to a major defense contractor. The recruiters claimed that they were too busy to interview me and I'd have the job if I wanted it. It smelled too much like a scam and I was suspicious about this particular operation because these jobs were perpetually posted so I bailed on their game.

eganist 5y ago

(I'm not in favor of this concept at all, but read on for a few thoughts) --- I can see one exceptionally limited use case for this: Recruiting influencers into related (influence-y) roles. Example: eSports player Taylor Jackson wants sponsorship with league Team Plasma. Team Plasma's application/recruiting process entails an invite-only process where players are contracted based on metrics derived from common streaming platforms like stream size, stream demographics, gameplay, an arbitrary "hype" measurement, etc., but Team Plasma decides to offer a secondary route for players capable of crowdfunding a certain total. Taylor fulfills the crowdfunding goal due to their reach on platforms not monitored by Team Plasma (e.g clubhouse for the sake of this contrived example). Another example could include influencers for promotional gigs, like those gigs where someone tends to a paradise island for a year. --- I don't foresee this model scaling all that well without shoehorning it into places where it doesn't belong, and the communication of the model (and the model itself) very deservedly got incinerated.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

version_five 5y ago

I think it's a stupid idea, would never use it as an employer or job seeker, and if it's as dumb as I and others feel, it won't go far (and in fact it seems to have shut down). That said, I don't understand the outrage. It's an ostensibly dumb idea, maybe even with an upside down some we dont see. It's not a personal attack on anyone. Make fun of it, sure, don't use it sure, but no need for outrage, "I dont have words" etc

satellites 5y ago
I think people are defensive and outraged because if something like this ever caught on among tech companies and became a normalized practice, it would make the process of job seeking much more frustrating than it already is. It's basically institutionalized, monetized nepotism, with all the toxicity of an MLM scheme. A professional world where this was a common practice would be an awful one for a lot of people. The intense reaction might be a bit of overkill, but it's worth sending a strong message that this is not okay.
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  Plus, the people who essentially bought their jobs would be hell to work with for those who were competent (and that's not saying standard interviews aren't themselves dystopian in many ways but just selling a job, if possible, would be a magnet for the utterly incompetent).
  - proofbygazing 5y ago
    This is literally not buying a job, otherwise there wouldn't be a 2x payout after two months. It's betting that you would be good at a job.
- tylerhou 5y ago
  I don't understand why people think this is nepotistic. If you're bad at the job, you won't make it past the first month or two. So you're really "buying" a (presumably paid) internship that has the potential to turn into a full time job if you're decent. If it turns out that you're good at the job, nobody loses any money (except the company, who has to pay a recruiting fee, but that's expected). If you're bad, well, hopefully that won't happen.... Granted I don't think it's a great idea for other reasons, but the nepotism angle just doesn't make sense in my opinion. I guess you could argue that skilled people with the ability to afford payment have a higher chance of being hired, and that's probably not a great thing, but even then it's not like every company who uses this will be filled with incompetent people who paid for their jobs--that just makes absolutely no sense from the company's perspective.

smoldesu 5y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/q7mice/a_new_level_of_hell_has_been_reached/hgjorsg https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/q7mice/a_ne... CEO's response is above

seaknoll 5y ago

From the website - > Out of the people I had hired at my last startup: > 12% of hires where exceptional hires (I would instantly hire again) > 42% of Hire were good hires. (I wouldn’t hire again but they did a fine job) > 29% of hires were bad hires. (They didn’t do a good job and were eventually let go) > 17% of hires were very bad hires (They had a negative effect on the company culture and other staff) These seem like extremely poor numbers. I haven't hired a ton of people but all of them have been excellent, though some that I was peripherally involved in hiring have been just good. I'm curious what other people feel that their ratio is.

version_five 5y ago
This could roughly be saying half of hires are below average, and the distribution is bell shaped (or triangular to a first approximation). For many jobs, below average can be equivalent to bad. If you have money to spend, or can wait to hire, you can beat the averages. I've hired a fair amount and done well too, but only by refusing to hire anyone if there are not suitable candidates that applied, which can burn a lot of political capital (your boss sees you've spend x time and money and had y applicant and z interviews and you refuse to hire anyone). Good, cheap, available, pick two.
zitterbewegung 5y ago
The percentiles seem to fit the Pareto distribution exactly. People seem to use it to describe intelligence or performance at a task https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution?wprov=sfti...
sokoloff 5y ago
Employees aren’t scratch tickets. The on-boarding, training, engineering culture and practices all contribute strongly to whether the prospective employee will turn out to be excellent or not. (I leave it to your judgment to guess how a place where 42% “were good hires, did a fine job, but I wouldn’t hire them again” falls on that spectrum.)
shaggyfrog 5y ago
> (I wouldn’t hire again but they did a fine job) This alone makes no sense to me. It's a contradiction. So I assume the website/author thinks they're a kind of mega-hustler 1000x developer or something.

