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Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel

969 points by IliaLitviak ↗ HN
Earlier I posted in a “Who wants to be hired?” thread, looking for a place where I could apply my experience in hospitality, food tech and automation.

A couple hours later I received an email:

“Hi Ilia,

I saw your comment on the June Who’s Hiring thread. I build production-ready TypeScript and Python systems that integrate LLMs into real workflows, with particular focus on RAG, agent orchestration, and clear blah-blah-blah”

Come on. I am a forced immigrant with a wife, a cat, rent and crushing debt, who’s been unemployed for 6 months. I am naturally an extremely optimistic person, but boy is energy on the low by now. And every e-mail in my inbox, especially one starting with something related to my job search, is a glimmer of hope. Just to be crushed by what comes next. Yes, it’s a minor cut, but those compound.

Please just don’t do this.

Maybe add a skill to your Claude Code called “empathy”? You can have your Claw access a “be considerate of other people’s experiences” MCP server! Or just ask your “Daily Grind Reminder” Telegram bot to recommend a good book of fiction from time to time. Just to develop some humanity.

Sorry for venting.

111 comments

[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 69.8 ms ] thread
xingped
That's horrific for people to even think of doing that and I'm sorry that's happened to you. You have my condolences. Too many people in tech are so utterly shameless, unfortunately.
Zak
I got one of those too, from "Alya", which seems to be an LLM-based tool the creator describes as his daughter.

Beyond the usual rudeness of spam, that's a little creepy.

ramon156
I've gotten at least three, and I haven't replied to those threads in a while. Safe to say it's a problem.
Hamuko
So wait, are they trying to sell something to unemployed people?
bjord
my sincere(!) sympathies, but realistically this won't reach anyone relevant. best of luck in the job search.
Rendello
I've been getting a lot of job spam in my email the past week or two, not sure if it's from here or Github mostly.
randomdev123
I got a recruiter that is apparently AI. Get Clera is the name. I already banned their domain to spam.

If you are coming to me as AI, I will ban/mark spam you. Period.

ibejoeb
I just started getting a barrage of these last month. They're just scraping those threads. I don't think there's much to do about it. These aren't "real" hn folks that actually participate here.
codeforafrica
That's because you all share your email addresses directly in your posts. I put my email address in my profile, and anyone genuinely interested is just one click away from getting my address from there or from my website which i also link to. Aside from a handful of exceptions I get no spam whatsoever, despite posting for years and not obscuring my address at all. And what I do get is most likely hand-written.
zahlman
I've been getting a little bit from what I think must be people scraping my GitHub. (Or their OpenClaw agents electing to do so, or something.)
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stavros
You can filter a few of these by asking that they include some specific word in the subject. These spammers won't, and you can just delete those.
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ed153
As a general rule, if someone ever posts any kind of career troubles on any platform, the only correct responses should contain sympathy or a relevant career opportunity. Anything else is so callous.

Hang in there Ilia, you're not the only one hurting, and don't apologize for venting. Most of us in the HN community are far more supportive.

[dead] iqihs
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josefritzishere
The primary use of AI seems to be spam. It's so gross.
onlyrealcuzzo
In fairness, that's always been the primary use of ML - between spam and spam filtering.
andrewzeno
My email is filled with junk from cybersecurity "experts" telling me that my open source project is "very compromised" and that they will gladly reveal to me what the issue is, if I commit to paying them a bug bounty. I get at least a few every week. I hate them, but I feel like we are well past the point where in any place where there is money to be made, the majority of cold outreach will be from semi-personalized AI agents. You just have to accept that most of the time your get contacted by someone, it is likely not a human.
dheera
Reminds me of all the recruiters who reach out to me saying they're working on filling some engineer position but never say the company name, and when asked, they want to have a call.

