Ask HN: Are YC startups *actually* hiring?

Hacker News Discussion ↗

Overall picture

  • Commenters report both: some YC startups do hire from public postings, but many roles feel fake, stale, or impossibly selective.
  • The hiring market is described as “a mess” with automation, spam, and misaligned incentives on both sides.

Ulterior motives & fake / stale postings

  • Job ads may be used for:
    • Signaling health/prestige (“we’re growing”).
    • Building future candidate pools when no role is open.
    • Meeting formal posting requirements while an internal favorite already exists.
    • H‑1B/immigration games and general data collection.
  • Some claim many postings, including on big boards, are outright fake or created by job boards themselves.
  • Posts can remain up long after budgets or optimism have evaporated, making them effectively dead.

Applicant experiences

  • Multiple people applied to hundreds of YC / HN roles and got zero or near-zero responses, even when seemingly well-qualified.
  • BS rejection reasons (“not velocity-focused”, “not a culture fit”) and late-stage rejections fuel cynicism.
  • Some do report success via YC’s WorkAtAStartup and HN “Who’s Hiring”, though it’s seen as a pure numbers game.

Startup / hiring side perspective

  • YC startups describe:
    • Hundreds to >1000 applicants per role within days.
    • Most applications as low-effort, AI-generated, or outright fraudulent résumés.
    • Many candidates unable to pass relatively simple real-world coding screens.
  • This volume pushes teams to:
    • Brutal early culling.
    • Focus on outbound recruiting and referrals; job posts mainly serve as shareable URLs.
  • Small teams lack dedicated recruiters and can’t thoroughly screen huge inbound pools.

Referrals, selectivity, and fairness

  • Several argue most startup hires are referrals; cold applicants are the last resort.
  • Advice: don’t rely on passive applications; hustle for warm intros.
  • Critics ask why companies keep public postings if they ignore them, calling it “make-believe” that wastes applicants’ time.

Automation, AI, and spam

  • Applicants use tools to auto-apply and generate AI résumés/letters; companies use ATS and ML filters.
  • This arms race leads to:
    • Candidates stuffing keywords to please algorithms.
    • Hiring managers filtering out anything that “sounds like AI” or generic enthusiasm.
  • There’s disagreement over expecting “mission enthusiasm” vs focusing on technical competence.

Compensation & incentives

  • Some founders complain applicants “want too much money”; others note YC startups offering very low pay/equity for high-risk roles.
  • Mismatch between startup comp and big-company expectations is seen as a source of friction.

Proposed improvements

  • Ideas floated: transparency about how long roles have been open, time-to-hire stats, response SLAs, vetting of job posters, centralized candidate databases, even “name and shame” lists.
  • Skepticism exists that platforms like LinkedIn already tried this and drifted toward spam and monetization.