oa335 5y ago

The backers get 100% return after 2 months if employee stays on? That doesn’t sound bad to me, if I was convinced of the company’s trustworthiness there are a number of former coworkers I would definitely “bet on” to last more than 2 months.

satellites 5y ago
Picture the inverse. Would you really email an old boss from 2 years ago asking for $50 so you can buy yourself a new job? I would not, nor would I want coworkers asking me for money. Imagine if someone asks you and for whatever reason you don't want to bet on them - how will that conversation go? How will that affect your professional relationship with that person? This is more or less a proposal for nepotism-based gambling.
- exporectomy 5y ago
  That's kind of how it already works with recommendation letters. The result of nobody wanting to say no is that every letter is positive but the number of adverbs chained together signals their true opinion of the candidate rather than the number of dollars.
  - cutemonster 5y ago
    Is many adverbs better? I like being concise; maybe better not ask concise people for recommendation letters
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  To me that was the point of it. You want to find those people who the boss/co-workers thought were so good and amazing that they would put down $50 for. I have had colleagues refer people they privately referred to as a "codebase wrecking monkey" to avoid telling that person no. But they would be willing to put down $50 for far fewer people. Is it uncomfortable for the people asked? Probably. But that seemed to be the point, as those uncomfortable people would give a positive reference for free otherwise.

pavlov 5y ago

This company’s mistake was that they didn’t implement this pay-to-play setup as an Ethereum smart contract and create NFTs to represent the employees. With that kind of scheme they’d ascend to the crypto parallel universe where they can raise millions and it doesn’t matter if nobody ever uses their platform for its intended purpose.

exdsq 5y ago
You may joke but that really could make millions by the end of the year if you built that

encoderer 5y ago

I haven’t seen any well articulated arguments about why this is so evil. I think it’s not likely to succeed because it’s a complicated 3-party transaction but I can’t understand why it’s evil.

MrStonedOne 5y ago
It unbalances access to jobs by family wealth and creates yet another:tm: skip annoying thing if you are rich enough and/or have enough friends who are rich enough. Somebody coming out of a life hiccup like family issues or health issues is gonna have a harder time skipping the interview while also having a harder time interviewing. it extends the worse thing that exists in our society: "It's easier to make money if you have money." This is what creates and enforces our class system, this is what makes it harder for historically disadvantaged groups to get ahead, and such a product would just extend this.
jorblumesea 5y ago
Incredibly discriminatory as it favors those with lots of spare cash. Completely elitist, almost Neo-feudalist in nature. Pretty solid take on all of this: https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1445902596653260800 https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1445902596653260800
shaggyfrog 5y ago
Asking for money from candidates as a pay-to-get-hired scheme is evil for the same idea that unpaid internships are evil. Taking it to the next level, it's offering jobs to people with wealth who have networks with wealth. Hyper-discriminatory. There used to be a time when companies saw employees as long-term assets, to be invested in, educated and trained, given space to grow and learn. Here, they're seen as such liabilities that they need to mitigate the financial risk a company could possibly take, but still ultimately be as disposable as ever.
aluminum96 5y ago
1) This turns professional networks, which operate on the basis of reputation and goodwill, into toxic and exploitative MLM-style cash grabs. 2) This reinforces the already prevalent social phenomenon in which well-connected people with rich friends get all the opportunities.

ALittleLight 5y ago

This reminds me of why I don't use reddit. I can see not liking this idea, but a subreddit dedicated to recognizing how terrible hiring is should also recognize people working to improve it - even if they aren't at a workable solution yet. Instead, it's just toxic insults, dunks, and preaching to the choir. On top of this, the criticism from reddit is mostly unfounded and suggests they didn't even bother to read the company's landing page. Multiple redditors say things like "I'd never pay fifty dollars to refer a colleague. What's in it for me?" The landing page clearly states you double your money if they get hired. Another complaint is that it's racist because black people have black friends and apparently black people can't afford to refer their friends. This complaint relies on a racist argument "black people in general have less money, therefore the black software engineers doing the referrals will have less money." I don't think that's how it works. In the company's model you'd need referrals not from your random friends and acquaintances, but from coworkers who knew you and would be willing to be on you. Presumably your coworkers can come up with fifty dollars. I think this is a poor idea because it would be awkward to bet on people like this. I'd have to tell my colleagues I didn't think they were good enough to bet on, or bet the minimum, or would I get mad at them if they blew an interview? It's not a good system, but the idea that referrals are broken because they cost nothing to give seems right and it's worthwhile to try and fix important things that are broken.

jmull 5y ago
> The landing page clearly states you double your money if they get hired. That should be a warning sign to you that this is a scam.
- Xisiqomelir 5y ago
  If he used reddit he’d have access to r/antiMLM
baby 5y ago
> should also recognize people working to improve it are you talking about this "skip the interview" thing? If so, what?
5y ago

EMM_386 5y ago

Absolute madness. CEO left feedback here: https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/q7mice/a_new_level_of_hell_has_been_reached/hgjorsg/?context=3&utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=SubredditDrama&utm_content=t3_q80h7h https://www.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/q7mice/a_ne...

