Tell HN: Anima/Shun (YC W21) Considered Harmful
I like to think the Hacker News community is a nice, respectful community. YC companies who interact with the community should be especially careful to treat everyone like humans.<p>Unfortunately, I came across a reddit post that made me realize something [1]. Anima, a YC backed company, used the Who Wants to Be Hired Thread to mass-send the same email while writing it to look personalized and did so month after month. I think this is not behavior that the community wants to condone or encourage.<p>Shun&#x27;s email to chater00:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;assets&#x2F;13973198&#x2F;8698a343-f2cd-4df8-8d2c-6724f81005fb<p>Why would Anima do this?<p>Reddit user cheater00 posted their email interaction with Shun [1] that took place after the January thread. They replied to Shun but never got a response. This suggests Shun mass-emailed everybody and didn&#x27;t have the bandwidth to reply to emails, much less actually look at any of the applications.<p>Shun also did not reply to my email response in early December. I am not &quot;salty&quot; for being ghosted, I now have a really nice job, but I find this behavior of doing &quot;growth&quot; hacking disgusting.<p>Shun&#x27;s email to me: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;assets&#x2F;13973198&#x2F;1ff7527b-c9d9-43eb-a394-05b9da41b270<p>If you look at Anima&#x27;s hiring page in the email, they mention the 0.5% - 0.8% hiring rate with Pride. I don&#x27;t mind them being selective, but they&#x27;re wasting so many HNer&#x27;s time to get this vanity metric.<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gist.github.com&#x2F;assets&#x2F;13973198&#x2F;3a317bdb-0354-4c1b-89c7-b47a6102cfd2<p>---<p>[1]: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;old.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;recruitinghell&#x2F;comments&#x2F;193fv5q&#x2F;i_finally_figured_it_out_i_know_why_companies&#x2F;?ref=share&amp;ref_source=link