Y Combinator deletes posts after a startup's demo goes viral
techcrunch.comRecent and related:
'Hey Number 17 ' - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43175023 - Feb 2025 (122 comments)
Tell HN: Y Combinator backing AI company to abuse factory workers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170850 - Feb 2025 (160 comments)
That dang is here dispels the conspiracy that this is being hidden by YC.
I'd be interested to know what he original pitch to YC was by this company.
YC companies often pivot - it may be that their initial pitch was not this at all.
Nothing about YC seems to imply they care about worker conditions…
Not saying I support this product, the demo is some horrific soulless behavior, but I’m not surprised either.
Watching that video made me wonder whether I should even feel comfortable visiting HN.
I don’t think HN really generates anything for them.
It’s to pull eyeballs for jobs at YC portfolio companies and to attempt to convince founders to apply to batches. It is their marketing and talent sourcing. It is, arguably, the most valuable contributor of forward looking potential returns (considering most VC investment decisions are statistics and gambling).
I'm always skeptical about "eyeballs" type arguments. If we were talking about millions of people for an advert sure, but most folks here aren't YC participants / won't be and heck most talk about joining a startup as an IC on here is NOT POSITIVE ;)
It's the car commercial dilemma. No one is going to spend 30,60,100k on a whim because a commercial told them too. But the long term idea is to implant that idea of wanting X brand once you are in the market for a car. You can't know what you don't know.
But such effects need to be measured over years, not weeks. So a company won't know until it's too late.
> most talk about joining a startup as an IC on here is NOT POSITIVE
I think to the personality type most sought after for startup jobs, the discussion here is net encouraging.
Being discouraging to others is a side benefit. (Note that I am not in the group to whom it is encouraging.)
Bro, what? Of course you shouldn't. There are a lot of powerful influence on HN in a lot of different ways.
At least Slashdot's participation in modern late stage capitalism was restricted to like, selling banner ads to RedHat, and selling mugs and t-shirts. YC is a whole other ball game.
> modern late stage capitalism ... selling banner ads to RedHat, and selling mugs and t-shirts
If these are the supposed sins of modern late stage capitalism I say let's have more of it and less of the various types of socialism which the entitled always seem to be pushing as a replacement. I'd rather ignore annoying banner ads and refrain from buying merchandising than stand in a line in a street to a shop selling something, anything, no idea what but there's a shop which has something to sell so people stand in line like they used to do in the worker's and farmer's paradise which was to lead the world revolution to the glorious victory of socialism.
I'll even take the entitled brats kvetching about the sins of the economical order which allows them both the means as well as the free time and freedom to do so. They'd be standing in some line to a shop somewhere, no fruitPhone in their pockets and no way to use it even if they had without having the state come down on them for their sins against the glorious revolution if their purported ideal order were to come to pass because the revolution always eats its own.
BTW, I don't consider slavery to be a form of modern late stage capitalism, it is more related to the primitive origins from which the different *-isms arose. Slavery used to be the norm rather than the exception and in some places in the world it still thrives. It is in the much-maligned West where the strongest movements to abolish it were and are to be found.
So what was your point wrt Slashdot?
Woosh
Wondering is just a visceral reaction to the possible harms that come with all technologies. As with most gut feelings, it’ll soon be forgotten once that cool new shiny doohickey is announced, with a price point of $599.
Come on it's not about all new technologies, there are extremely reasonable concerns with this specific technology (or at least its application).
What even is the the point of VC vetting if companies like this make it through?
What do you think the purpose of VC vetting is? It's right there in the name: Capital. You know the thing they optimize for is capital, right?
Making even more money?
'chart goes up and to the right' seems to excuse a great many lapses in morality in the modern era.
YC doesn’t vet. It’s a sweatshop for startups. They need volume. For this reason, YC cohorts have always been full of wankers. Er, “wantrepreneurs”.
Ha! The sweatshop for startups has finally produced a startup that wants to help sweatshops grind their workers into dust. The circle is finally complete!
More of a "fractal", if you ask me, but there's definitely a similar pattern here:
Wanting to maximize profits by squeezing work out of less-fortunate people, efficiently, and at scale.
The circle will complete when the co-op spaces install this new system so startup founders can watch their employees. And then the circle will make another loop and VCs can watch the startup founders.
What do you think VCs are vetting for?
(Hint, it's potential for profit, not ethics.)
Even "Taylorism" wasn't this bad...it at least tried to analyze conditions that were constraining worker productivity. This just measures output and manages by pressure and belittlement.
> This just measures output
Not even that. Measuring output makes a certain amount of sense. This just measures "looking busy". It's practically an admission that they don't care about actual production, they just enjoy hassling people.
