Since I'm the kind of person that likes Stripe's take on email transparency[1], I might just be over-opinionated on the matter when I think that the YC job posts would be better if conversation was able to occur within them.<p>Some examples:<p>* Clever - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9082693 - what does code refactoring have to do with that position?<p>* LivBlends - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9047329 - any YouTube videos of your product in action?<p>* Mailgun - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7681316 - is there any correlation between the positions and the locations?<p>Sometimes the conversation is going to be asking for more details. Sometimes making suggestions. Sometimes OT. But I can't think of many situations where inspired conversations would detract from the quality of the posting...<p>[1] https://stripe.com/blog/email-transparency
> Clever - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9082693" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9082693</a> - what does code refactoring have to do with that position?<p>I've been on teams pushed to create feature after feature. After some time, we literally begged to refactor code. We begged to do what was best for the company. Guess what? They didn't listen and new features became painful to implement. Of course some of us refactored code on the down low, but this is dangerous (they aren't fully QA'd or reviewed) and kind of insulting to have to sneak around doing the right thing.<p>For me hearing a company refactors its code is refreshing.
So i've been running a private job board with 3k members for few years now. People can comment on job posts.<p>There are 4 kinds of comments:<p>* Mention of someone, to make him/her aware that job may interest him/her<p>* Correct the person who posted on the job on a typo<p>* Mocking the job. Often a big circle jerk we have to moderate<p>* Someone saying that the company is awesome they have worked there or know the founders, ...<p>I find it quite interesting however, it's never really bringing anything valuable to the job post. The comments are never about asking what are the use of X language, how are the teams, ....
Seems to have slowed recently but Clever was borderline SPAM there for awhile. On more than one occasion I wished I could flag their post. (I understand that would probably be a slight misuse of the flag button.) Had there been a comments section I likely would have said something to get myself banned for a bit. So maybe it was a good thing I couldn't comment.
I'm not sure if this is a minority opinion or not, but since I don't see anybody saying it: the job postings would be better if they could be filtered out or at least throttled. I am so tired of being asked if I'd like to disrupt the big telecom companies or build drones in SF that it makes me contemplate writing a filtering RSS proxy whenever I see them.
since a lot of people on here have probably been involved / applied for companies posted on here, their feedback would probably be useful. in my case, an unnamed YC company made me a really insulting lowball offer. i feel the desire to mention that every time they post on here. maybe thats not what you want, but i think its good for everyone if companies are accountable and dont try to take advantage of people in the hiring process.
Those three you selected co-existed alongside 295 days of many mediocre, dull, boring and ridiculous job posts that don't foster good or valuable discussion. I think there was also problem(s) with startups trying to stay secret + being identifiable from their job listings. There did used to be comments, until those reasons.
Valuable to the readers or to the people posting job ads? I wouldn't want comments on my job ads and I assume the same is true of YC companies posting here.<p>I would wager many comments would be negative opinions of the job, the company, or something entirely unrelated.
In almost all cases it will be people griping, picking issues and holes in the job ad, running down the company.<p>There's a reason why few places on the Internet have comments on job ads - it's because recruiting is the business of rejection.<p>The naive would think comments would be polite positive enquiry and enthusiasm.
Maybe not the most noble or forward-thinking reason, but I'm happily employed and have no interest in seeing HN job posts, so I appreciate that the job posts have no comments link, because it makes them easier to mentally filter out when I'm scanning the front page.