15 ms·
Ask HN: Why can't we comment on “X is Hiring” posts?
I think it would be a good opportunity for people to ask questions about the company and what it's like to work there. Has this been considered?
- UmYeahNo 4y agoI always took those posts to be a form of (dark pattern) undisclosed advertisement masquerading as content offered as a perk to YC companies. The last thing those advertisers (and YC) want is comments that are similar to what you might read on glassdoor, criticizing the company, management or work culture. And, it's also possible that they are used as plain-old "brand recognition advertisements", and no one really gets hired. Unless of course Smarking is hiring dozens of "head of engineering" positions (or turnover is that ridiculously high) [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27294446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27294446 Edited to add: I see it as a dark pattern because it is not explicitly stated as an "Ad" or "Sponsored", and relies on us navigating somewhere else to determine if this is some kind of special post, or for us to have the experience to recognize it as something different than an organic post. I.E. If today were your first visit to this site, would you recognize them specifically as promoted / sponsored content?
- ALittleLight 4y agoHow is it a dark pattern or undisclosed advertising? I thought it was one of the perks of being a YC company. There is very little advertising on this site, and what is here, e.g. jobs for YC companies, is labeled and on topic.
- batter 4y agoHm... i was leaning as well to dark pattern/ad. Would be interesting to have a poll to understand how many users find this acceptable and click.
- gitgud 4y ago> How is it a dark pattern or undisclosed advertising? Ads here are displayed exactly like a post with extremely subtle differences. Anyone new to the site would think it's a post and click it... To me that's a dark pattern
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- daenz 4y agoIf we're going by formal definitions, here are a few[0]: More broadly, dark patterns supplant "user value...in favor of shareholder value". a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills The hiring posts are deliberately made to look like every other submission, with the exception of not being able to comment on them. So in that way, they're misleading about what they are. They don't really trick users into doing anything, unless you count clicks from users who think they're about to engage with actual community content. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern
- ALittleLight 4y agoThe posts are explicitly differentiated from normal submissions - you can't comment and they usually say something like "X (YC year) is hiring". That's not a dark pattern. I agree that some people may not understand what or why these posts are and not look into it (answers are easily available) - but that doesn't make this a dark pattern. Hackernews has minimal ads, lax account requirements, professional moderation, minimal intrusion from owners - and you are hyperventilating about 1 post in a 100 being a marked ad?
- boredemployee 4y agoreally arbitrary moderation imho
- nopehnnope 4y ago[flagged]
- daenz 4y agoI'm not "hyperventilating", I am attempting to answer your question...no need to be rude. Clearly it's a matter of opinion about where the line of "dark pattern" starts.
- 4y ago
- version_five 4y ago> undisclosed advertisement To be fair, it is disclosed on the FAQ page: Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down and fall steadily. Only one is on the front page at a time. The rest are listed at jobs. I don't know where else they would disclose it, the fact that you can't vote or comment on it clearly shows you it's different. It's way preferable to e.g. astroturfing, and is not a dark pattern a la Amazon tricking you into prime
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago> I don't know where else they would disclose it Inline, I assume; "[Ad] Foo hiring bar"
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fabianhjr 4y agoIt should be clearly stated as an ad though, google wouldn't get away with not marking the top 2 rows of the result page as advertisement because "they disclosed so on the FAQ"
- phendrenad2 4y agoIANAL, but isn't there a law about online ads similar to what you mention? But then again job postings probably aren't typically considered ads...
- version_five 4y agoNot a lawyer either, but the "ads" (and I think they are ads in the dictionary sense, plus HN refers to them as such in the FAQ) are literally on the website of the company they are advertising for. It's hard to imagine that is not allowed.
- jacquesm 4y ago
- yaseer 4y agoIt's a pattern, but definitely not dark or undisclosed. The system and rationale are explained in the HN FAQ and repeatedly reiterated by the mods. i.e This is one of the things HN gives back to YC, for funding it. Compared to online advertising, jobs posts targeted at a technical audience seems like a reasonable trade.
- paulcole 4y agoWhat do you mean “compared to online advertising”? It is online advertising lmao.
- jjulius 4y ago>It's a pattern, but definitely not dark or undisclosed. Isn't it a dark pattern something that you're not upfront about? Because... >The system and rationale are explained in the HN FAQ and repeatedly reiterated by the mods. ... I have to go to the FAQ (and how do you easily get to the FAQ when you're on https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com, anyway? it's not exactly easy to find, I had to Google it) to learn about it, or a mod has to show up in a thread like this to mention it. There's nothing at face value when the post is on the front page that alludes to what it is, and I'd hardly say that removing the ability to comment on that post does much to clarify what it is. A pattern can be dark even if unintentionally.
- yaseer 4y agoTo get into pedantic semantics: Yes, I agree it's opaque- perhaps not totally clear on first sight. But a dark pattern has connotations of some intention to deceive, which I don't think is occurring here.