Wowfunhappy 5y ago

I think this company is interesting (not in a good way), but could we please get a less inflammatory link? I don't feel that it fits the site guidelines in its current state...

turminal 5y ago

Is this Chris from https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-the-technical-interview https://aphyr.com/posts/342-typing-the-technical-interview trying to save himself and others from Haskell types?

CosmicShadow 5y ago

Imagine you and a bunch of other people at your company can all chip in and convince that person no one can stand that you can get them a better job guaranteed at another company as long as they apply. Would you? How much would you pay to get rid of that bad apple that seems to stick around? Let someone else fail upwards at another company for less than the price of the party you throw once you get rid of them!

MrStonedOne 5y ago

This is such a tone deaf idea its kinda disappointing YC incubated it. Somebody coming from a poor (or absent) family would have a harder time breaking into the tech fields with this added on compared to somebody coming from a rich or even middle class family. Somebody job seeking after a 2 year long recovery from serious illness wouldn't have the connections to their old co-workers or bosses to crowd fund this, and wouldn't have the liquid cash flow to do it themselves. It unbalances access to jobs by family wealth and creates yet another:tm: skip annoying thing if you are rich enough and/or have enough friends who are rich enough. The return on investment aspect would just get gamed by companies being excessively selective on which candidates they allow to stay past 2 months. And finally it extends the worse thing that exists in our society: "It's easier to make money if you have money." This is what creates and enforces our class system, this is what makes it harder for historically disadvantaged groups to get a head, and such a product would just extend this, while benefiting the company. The anger is justified, such systems can not be allowed to exist.

dang 5y ago
AFAIK YC didn't incubate that idea - it was a later development. The reaction seems a bit overblown to me but maybe that's helpful in a way, since it might not have been as clear a signal otherwise (I mean to the startup, not YC).
- dbingham 5y ago
  Just out of curiosity, what's your relationship to YC? I (and I'm guessing others here) only know you as HN's moderator.
  - peterthehacker 5y ago
    According to this article https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hacker-news/ https://blog.ycombinator.com/meet-the-people-taking-over-hac... dang has worked for YC full time since 2014, so I’d assume that dang is “in the know.” But sometimes I wonder if dang is more than one person.

gjs278 5y ago

great company and idea, can we get this pinned as top thread? i’ll throw $50 on it

alanlammiman 5y ago

The concept of having colleagues essentially pay for your salary during a probation period is inane. But if it were your former employer, it could essentially be a type of severance / outplacement benefit. The 'skip the interview' bit is also silly. You'd still interview, but the hiring company would have an extra incentive to give you a chance if they aren't 100% sure. Having said that, I once tried something vaguely analogous and it backfired. I had left my job and was freelancing, looking into businesses to start for myself, but nothing solid yet, and a fairly senior job opening came bouncing around that I thought would give me useful experience even though in the long term I was set on entrepreneurship. it was clear the company wasn't quite sure about me. So I essentially offered them a free trial - I'd come in and just start working for a few weeks for free for us all to see if it was a good fit, no commitments. Ironically, I think that seemed so bizarre to them at a senior level (or they read it as signalling that I was desperate, which I wasn't) that they passed. In the end it was all for the best - I started a business, etc.

vincentmarle 5y ago
It’s a legal thing: unpaid work is illegal. So they probably didn’t want to risk it and carry the liability.
- alanlammiman 5y ago
  That varies by jurisdiction and this wasn't in the US. Even if free were illegal it could have been minimum wage. But I think you're right in that it doesn't fit in well with established processes (HR, etc)
- csense 5y ago
  Also, copyright. If you're not paid, they don't fully own the code in any product you've worked on.
  - alanlammiman 5y ago
    True, but in this specific case I wouldn't be programming or creating content. It was management.

rootusrootus 5y ago

My initial reaction is disgust. But I'm trying to give the idea the benefit of the doubt, and I can see the appeal -- abstractly. But it definitely seems like one of those utopian concepts that completely fails to account for what would happen in real life.

