Is it modern slavery already or more nuances required?
Maybe "indirect" modern slavery? First we teach a man how to cult, then we show him how to enslave himself?
YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
41–50 of 78 posts
Re: YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
#42Re: YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
#43Ew. At what point do we just decide that this whole community has eaten itself? Remember when a "YC founder" was a diligent nerd just trying to make something people want and get to ramen-profitable before the runway from their tiny seed check ran out? Now being a founder is such a valuable status that it's attracting people who thinking that ghoulish worshipful body art (on the bodies of people afflicted with the sa…
Come and gone. Gatekeeping has some merits
Re: YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
What purpose is that? Are you claiming they aren't looking to hire people, and just want their company name out there for other purposes? Or that having this story somehow helps their actual hiring goals (e.g. by dissuading people who think that this is awful from applying, or that it will actually make people want to apply)? I can think of several purposes someone might claim that this has. All of them seem pretty d…
any publicity is more than a no name startup would usually get. stunts like these are often primarily for publicity.
More appalling than the publicity stunt is the fact that several people were desperate enough for work to take them up on the offer.
Re: YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
#45Not going to click on any of the articles to avoid driving traffic to this…conflagration of poor judgment colliding head on with amorality…but there’s a part of me that wonders if the tattoos were all done with the same needle. Bear with me here. This is not a case study in good judgment. Extending the logic is purely academic.
Re: YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
#46His apology seemed AI generated as well
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Re: YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
#47> We are bold, we take risks, and we do things that haven’t been done before. This is a very annoying line. Risk for the sake of risk is self-destructive. The risk-reward profile is what matters, and people respect risk taking with large upside. Having your company’s logo tattooed on a bunch of random people is zero or negative upside.
It's the kind of action founders imagine who would be willing to give optional tattoos to any of their their proud employees after all their unusually generous equity packages have skyrocketed, matured, and been cashed in.
But they know they don't have what it takes for that.
Re: YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
#48Is it modern slavery already or more nuances required?
Not quite weimar conditions yet
Re: YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
#49> We are bold, we take risks, and we do things that haven’t been done before. This is a very annoying line. Risk for the sake of risk is self-destructive. The risk-reward profile is what matters, and people respect risk taking with large upside. Having your company’s logo tattooed on a bunch of random people is zero or negative upside.
There seems to be a line of thinking that past unicorn startups had bad risk-reward profiles, and therefore a good founder should be taking lots of bad risks. If they take good risks, they will never succeed and become a unicorn. Very "tres commas".
So, demonstrating there's no risk too outlandish for you becomes a form of social signaling to investors.
Re: YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
#50I could imagine how a potential interviewee might say something like “I’d tattoo myself with your logo for a chance at a job” and a CEO might respond “Hell, yeah! That’s the kind of energy I’m looking for.” What I can’t understand is how in a whole executive team, no one thought bringing a tattoo artist to tattoo potential interviewees with was a stupid idea. This wasn’t an accident, or surprise, like a tattoo artist…
They didn't think it was a bad idea because they don't have a sense of right and wrong. If something is potentially profitable and technically legal they will do it. This is what YC screens for.