- dang 4y agoThe FAQ is linked at the bottom of every HN page.
- jjulius 4y agoD'oh. Egg, meet face. Thanks dang.
- __s 4y agodang's response on why job ads don't have comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767319
- dang 4y agoThanks, I forgot that and would probably never have found it. There was another variant more recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31602113 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31602113. There's also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20%22job%20ads%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... but most of those comments simply explain why the job ads exist.
- ss108 4y agoSmarking, Skio, a couple other ones.
- anm89 4y ago
- digitaLandscape 4y ago
- contingencies 4y agoAt a guess, such threads (which AFAIK are offered to YC companies only) would otherwise tend to degrade in to opine regarding compensation and the relative merits of various early-stage ventures in a sector plus function as a guaranteed time sink and PR nightmare for early stage businesses who could better focus their attentions elsewhere.
- iso1337 4y agoInstagram is one of the few platforms that allows you to comment on ads. It's pretty interesting as the comments tend to be overwhelmingly negative.
- avrionov 4y agoReddit also allows or used to allow commenting on the some ads.
- koverda 4y agoI noticed the opposite, there's a lot of people leaving positive comments on a lot of ads.
- agluszak 4y agoFacebook also allows that
- nyadesu 4y agoFacebook/Meta also allows it I think, but comment section on ad publications is heavily moderated
- mongol 4y agoTwitter also
- Retr0id 4y agoAlthough, now it is also possible to disable replies on a tweet (sponsored or otherwise)
- beeboop 4y agoOutrage drives engagement, it's making people engaged with ads. I'm sure there's a positive effect there to conversation rates.
- bergenty 4y agoIt’s only going to be negative stuff, why would any company want that. No one would post jobs here then.
- amelius 4y agoThere are many alternative interfaces to HN ([1]), so perhaps one of them could develop the possibility to overlay comments on a hiring post. [1] https://github.com/cheeaun/awesome-hacker-news https://github.com/cheeaun/awesome-hacker-news
- moritonal 4y agoThey can't. Comments would mostly be negative and likely open the whole place to libel claims. Moreover, it couldn't even be offered as an optional thing given how bad it would look on any company that didn't. What I would love is the ability for an Ad to be associated with a user account.
- abeppu 4y ago> Comments would mostly be negative and likely open the whole place to libel claims. Why is the libel issue more a problem with job ads than with any other kind of post that people comment on?
- leg100 4y ago"...likely open the whole place to libel claims" What rot. Any HN story comment is subject to "libel claims" in jurisdictions with poor free speech protections (e.g. Britain), not only "X is hiring stories". Commentary is the night torch of liberty, shining a critical light on propaganda. YC libertarianism should be eating its own dog food
- waynesonfire 4y agowish there was like a decentralized, pub-sub website overlay.
- ehlesmes 4y agoMaybe it could be optional. Companies might decide it’s worth to take a risk, and hope that engaging will differentiate them from others, and generate engagement/good will/hype… Like a sponsored Show HN
- teddyh 4y agoThere was such a post recently with the title “OlaClick (YC W21) first LaTam startup to raise from Facebook, Google; now hiring”¹, which I thought was particularly sneaky, adding extra ad copy in the title of an impossible-to-criticize post. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31523852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31523852
- jacquesm 4y agoAgreed, did you alert dang to this?
- dang 4y agoThey shouldn't have done that, though it was almost certainly an innocent mistake*. If I'd seen it, I would have edited it. You can see the guidelines for YC startups posting job ads here: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobguide.html https://news.ycombinator.com/jobguide.html. As you can see there are 6 paragraphs dedicated to neutral titles. * Founders don't post like that for nefarious reasons. It's just that many of them don't spend much time on HN and have no idea of the finicky conventions of this community.
- altairprime 4y agoWe as a community have trouble remaining courteous in normal posts. Allowing us to comment on hiring posts would be a nightmare for the moderators, as well as force them into a rock-and-hard-place scenario where moderating ill-behaved commenters leads to claims of bias and conspiracy.
- jstx1 4y agoTo prevent every one of those posts from becoming a general discussion about the company that's hiring.
- willio58 4y agoI get this, but it's also antithetical to hackernews to post something and not be able to comment. It's as if job postings should stay in https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs and never show on the front page.
- colinmhayes 4y agoHacker news exists as a way to advertise for y combinator. Advertising for y combinator companies seems like the opposite of antithetical to hacker news.
- teddyh 4y agoHN is a community of people. A community always exists to serve the community. Even if YC created the community, YC does not own it, and if YC were to become egregious, the community would move elsewhere to better serve itself.
- colinmhayes 4y agoYC pays the hosting costs. They employ multiple moderators. This is their website, not the communities.
- teddyh 4y agoThe website belongs to YC, but the community does not belong to either.