Stop wasting my time, STATE THE COMPANY UPFRONT AND AT THE TOP, preferably in the subject line

chrismorgan
Whether it helps or not—the typical contact like this hasn’t been a human for decades now. What I’m seeing these days is materially almost identical to what went out ten years ago. Basic form letter with a cover sentence or paragraph of either no relevance, or a tenuous but normally ill-researched claim at relevance.
cyanydeez
this is what a pi based LLM is great for; give it it's own email address, then say something like "I'm intrigued, please talk to my security expert, CC'd" and cc the pi.
maxrumpf
are you a maintainer on npm?
ivanjermakov
Reason #176 to not be an open source maintainer.
sourcecodeplz
Then you have your own agent read your emails to flag these and... the circle begins
pluc
Have you gotten the "hey, wanna be a North Korean proxy?" offer yet?
Esophagus4
Does that happen?? I’ve always been curious how those things go down
tayo42
How much does it pay?
Spoom
Usually it's the Phillipines or an African country or something, but so very many times.
cmrdporcupine
Amazingly, Gmail dumps those straight to spam bucket for me. And yep, I get them.
csomar
Yes, though the North Korean angle was implied? I thought it is more likely to be a blackhat interview service than the North Korean themselves.
Grosvenor
I've gotten the north Korean wanting to use my upwork account... I'd have to create one first.

But now the Nigerian "format" scammers are into job scams. I got an email that reeked and played along a bit. I was "hired" after a curiously simple interview via signal, and had to wait for my "supervisor" to come train me.

Eventually I got the "boss" on the line to talk, he went absolutely postal when I asked if he was an African scammer. Apparently that's racist now.

zahlman
> I've gotten the north Korean wanting to use my upwork account... I'd have to create one first.

I've gotten that too, now that everyone ITT is talking about it. I had no idea what was going on with it at the time and ignored it. Amusing to know that there could be state actors behind it.

The version I got explicitly suggested that I create such an account for the purpose if I don't already have one (I didn't, and of course still don't).

> But now the Nigerian "format" scammers are into job scams.

Sorry, "format"?

Grosvenor
"format" is what Nigerian scammers call a playbook for each scam type. So a pig butchering "format", romance scam "format", inheritance scam "format", etc.

They offered to help me setup an Upwork account too. Tiresome creeps.

boesboes
Yeah, recruiters already were complete assholes in general, now they can scale their cuntiness..
CodeCompost
Not to troll but what is a "forced immigrant"?
lmz
Refugee? Draft dodger?
zirkonit
Based on the name, he's either Ukrainian running away from the war, or Russian, running away from being complicit in the war. Shitty situation to be in either way.
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crumpled
You had to leave and you can't go back.
keybored
Didn’t emigrate from a middle class European tech job to an upper-middle class American tech job.
gosub100
Lebanese who got their apartment blown up
IliaLitviak
A more than valid question! It's the only way I could figure out how to economically convey "I am a Russian who decided to leave Russia to not be complicit and because my history of protests and support for opposition makes it scary to stay, while I completely understand the level of privilege I'm enjoying and can't call myself a refugee even remotely". Even though I always wanted to live abroad, I didn't decide when and how exactly I would emigrate, hence "forced".
cmrdporcupine
Another trend I've seen is what I would term .. bottom-feeder ... services trying to take advantage and exploit people's hardship. AI generated e-mails that then do things like this (and this is only one of these kinds of things I've received):

"Right now, we are running a $35,000 API Hackathon. If you build the best tool on our data, we acquire your codebase for up to $20k.

But here is the real hook for your job search: To get API access, you must pass our Architectural System Design Audit. If your submission clears our technical bar, you don't just get an API key—you get instant VIP access to our job pipeline, and I will personally bypass HR to pitch your profile to hiring engineering leaders."

a) Written by AI [LLM shibboleths all over it]

b) Getting people to do interviews for things that aren't jobs.

c) Trying to get fire-sale "purchase" on people's IP assets / work?

d) Acting like a recruiter, but actually gatekeeping for jobs that... may not exist.

People are using the HN hiring forum posts to produce these.

Be careful out there people.

GodelNumbering
I was once suggested creating a 'fake job posting' to promote my startup, didn't do it for the same reason you described. Also the reason I have deep hatred for operators trying to exploit jobseekers or the ones trying to scam already indebted people.
Jeremy1026
Honestly, could just stop at "please don't spam people". Good luck on your hunt OP, hope you find something soon.
Tade0
I'm still getting this sort of spam to an address I posted here 5+ years ago. Recently it intensified, which leads me to believe it's automated.

I guess we can officially add a third entry and, keeping the alphabetical order, make it: "death, spam and taxes"

ElevenLathe
Ordinary, non-elite jobseekers (at least in the US) NEED a job or they will be homeless. If you want somebody to stop asking for a job, give them a job.