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Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

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Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#61

Post by bobthecowboy »

I've applied to a couple of these. If I remember correctly PostHog and Enveritas both posted here and for both I went past the initial screening step, but that's where it ended for me.

I also participated in the hiring side for the previous startup I worked at - SoftIron - and we did actually hire someone we found through a post I made here on the monthly Hiring thread. He was a good candidate, but eventually everyone got laid off anyway. I actually felt bad about that - I think we were only around a year after hiring him.

On that note, since I was participating in the hiring, I will say that we had a shocking amount of low effort and AI-written responses to the posting.

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#62

Post by rjbwork »

bobthecowboy wrote: post #61

I've applied to a couple of these. If I remember correctly PostHog and Enveritas both posted here and for both I went past the initial screening step, but that's where it ended for me. I also participated in the hiring side for the previous startup I worked at - SoftIron - and we did actually hire someone we found through a post I made here on the monthly Hiring thread. He was a good candidate, but eventually everyon…

>On that note, since I was participating in the hiring, I will say that we had a shocking amount of low effort and AI-written responses to the posting.

Also put an entry up on the monthly hiring thread a few years ago. Even though we explicitly stated US-Based and authorized to work in the US, we did not get a single application from US-Based people. All Indian, Eastern European, and South American.

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#64

Post by beambot »

rors wrote: post #55
themanmaran wrote: post #42

As a YC company that is currently hiring, yes! And all of the YC companies I know are also struggling to find engineers. But the job listings (HN, WorkAtAStartup) practically never bring in good candidates. A few big problems: 1. AI Spam. I categorized the inbound we got the other day from a job post. Out of 172 daily applicants, we got 22 that looked reasonably like a person, and 150 that were primarily AI generated…

I have a PhD from one of the best universities in the world in Machine Translation, I was training feed forward networks in 2014, built models in TensorFlow in 2016, founded a generative AI startup in 2019 and signed deals with huge consumer goods companies, debugged distributed training jobs on a cluster with thousands of A100s, and wrote PyTorch training pipelines for a financial ML trading signal that made money.…

The attitude underlying this comment likely makes you a bad culture fit...

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#65

Post by nradov »

segasaturn wrote: post #14
alberth wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, why do you say that - given that many job board cost money to post on.

One of my friends almost got scammed by a fake job posting just yesterday. The job was for a real company with a real site and headquarters in the US, and the fake recruiter was impersonating the identity of a real recruiter on LinkedIn. They realized it was a scam when the "recruiter" told them that the job interview would be over Telegram. Often these fake jobs will string applicants along, then start asking them f…

Or they'll ask you to fill out an "application form" that includes your full name, date of birth, address, SSN, driver's license number, etc. Hmmm...

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#66

Post by mikhael28 »

Pedro_Ribeiro wrote: post #39
ryandrake wrote: post #21

It would be cool if the monthly Who's Hiring threads asked companies to optionally disclose useful information like "How long have you had this job open?" or "When was the last time your [company | team] hired someone, and how long did the process take from first posting to the employee's first day on the job?" Better yet, a response SLO for getting back to candidates (this will never happen).

I believe HN is a high quality forum that enforces high quality standards, there is no reason this shouldn't be a thing. Companies that advertise here should be held accountable.

Maybe a startup could work on this problem - HN has two moderators, I’m not sure it’s realistic to ask them to track more than what they already do. How would they even track and verify such hearsay anyway?

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#67

Post by themanmaran »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #60
themanmaran wrote: post #42

As a YC company that is currently hiring, yes! And all of the YC companies I know are also struggling to find engineers. But the job listings (HN, WorkAtAStartup) practically never bring in good candidates. A few big problems: 1. AI Spam. I categorized the inbound we got the other day from a job post. Out of 172 daily applicants, we got 22 that looked reasonably like a person, and 150 that were primarily AI generated…

The unspoken problem is that most people want way too much fucking money.

So far we haven't had a candidate pass because of salary yet. Typically candidates looking for that stable $400k salary never even talk with startups, because they know that's only a FAANG position.

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#68

Post by steve_adams_86 »

Not a direct answer, but months ago I was applying to YC startups that were actively posting opportunities. I had great references from past YC startups, what I'd consider a good resume, a proven track record of actually building stuff. Not a single company was interested. This was true outside of YC companies too, though. It was surreal. I started to think I must be a fraud or something.

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#69

Post by mikhael28 »

jjice wrote: post #51

I work for a small YC startup and we have recently wanted to hire another engineer. Our CTO posted a listing on WorkAtAStartup and within two or so days, got over 200 applicants. Apparently, WorkAtAStartup (which I've used successfully in the past) allows you to bulk send applications. He went through and found that almost all the applications he was able to go through were absolute nonsense. He then screened some pe…

Crazy to hear how much spam & straight up liars are applying nowadays. Not being able to pass a technical interview is one thing, but sending a fake resume and then expecting to not be exposed as a fraud is just crazy, sociopath behavior.

Re: Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

#70

Post by WD-42 »

themanmaran wrote: post #42

As a YC company that is currently hiring, yes! And all of the YC companies I know are also struggling to find engineers. But the job listings (HN, WorkAtAStartup) practically never bring in good candidates. A few big problems: 1. AI Spam. I categorized the inbound we got the other day from a job post. Out of 172 daily applicants, we got 22 that looked reasonably like a person, and 150 that were primarily AI generated…

The irony of an AI company’s hiring woes due to too much AI.
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