- boredemployee 4y agowhen money is at play, there's always an execption my friend
- pyrrhotech 4y agoMost of them aren't really hiring, but instead using the thread as covert advertisement for brand. In fact, HN largely exists in general to promote YC companies. Why would they allow comments on these threads, of which a large majority are likely to be negative, given this agenda?
- azemetre 4y agoYeah, a company that routinely posts gives a “referral” link but it just leads to their normal career page and there’s nothing I can tell that actually makes your application a referral. It’s disappointing because this is a company I’ve been trying to interview at for nearly 4 years now.
- dang 4y ago> Most of them aren't really hiring, but instead using the thread as covert advertisement for brand. Do you have any evidence of that? If that's actually true, we would stop those companies from posting job ads. As I said elsewhere, though (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32587596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32587596), you really shouldn't be cavalier with allegations of abuse. > HN largely exists in general to promote YC companies That's definitely not true, or at least a huge overstatement. I've written a lot about this in the past if anyone wants explanations of how we think about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=yc%20business%20interests%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20%22less%2C%20not%20more%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... It would be closer to the truth to say that HN exists to help new YC companies come into existence, since the biggest benefit is more startups getting started, applying to YC, and getting funded by YC. Even one large such success would pay for hundreds of years of HN.
- timbit42 4y agoI read HN via RSS so I put "YC" and "is hiring" posts in my delete filter.
- nvahalik 4y agoI have wanted to upvote ads a few times! Love a couple of the companies I see
- justinlloyd 4y agoThe other question is "why can we comment on 'X wants to be hired' posts?" Nothing quite like hanging out your shingle, putting your professional foot forward, so you promote yourself in the best light possible to potential employers, only for someone to make a snarky comment about your skill set or name. There's at least a few of those each month under various comments from people looking for a new job.
- dang 4y agoYes, those are much harder to deal with because we can't simply switch them off—other than disabling replies, which I don't want to do because most replies are good faith questions. I've even written code to specifically monitor all the replies that get posted in those threads, but it still requires moderator review energy—a scarce commodity if ever there was one.
- aryamaan 4y agoIt's rarely a good idea mixing an anonymous party(us) with non-anonymous party (the company). Reddit AMAs-- which I suppose are heavily moderated by the mods and up/down votes-- would be an outlier of this rule.
- analog31 4y agoI've followed other forums where company representatives can post, and I think it takes a person with an exceptional skill set to handle the comments and discussions that result. It's not a "normal" skill that I'd expect of any normal job duty, even HR or PR. So I think the proscription of comments is necessary to avoid frightening those people away. I've seen otherwise competent and articulate people get baited into losing their composure or taking the low road. Forum interaction is, for better or worse, a performance art. Anyway, somebody can always start a thread about the same company.
- jacquesm 4y agoYes, and that's exactly why you can't comment on them. They're one of the payoffs for YC of running Hacker News and those posts historically sometimes became mudslinging contests instead of the recruitment post they were intended to be.
- causality0 4y agoThings would get awkward for the more exploitative or otherwise "bad" companies. Having the top comment be "Your entire business model is a dystopian nightmare" would probably hurt some feelings.
- brudgers 4y agoCurious what an intellectually interesting comment on one of the “is hiring” posts look like? The interview process aeems like the appropriate context for asking questions. And the context in which it is productive for the company to answer them. In this regard it is just like other job postings everywhere on the internet.
- nhumrich 4y agoI often see problems with these postings. The link doesn't work, an error in the wording, etc, and a comment would be a nice way to tell them their post needs to be fixed somehow.
- NHQ 4y agoMost of the companies are not actually hiring, they post the same job month after month, it's all optics.
- dang 4y agoI've not seen any evidence of that. Have you? If that's really happening, we'd take away job posting privileges, but it's important not to be cavalier with accusations of abuse.
- NHQ 4y agoYou could have your companies report hiring results every month. My accusation is based on years of evidence (reading job post) and anecdote (applying, never hired). A lot of the time companies don't even respond. I'm perfectly willing to suspect the HR cabal, but if I'm a CEO missing 20+ engineering roles month after month, I'd get a new HR and process. Are your CEOs complaining they can't fill all these open jobs?
- dang 4y agoI really have no idea. (I don't mean that dismissively, just literally.) Things like this, btw: > You could have your companies report hiring results every month ... come from a mismatch between perception (of how things are over here) and reality (of how things are over here). We'd never do that, not because it would be valueless, but because there are so many other things that need doing which would benefit the community more. (Again, I don't mean that as a criticism - it's not as if these things are directly perceivable.)
- tptacek 4y agoYou can't really comment on job posts on the (open-access) "Who's Hiring" threads, either. Every month, the mods have to waste a bunch of time zapping people who want to debate the merits of different companies that post there. If there was an easy way, without changing the UX of the site (something that happens very rarely here) to eliminate comments on those threads, so all you could do is post job ads, HN would probably do that too.