Bizarre that they would do this instead of trying to alleviate the toil of production instead. I just don't get it.
Improving processes is hard.
Wagging your finger at that “bad” employee who is “slacking” that’s a very desirable and I think almost primal motivation for some folks….
When market conditions give you a glut of "qualified" labor you can afford these practices.
Then again these are precisely the types of "poverty studies" that have been done in India for years. "Should we fine nurses who are late to work? If so, how much?" "Should web publicly shame and harass office workers who leave early? If so, how much?" Lookin' at you, "Poverty Action Lab."
This looks like the logical extension to what we've been putting this country through for years.
Actual manufacturing engineers are expensive and tell you things that you don't want to hear/require work and long term thinking on management's part. Yelling at/blaming employees is instant gratification.
> This just measures "looking busy". It's practically an admission that they don't care about actual production, they just enjoy hassling people.
I would tend to read that as saying more about the skill level (or lack thereof) of the people doing the measuring than about that their goals are
This is like when I worked at UPS loading trucks over the summer and they recorded how many packages I scanned in 15 minute intervals and I was slower than they wanted. It sucked.
These guys spent a lot of effort making a really great implementation of sweatshop software. These two privileged kids really thought it was a great idea and honestly didn't think there was anything wrong about this at all. Objectively they did a great job from a technological perspective.
The fact it didn't cross their minds that maybe this is a bad idea to release in the US really shows the cultural difference between the West and other countries like India. There are plenty of things wrong with the US but blatant treating of lesser-privileged people like animals is something that isn't well tolerated here.
I would hazard a guess that plenty of US companies (start with Amazon warehouses, move on to truck drivers) do very similar things, if not exactly the same.
I've noticed this in interactions between high caste and low cast Indians at my job. Many High caste Indians have a level of arrogance towards low cast Indians that would make a Goa'uld system lord embarrassed. They truly feel entitled to their subservience and cheap labor. It is remarkable. I'm not sure if anyone born and raised in the US has the same degree of entitlement. You would have to go back to slave plantation owners in the US South.
> Objectively they did a great job from a technological perspective.
It’s not clear to me that their software, actually does what it says… I feel like that wasn’t entirely clear from the demo. It’s not like a short demo proves much.
>The fact it didn't cross their minds that maybe this is a bad idea to release in the US really shows the cultural difference
They're YC-backed. Was there no one to advise them on the "cultural difference"?
That has been the criticism of YC of late. The “advise” part has been lacking.
> They're YC-backed. Was there no one to advise them on the "cultural difference"?
When they talk about money, the "cultural difference" doesn't matter. /s
> The fact it didn't cross their minds that maybe this is a bad idea to release in the US really shows the cultural difference between the West and other countries like India. There are plenty of things wrong with the US but blatant treating of lesser-privileged people like animals is something that isn't well tolerated here.
McDonalds and Amazon are American companies that micromanage workers - the only difference is that their software is inhouse. The next time you're at any fast-food drive through, have a look at the monitors they have up, you'll likely see a timer and stats about rate they are serving customers.
More broadly, Hell, mouse-jigglers became a thing, and most American retail outlets won't let their cashiers sit (no chairs!) - talk about treating workers like animals.
> These guys spent a lot of effort making a really great implementation of sweatshop software.
This is such a fallacy of "If it is evil, it must be competent". Did you actually look at the software? In no universe can you confidently infer that it's a "really great implementation", it's childish at best. You're just assuming it so you can make the rest of your argument.
What kind of fallacy is that? I generally assume the opposite.
I'm only assuming its somewhat competence because it still got funded by Y Combinator in a pretty stiff time to make pitches.
Yeah, I’ll be honest the UI looks like it was churned out by Claude.
When I went to India I was quite shocked how badly they treat each other. The killing people for marrying the wrong cast is maybe the worst of it but you see the attitude all the time. https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/gurugram-woman-22-killed-by-...
> There are plenty of things wrong with the US but blatant treating of lesser-privileged people like animals is something that isn't well tolerated here.
Eh, that's flattering, but there are many ways of treating lesser privileged people like animals that are socially acceptable in the US, e.g. homelessness, prison slave labor, healthcare, immigrants, the whole "tough on crime" schtick, just off the top of my head.
There are all for the most part special cases. Most people aren’t homeless, in prison, illegal immigrants, etc.
This is just what-about-ism.
Clearly what the person was talking about was how PEOPLE tend to treat others, in vast numbers, so that it’s common to be an offender and even more common to be on the receiving end.
There are not 100 million people in the US actively poorly treating 250 million others like cattle.
dismissing what is often the lowest income part of a country as a minority is a pretty useless tautology. Of course the poorest people are the poorest.
