Not to generalize, but if you relied on Hacker News for recruiting you could wind up in all sorts of wonky, dubious or failed companies. Like people were such sweethearts for Juul and Alt Schools. They’re also really skeptical of Google, which for all its faults is, without a doubt, the single best deal for employees in the history of the world, at least since the time that anyone was legally or culturally allowed to take such jobs in this country. That’s coming from a noted skeptic!
Personally I’ve always found that libertarian ethos in support of crappy things, like shitty schools and tobacco, and opposed to nice things, like healthy kids, frustrating. Like on the one hand there’s a kind of engineer who finds the most abstract IT infrastructure so stimulating, something totally removed from actual concrete stuff with even an iota of moral, emotional or socioeconomic consequence. But then when the schadenfreude gets going, an emotion that these supposedly stoic people seem to have in spades, they have opinions about fucking everything. And then when it comes to hills to die on, they finally choose to die on the Hill of Nicotine.
So like sure, say no to some recruiter. But if you trust the aggregate opinions of people on this board, with its profound adverse selection, get ready to be disappointed.