HN is for thoughtful conversation about topics of intellectual curiosity, and job ads are intrinsically uninteresting. Threads on uninteresting, predictable topics tend to be tedious and nasty (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...). It's easy to predict what threads on job ads would look like: a generic boo-or-yay referendum on each company, repeated each time. But the highest-motivated commenters would be ones with pre-existing grievances, so it wouldn't even be boo-or-yay. It would mostly just be boo. That would make HN worse, not better.
Uninteresting posts like job ads arguably shouldn't be on HN in the first place, but they're there for an out-of-band reason, which is that it's proper for HN to give something back to YC in exchange for funding it. Since that's their only reason for existing, it doesn't make sense to turn them into regular threads.
The opposite is true of Launch HNs, incidentally, which is one of the other concessions HN gives to YC. In those cases, there is something new and interesting to discuss—the launch of a startup—and since each company only gets one such thread, repeats aren't an issue. It's in HN's interest to have open comment threads on those submissions, so we do: https://news.ycombinator.com/launches.
> But since the only commenters motivated to participate in such discussions would be disgruntled ones with pre-existing grievances, it wouldn't even be boo-or-yay. It would just be boo.
Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I take issue with this statement though, because daily there are companies posted here that get a critical review, and inevitably a crowd amasses that comes in to provide counterpoints to the negative testimonials, the majority of the time a lot of good on topic and off topic conversations ensue. To me, that makes HN better.
I get that I'll catch heat for even suggesting this, but maybe consider a poll, some day if you have a change of heart. I think you might be surprised that the community would like to participate in those job threads the same way they do in "Whos Hiring?" for example, they're the same nature.
> daily there are companies posted here that get a critical review, and inevitably a crowd amasses that comes in to provide counterpoints to the negative testimonials, the majority of the time a lot of good on topic and off topic conversations ensue.
Aren't those companies already established? Isn't the topic usually about something related to a new product or scandal? Usually the topic circles around that. A new YC startup job ad likely won't have that.
With that said, any YC startups want to give it a shot? Allow comments and see if the questions helps with their recruitment? Might help craft a better ad.
> With that said, any YC startups want to give it a shot? Allow comments and see if the questions helps with their recruitment? Might help craft a better ad.
Wow that's a good idea, and compromise that I had not considered. Imagine if it were optional, that's a great solution to satisfy both sides and puts the startup in control of their own involvement.
We don't allow testimonials and discussions and criticisms of companies in the ordinary non-YC job "Who's Hiring" thread either; once a month, Dan has to go patrol those threads looking for people trying to start off-topic discussions on people's job ads.