Maybe a startup could work on this problem - HN has two moderators, I’m not sure it’s realistic to ask them to track more than what they already do. How would they even track and verify such hearsay anyway?
I'm mostly just spitballing un-implementable ideas. At the end of the day, the HN "Who's Hiring" tradition relies on people acting in good faith, which cannot be assumed anymore. There is nothing to stop a "hiring" company from lying about every last thing in their job ad.
HN has two moderators but the YC Job Opening ads are not just part of HN, they're part of YC as a whole.
I expect YC to do due diligence if one of their companies receives several reports that they heard no replies (it's not that many companies). If it's found to be more than hearsay, they lose HN ad privelleges.
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I wouldn't do a startup but I certainly could see myself creating a bunch of fake developer profiles of varying skill levels and sending them to companies en masse. If they don't reply to anything even though they have had a job opening, they get placed on the (public) name & shame list.
Would also be interesting to automatically keep track of which job openings a company has and how long they've been open for.
