Ask HN: Is this take-home a scam? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is this take-home a scam?

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A Y-Combinator backed company, AutoAce AI, sent me this "take home" unsolicited, in which they ask for what appears to be a complete, "production ready", deployed internal tool. They want completed source for the service, and to have the "applicant" let them run large batches against it.

I can't tell if it's a deliberate hustle or slop. They attached a small test set with obviously incorrect labels, so I suspect the entire thing may be Claude-slop (it won't be able to label the audio itself).

Is this normal?

I wouldn't do any work of any kind before talking to a recruiter about the actual job - what's the salary and benefits? what are the expected hours? What kind of work would I be doing? etc.

I also wouldn't even open those files. God knows what's in there, or if it was actually sent by them. This is the equivalent of finding a USB stick in your job's parking lot.

It looked interesting, so I studied a bit into it, but I asked to present something in a meeting (no source code) so they ghosted me.

Did you apply for a job there?

Looking at their website, I couldn't find a link to available jobs: https://www.autoace.ai

No. It seems they found my profile on the Y Combinator job board and contacted me through that, referencing similar work on my CV.

https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Oeo-autoace-ai-co-pilot...

This seems to be them.

Are you interested in a job with them?

It looked like really interesting, but when I said I'd prefer to not send anything until having a chat, they ghosted.

I see. I might have said "Thanks for the reach out. What is the job you're offering?" It feels a little more collaborative and open and interested than "I'd prefer to not send anything until having a chat".

Having said that, I suspect it might not have made a difference. If you're really interested in them, see if you can find their job listings and apply. Or maybe this has sparked in you curiosity about other similar jobs so maybe search more widely. Good luck!

@andsoitis Thanks for the advice, I'll think about how I can be more diplomatic like that going forward. The SER is extremely interesting now that I dug into it so I will probe around if there is something there.

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