HN Explorer

Ask HN: Why are comments disabled for the “X is Hiring” posts?

12 points by julianlam ↗ HN
Just an honest question I had... I would have thought that these hiring posts from YC companies would be a great vehicle to advertise their company product, culture, etc., especially since the posts themselves are artificially boosted.

More than once I've thought -- "that sounds like a cool company, maybe their founders would do an informal Q&A", only to discover that there were no comments.

Is it because they got flooded with negative comments about the company in question?

4 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 15.5 ms ] thread
version_five
Comments are also de-facto disabled for the monthly "who's hiring" posts. Personally I think this is a good thing, these posts are for people looking for jobs and employers posting them, not for debating the good/bad of individual employers which would create a massive distraction and could easily be found/posted elsewhere by people that were interested. I expect it's the same with featured YC companies that are hiring.
gus_massa
Reply from dang himself (1.5 years ago):

> The short version: job ads are boring. The long version:

> If job ads were threads, each thread would be a generic referendum on the company. Worse, it would be the same referendum over and over. [...]

Even longer version available in the original comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22767253 (Link to the parent of the comment for context.)

rajnathani
To add to gus_massa's referenced dang's earlier comments on this, it would also be harder to moderate. HN has limited moderating resources, yet dang et al do a really good job.
seattle_spring
The comments used to be enabled and they were mostly made by disgruntled ex-applicants accusing the companies of things like ageism.