>There are not 100 million people in the US actively poorly treating 250 million others like cattle.
So it's okay when it's maybe 10,000 people treating 320 million others like cattle?
AI enforced slavery. I remember reading a short story where workers get instructions from an AI constantly after starting out as work assistance. Don't remember the details.
“Manna” by Marshall Brain of howstuffworks.com ?
RIP Marshall Brain. He was a great man. And quite befitting the peculiar name.
It really makes me think. Honestly the Manna system has only just since the LLM discovery been possible, whereas it seemed a bit farfetched to me 15 years ago when I first read it. It would be pretty easy to roll today’s “AI” into a product to replace fast food managers like in that story.
An interesting read, thanks for this.
Whoa this is excellent!
From back when we thought silicon valley were the good guys working to prevent a dystopian future and deliver a better one.
There is nothing AI about that demo though? It is just humans talking on the phone looking at an mvp dashboard of basic productivity metrics. In serious logistics/ manufacturing better stuff than this is already in place.
e.g this article from six years ago about Amazon’s practices then: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/25/18516004/amazon-warehouse...
It's not slavery. There's enough of that around without making stuff up
There's a very common and often discussed concept called wage slavery. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
Which is different from chattel slavery, of course. But it's still an extant theory that gets discussed widely. It would seem an AI company to be a labor panopticon would align with the critiques raised by the concept of wage slavery.
Its important to raise awareness of the forms of modern slavery [1] and while comparing employee-surveillance software to slavery may seem hyperbolic, we who build these tools are culpable to their impact on the world and what they might lead to next.
Another example of terms being appropriated like that would be how "piracy" now refers to copying information your aren't legally permitted to copy, as well as the older meaning of using violence to steal things at sea.
Another one is nemesis, which now refers to a long standing enemy, as well as the older meaning of a Greek goddess of vengeance.
Don't imply or wink and nudge. Say what you mean to say. Your example is either a non sequiter like mine, or it's implying something while avoiding saying the actual thing you are trying to convey.
You're right. It's not slavery.
Slaves didn't have freedom to move jobs or to have agency in their lives. At the base level, let alone all the abuses they faced which varied in places and times throughout history.
But a lot of these workers don't have some things that even slaves had. Like room and board.
Many, many, sweatshop workers are slaves.
Why not call it Panoptify.
(In reference to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon )
Aside from the mildly disturbing tone of the video, I thought it was amusing/interesting that both of them were born into families that owned factories and got into Duke. What a world of people that get into YC.
Not gonna lie the tone of that product pitch sounded straight out of a certain mobile game ad.
What do you mean you’ve been working all day? I've got over 500 million power in “Rise of Kingdoms” and
My win-win-ism: "Helping employees meet their full potential!"
“ No one exceeds their potential. If they did, it would mean we did not accurately gauge their potential in the first place.”
-GATTACA
While still paying then peanuts.
YC, We make money when no one else can
I really hope that this was just a crappy mockup that the founders didn't spend any actual time on.
Because if it is a fully fledged product, I'm not sure what that says about the many people at YC and elsewhere that gave it a pass. Seriously wtf material.
It’s not a cultural thing. It happens here too. Someone created something like this to track strawberry pickers and their ‘productivity’.
Remember they are not even paid minimum wage by the hour. They are paid by how many punnets they pick. And this founder thought it was a great idea.
American Ag is more exploitative than any third world/developing country because the really desperate work here. It is sorely in need of automation.
Nobody wants to actually invest in Ag automation..not really…there is a lot of BS floating but everything grown locally and on our shelves relies on low paid manual labour.
I wish.. so very much..that Americans see how their food is grown.
I grew up in Santa Cruz county. I went to school with field workers' kids. I don't know about the ones that were migrants as we didn't keep in touch, but the ones I went to school with year after year almost all went military then college. None went on to be field workers. American ag might suck, but like you said it at least comes with something more, some future hope, if only for your kids.
Anyone who would fund or build this is, in my mind, taxonomically evil. Maybe not irretrievably so, but YC would need to do a lot of work in my mind to not be "that form that believes the panopticon and dehumanization is good."
This isn't just run of the mill capitalism bad, this is truly exceptionally vile and staining.
Probably depends what the pitch was. "Monitor assembly lines using AI so you can tell when a machine breaks" is radically different from "constantly snitch on all your factory workers".
I wonder where monitor assembly lines to ensure people are following work instructions sits?
Ensuring order of operation was a big deal at the company I worked, but this isn't going to be able to track that.
Or protect your workers, keep them safe....
> This isn't just run of the mill capitalism bad, this is truly exceptionally vile and staining.
