Hacker News Reader

Comment by elastolin | Hacker News Reader

Is this satire? The fact that you even specify that you "do not ask for passwords" for social media accounts of potential hires, is sketchy as fuck. I'm sorry for the desperate people that go along with this shit.

View on HN

I wanted to clarify as there are reports of employers asking for people's social media login credentials (to log in as them and archive/review old/private posts) as a condition for hiring.

I think that's insane and abusive.

Asking to see someone's public webpage isn't.

Do you drive by their home before hiring them? Maybe peek through the windows? Obviously you can’t ask for a key to their house, that would be insane and abusive. But anything you can see from the street is fair game, right?

If I thought that such public information would yield information useful to a hiring decision, relative to the time and resources required to obtain that information, then yes.

The exterior of someone's house isn't useful in hiring. Their thoughts and opinions they choose to publish to the billions on the internet generally are.

I'd say you could learn almost as much about a person by looking at their house as by looking at their profile on the internet (that is until they learn that you will check their house. Once something gets measured it stops being a good way to measure or something like that)

Edit: and I kind of agree with the others.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com