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Tell HN: Anima/Shun (YC W21) Considered Harmful

26 points by JCharante ↗ HN
I like to think the Hacker News community is a nice, respectful community. YC companies who interact with the community should be especially careful to treat everyone like humans.

Unfortunately, I came across a reddit post that made me realize something [1]. Anima, a YC backed company, used the Who Wants to Be Hired Thread to mass-send the same email while writing it to look personalized and did so month after month. I think this is not behavior that the community wants to condone or encourage.

Shun's email to chater00:

https://gist.github.com/assets/13973198/8698a343-f2cd-4df8-8d2c-6724f81005fb

Why would Anima do this?

Reddit user cheater00 posted their email interaction with Shun [1] that took place after the January thread. They replied to Shun but never got a response. This suggests Shun mass-emailed everybody and didn't have the bandwidth to reply to emails, much less actually look at any of the applications.

Shun also did not reply to my email response in early December. I am not "salty" for being ghosted, I now have a really nice job, but I find this behavior of doing "growth" hacking disgusting.

Shun's email to me: https://gist.github.com/assets/13973198/1ff7527b-c9d9-43eb-a394-05b9da41b270

If you look at Anima's hiring page in the email, they mention the 0.5% - 0.8% hiring rate with Pride. I don't mind them being selective, but they're wasting so many HNer's time to get this vanity metric.

https://gist.github.com/assets/13973198/3a317bdb-0354-4c1b-89c7-b47a6102cfd2

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[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/193fv5q/i_finally_figured_it_out_i_know_why_companies/?ref=share&ref_source=link

15 comments

[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 37.1 ms ] thread
yieldcrv
this is incredibly normal behavior, but I’m ok with making it not normal, sure

have at it, let’s cancel Anima and pretend this is a unique problem until it is

JCharante
I didn't receive any other fake personalized email from the who is hiring thread, did you?
yieldcrv
yes I have
JCharante
Feel free to share here then. I think YC companies should be held to a higher standard not abusing the HN community.
wildknocker
Seems to be somewhat of a trend among companies recently to post job offers and reply to either the "top" candidates only or not reply at all
whimsicalism
This seems ordinary and fine practice to me. You can’t expect to get a response to every hiring email, even from a YC firm and even if they reach out to you first.
JCharante
The email contents are exactly the same, except for the usernames which are parsed from the comment thread. My problem isn't with not getting a response, my problem is that they sent the same email to everybody while writing it to sound personal with phrases such as "Saw your profile on HN and we think your skills look like a good fit for our team - wondered if you'd be interested in our YC company" and "I think you'd find our job description interesting, can I tempt you to take a look? :)".

If it was written to be less personal to make it clear that it's sent in mass then that'd be okay.

whimsicalism
Personalized recruiting messages are industry standard practice, I am sorry you got false hope.
sgammon
The email is written to sound personally targeted.
throwitaway033
They always seemed pretty off to me. If you read between the lines on their hiring page it seems to be saying 'Look at how many webapps our small team cranks out as we desperately try to reach product market fit'.

Anyways my story: Got auto reachout from Shun. I made it partway down the funnel after providing a pretty thoughtful (in my opinion) application. I took the automated code exam and figured I didn't do so well.

1-2 months down the line, another hiring thread, another auto email from Shun. I replied fairly salty, saying "It's great you've reconsidered!" then proceeding to say at least have the decency to remove rejected candidates from your auto emails.

cldellow
A previous discussion (flagged, for some reason): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38517333

I tend to agree with the OP. The potential employer is starting the relationship on a deceitful basis.

There's a reason people absolutely drag recruiters who do this - it's because it's slimy. At least with a recruiter, the company has a degree of insulation.

If the CEO is going to send emails claiming they've pre-screened you, are excited about talking to you and that they will get back to you if you submit an application, then it's reasonable for people to call them out when they don't do this.

nickkao
I'd wager you don't complain about recruiters on linkedIn. This is called outreach it's very normal and very much regular business practice.

I agree not responding is not a good look. But this is a lot of huff and puff for what is industry standard.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
sgammon
This happened to me too. I got an email from Anima and no response.
sgammon
I was pretty excited they had "reached out" to me directly. :(