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negrit

So i've been running a private job board with 3k members for few years now. People can comment on job posts.

There are 4 kinds of comments:

* Mention of someone, to make him/her aware that job may interest him/her

* Correct the person who posted on the job on a typo

* Mocking the job. Often a big circle jerk we have to moderate

* Someone saying that the company is awesome they have worked there or know the founders, ...

I find it quite interesting however, it's never really bringing anything valuable to the job post. The comments are never about asking what are the use of X language, how are the teams, ....

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> * Mocking the job. Often a big circle jerk we have to moderate

If the position is actually bad, then it's fair game for others to call it out. About a year ago, there was a Who's Hiring thread on HN, and a very large bank in NYC was offering internships... for $7.50/hour (minimum wage). They were called out on it (and rightly so, because that's just exploitative). My point is, we need people to call out the "bad" jobs so that people don't sell themselves short or do something they will regret.

> Mocking the job. Often a big circle jerk we have to moderate

That's pretty much what I would expect to see. Ever clicked the link to discuss an ad on reddit? It's rare that someone commented because they had something nice to say.

What if job postings were a weekly thread here, where people could comment on all of them/talk about other positions, etc? There might be more useful discussion to be had in a general jobs thread.

There are general jobs threads posted monthly (two of them — "Who is hiring?" and "Freelancer? Seeking freelancer?"). These comment-less job posts are a special privilege of YC companies that offers greater visibility.

The thing with the monthly threads is that there is rarely a followup on the questions.

Oh you're right, I forgot about those threads.

That is interesting. Since it's private, do you think that there is something about the community that leads to that? Aside from being discovered by a current employer/coworker or fearing that a question is bad, I don't really see any cost to asking questions. Maybe people feel protective of their process (i.e. they consider those questions private or proprietary).

> Mention of someone, to make him/her aware that job may interest him/her

> Someone saying that the company is awesome they have worked there or know the founders, ...

> it's never really bringing anything valuable to the job post.

But both of those things that you listed are valuable! The mocking is a bummer though.

In an ideal world yes but:

> Mention of someone, to make him/her aware that job may interest him/her

it rarely end up in having this person mentioned applying for the job. I can't recall the last time it happened.

> Someone saying that the company is awesome they have worked there or know the founders, ...

To be honest, I don't really care what you think of the company or the founders. I want to know why.

We tend to stop the mocking, it happen a lot less nowadays.

Curating the Q's could help here

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