version_five 5y ago

As others have posted, the CEO replied to the reddit mob: > This is the CEO. We actually launched just to get feedback and clearly the feedback was not positive, so we are definitely going to talk to a lot more people before moving forward. We really were not aiming for something discriminatory and actually had long discussions about it with quite a few people, but we didn't get close to the right outcome, so we will talk to a lot more people before moving ahead. > Thanks for the feedback. He had ~-1000 points when I checked (I dont know how voting on reddit works) I'd like to think there would be some respect for the attempt, apparent failure, and explanation - this is exactly what should be happening as companies take risks and try to build something valuable. Reverting to feigned indignation that someone could even propose a new way of hiring is not helpful. Like i said in my other post, I think it's a bad idea too. That's no reason to act like they're committing a major transgression.

jmull 5y ago
I don't really agree with internet outrage, but the proposed plan is a scam.

peripitea 5y ago

I'm (perhaps naively) shocked at how opposed to this people are on Reddit, but especially on HN. This community was founded on startup ideals of trying radical ideas, knowing that most wouldn't succeed but some would go on to have outsized positive impact. Anyone who claims to definitively know that this idea would have problematic/racist results is kidding themselves. I've worked with and mentored a lot of minority candidates (who often have trouble with the cultural test that is getting and passing interviews), and my first thought on reading this idea was: "Sweet, I could start a little fund getting under-represented people I know jobs; I think I could probably even make it profitable. This could be transformative." Of course I don't know for sure that it would work, but to just confidently dismiss it out of hand seems about as stupid as the people who, upon first hearing about Lambda School ISAs, insisted that it was morally akin to slavery.

prepend 5y ago
> ideals of trying radical ideas It’s hard to distinguish between radical ideas and truly stupid ideas. There needs to be a better filter to get rid of bad ideas because some are horrible (ie, this one). I think it’s funny that people assume that all radical ideas are worth trying and that change can only be good.
- peripitea 5y ago
  >I think it’s funny that people assume that all radical ideas are worth trying and that change can only be good. Nobody thinks that.
brown9-2 5y ago
if you want to be free to try radical ideas, you should also be open to the feedback when they’re terrible and foolish ideas
- version_five 5y ago
  Feedback that's of any use is constructive, or at least "this will not work because" not silly directed outrage

stale2002 5y ago

Nah, sorry, people are looking at this all wrong. Compare this to services that allow you to pay for practice interviews. 50$ for a garenteed tech interview sounds cheap.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

aluminum96 5y ago

This is transparently awful. I cannot believe how many people are in the comments above defending this. Surely it's obvious why so many people find the idea of paying to get a job viscerally offensive?

EMM_386 5y ago
> I cannot believe how many people are in the comments above defending this. Likely some of the same HN crowd who hang out in the same bubble with the founders and VCs who backed this. I know what site I'm on and who funded this. I guess the only thing I'd ask is step out of this delusional bubble where the money flows like water and you can toss your coin in all these stupid wishing wells and wait for the one that works.

robocat 5y ago

Purchase of commissions in the British Army — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_of_commissions_in_the_British_Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_of_commissions_in_the... Old reheated idea.

aluminum96 5y ago

Reasons why this company's business model is unethical and deserves outrage: 1) Professional networks operate on the basis of reputation and goodwill. This company seeks to make them into exploitative MLM-style cash grabs. 2) Well-connected people with rich friends already get opportunities disproportionately. This company would exacerbate that social problem.

IntFee588 5y ago

I understand the business case and problem it's supposed to solve (onboarding is costly), but it's so utterly distasteful.

yuppie_scum 5y ago

There’s a subreddit that narrates other subreddits now?

nitwit005 5y ago

If this became a real thing, people would just pay their former boss or coworkers to transfer the needed amount. People will apparently give referrals for quite cheap, so it wouldn't cost much: https://www.rooftopslushie.com/referral https://www.rooftopslushie.com/referral Also, this seems like it'd be illegal many places due to laws against demanding payment for a job.

dave333 5y ago

Someone should start an employment scheme where employers and employees both sign up to a broad pool eg "javascript developers" and then employees are assigned to employers arbitrarily but everybody gets hired once before anyone is hired twice and so on. Employers can opt to trade someone back to the pool as can employees after a minimum hire period say a month. Employees that are good enough will stick and the others will get experience and training and will hopefully improve, and will get paid something at least. Employers get immediate employees without having to bother with interviews. If the pool is swamped with unqualified people then the service could implement some minimal qualification process such as a multiple choice test for entry into the employee pool.

dsQTbR7Y5mRHnZv 5y ago
> If the pool is swamped with unqualified people then the service could implement some minimal qualification process Wouldn't that be an interview of sorts?
- dave333 5y ago
  No - it would be a standardized subject matter test without any of the personal baggage that sinks most interviews, that an applicant can take online at minimal time and expense.

alasdair_ 5y ago

This reminds me of the East India Company requiring a deposit of 100 pounds from the friends of a new recruit to ensure their good behaviour.

lokedhs 5y ago

I am honestly surprised that this isn't implemented on a blockchain, with the payouts being smart contracts. It's the only way this this could have been made any worse