Ask Y Combinator: How often can YC companies post jobs to the front page of HN?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14822315

by webmaven • 9 years ago

61 37 9 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

detaro• 9 years ago

For questions like this, e-mailing the mods is more reliable. Their e-mail address is in the footer

hartator• 9 years ago

I think it's more a complain than a question. At some point, I got tired as well of all the "Muse" hiring post every week or so.

webmaven2• 9 years ago

Not a complaint at all, I was just curious if there was any sort of "rate limiting", even if informal.

ddebernardy• 9 years ago

More reliable maybe, but not more transparent. Others might be curious about this too.

sixhobbits• 9 years ago

Don't know why you're down-voted. This is literally in the guidelines

"Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to hn@ycombinator.com. "

webmaven2• 9 years ago

If this was about YC you would be right. But I am asking about HN's interface (so to speak) with YC.

wenbin• 9 years ago

That's one of the benefits of being accepted as a YC company. They have the distribution advantage with Hacker News :)

tylermenezes• 9 years ago

Last I knew it was about once a week or so, but there's also an absolute limit on the number of active posts across all companies to prevent Hacker News from becoming Job News.

no_protocol• 9 years ago

The job postings would be more interesting if discussion was allowed on them.

baron816• 9 years ago

I'm sure they're afraid that people will bash certain companies in them. But I'd like that too. They should let the company moderate the discussion in those posts. I don't care if they're highly censored, I think there would be a lot of value to being able to ask the company questions about the roles.

munchor• 9 years ago

I actually think companies would get positive and negative feedback on their job postings which would mean that future postings would be better. The company will always win. No need to be afraid of bashing IMHO.

eps• 9 years ago

I seriously doubt that they are afraid of negativity.

It's just that public comments on these posts would serve no tangible purpose for the companies.

frgtpsswrdlame• 9 years ago

They should let the company moderate the discussion in those posts. I don't care if they're highly censored, I think there would be a lot of value to being able to ask the company questions about the roles.

Ew no. The illusion that a company is good is way more harmful than just disallowing comments in the first place.

tomc1985• 9 years ago

It's struck me as somewhat suspicious that hiring posts disallow comments so conspicuously.

look_lookatme• 9 years ago

It only takes one Genius thread to ruin everything.

maxerickson2• 9 years ago

Letting the companies moderate the threads would be just an incredible drama factory.

Not necessarily from anything the companies were doing...

zck• 9 years ago

At one point, I believe it was said that one reason discussion isn't allowed is so that stealth companies hiring aren't outed in the comments.

rjbrock• 9 years ago

I think adding a "We are stealth, dont allow comments" option would be good then

rubidium• 9 years ago

They'd be more interesting if they weren't so cookie-cutter. "Help us disrupt the X industry". "Passionate about [insert particular software thingy], so are we".

zitterbewegung• 9 years ago

The job postings are basically ads due to the fact that YCombinator runs the site for free. Considering how often someone posts a comment that is mean spirited and possibly even wrong which gets to the top I don't think that allowing for discussion would help at all.

tptacek• 9 years ago

Unlike everything else on the front page of HN, job posting are not there to be "interesting". Before the current system, when people could comment on them, "interesting" quickly became a problem.

gdeglin• 9 years ago

Our recent experience has been approximately once every two weeks.

Job posts are submitted and go into a queue. Only posts from companies that have not recently had a job post shown are picked from the queue.

They appear near the top, and then work their way down over the course of 3 hours. Only one job post is shown on the front page at a time.

seanmcdirmid• 9 years ago

Additionally, does HN keep track of how effective these postings are? I mean, as in, how many quality hits do YC startups get from being on the front page of HN?

harrisonjackson• 9 years ago

It is just one of many many places we utilize at Zapier. As a remote company, we are able to draw candidates from all over the world, so the top of the funnel is pretty wide. HN alone wouldn't provide the diversity we look for when we open a new role.

It'd be really interesting to dig into geodata about the HN community; I'd imagine as a job listing tool, it is less useful for YC companies that aren't based in California. That's assuming a much higher concentration of readers in tech hubs.

cynusx• 9 years ago

I don't get why ycombinator doesn't advertise on a sidebar to the right similar to stackoverflow or reddit ads.

There would be a lot more 'job ad' inventory and it wouldn't interfere directly with the user experience.

In fact they can also use it to advertise other initiatives like open applications/events/research grants/...

tobyjsullivan• 9 years ago

It would be less effective though. More inventory is useless if nobody is looking at it and, generally, people don't look at side bars often.

It would decrease the impact on UX, as you suggested, but I don't think the current experience is not significantly injured.

tostitos1979• 9 years ago

There is already an inventory: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

See the link on the menu bar at the top.

Also, constants ads would be a bad distraction. I'd definitely try to block it or leave the site.

vmarsy• 9 years ago

I think stackoverflow, reddit, etc. clearly know this is less effective, but they are probably simply following the law regarding "Native advertising" [1] which applies to "content that bears a similarity to the news, feature articles, product reviews, entertainment, and other material that surrounds it online"

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/nat...

Mz• 9 years ago

They already curate them in a link visible at the top of the site, which fits in vastly better with the overall ux here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs

sgroppino• 9 years ago

How about infomercials? Is there a limit on those?

throwaway236533• 9 years ago

I posted recently about drchrono posting way too many Django dev ads.

The post was voted up rapidly and then killed assumedly by a mod.

It seems like some yc companies see it as a strategic advantage that they can spam hn to get cheap devs.

dang• 9 years ago

I think once a week, but I don't remember exactly and don't have the code in front of me at the moment.

Ask Y Combinator: How often can YC companies post jobs to the front page of HN?

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