My friend, they’re one and the same.
2025 tech industry try not to be the bad guys in a dystopian Sci-Fi story
Challenge: Impossible
Please fund my torment nexus.
so, we don't yet have AI good enough to do real work, but we do have AI good enough to punish people for not doing work.
We need an alternative platform
programming.dev is a federated platform
Mastodon
I like lobste.rs. It gets heat from being invite only and therefore somewhat snooty but I’m a big fan
A bit too posh even if they now ban UK users.
Will likely be bought by Amazon. Looks like a good fit for their warehouse work "culture".
This is why it is no longer safe to make the most dangerous satire.
Life imitates art, https://theyesmen.org/project/finland
It is interesting to me that people seem to believe that were it not for this software, no one would ever complain at workers who are, or who are though to be, slacking. As though that concept was invented by the software.
In reality this sounds to me like a play to eliminate the manager jobs, not to materially change working conditions for the rank and file, who are monitored for output one way or another, even in Western countries. Nobody employs workers unconditionally and for life.
If you are going to be funding boss spyware at least have the guts to face the backlash
Bullies always act tough but they are often weak and insecure.
Some discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43170850
Also discussion from today: 'Hey Number 17 ' (404media.co) 314 points by Amorymeltzer 10 hours ago | 122 comments | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43175023
Holy shit, this is pure evil.
”Optifye says it’s building software to help factory owners know who’s working — and who isn’t — in “real-time” thanks to AI-powered security cameras it places on assembly lines, according to its YC profile.”
"At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus"
The Luddites were right. We need to learn from them to stop these kinds of practices in the cradle.
Too late
the lashings will continue until morale improves
A startup looking to act as the equivalent of overseers on a plantation in 19th century is very representative of the American neoliberal shithole we live in.
A truly disgusting display by everyone involved. Only a sad, sorry person would ever consider using technology like this.
Did someone at YC watch this and think "wow, I'm in!"? lol.
This kind of naive focus on technology is dehumanizing.
What are Universities doing to curb this?
It sounds like you want universities to instill a sense of respect for other people with a different socioeconomic background. The current administration would consider that to be "woke" or "DEI", and fine Duke the equivalent of it's endowment based on a tenuous link to the anti-affirmative-action SCOTUS ruling.
Nothing ? /s
That's absolutely insane
I'm confused, what's so bad about measuring worker productivity?
I wouldn't be surprised if the startup asked YC to pull the Launch after the backlash, and I would be surprised if HN was resistant to doing that. Unlike most of what runs on HN, Launch HNs (and YC company job posts) are purely a benefit for YC companies.
I wouldn't bring this particular product to market. But I think people have weird ideas about the level of intentionality that exists inside of YC with respect to its portfolio companies.
Relative to an ordinary VC fund, YC admits absurd numbers of companies every year (always has!). It deliberately admits companies that are nothing but pairs of impressive founders and an idea. Those teams get some office hours advice from some subset of YC partners, but are left alone to build their companies --- YC takes a small amount of equity, nothing resembling control. By the time Demo Day or "Launch HN" happens, many of those companies are working on totally different things from their applications.
I don't really understand why anyone would expect YC to keep a durable record of a Launch post that was working against the startup that put it together. They're not a journalism outlet, and it looks like journalism did just fine keeping a record of what happened here.
> I don't really understand why anyone would expect YC to keep a durable record of a Launch post that was working against the startup that put it together. They're not a journalism outlet
Is it really surprising that people might expect "Hacker News" to follow the basic standards of respectable news outlets?
I think people mostly just like piling on.
I'm sure they do. That doesn't mean the criticisms aren't justified.
Does this even have anything to do with Hacker News?
this is just surveillance with python machine learning noo??
seems like bad business since the endgame was full automation robot factory
Wet automatons can well be more convenient than real robots, for many jobs
Yeah but this is for manufacture mostly not specialized one
I'm very glad to live in a country where something like this would be considered blatantly illegal.
In the UK and most of the west this is unethical but there is no explicit law that makes it illegal, curious what country you are from that deems this illegal?
I think any country with GDPR, although some are more known to enforce it aggressively than others.
France fining Amazon for similar surveillance based on scanner data: https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/national-news/2024/employee-...
Germany issung a 10 million fine to a small (<1000 employees) company: https://www.dataprotectionreport.com/2021/01/new-german-fine...
That was "just" CCTV, not an AI panopticon. I think the law (and nearly-guaranteed consequences) are so clear in Germany that few larger companies would be stupid enough to seriously consider something like this, and if they did, any serious Betriebsrat (works council) would put a quick end to it even before the privacy authority could bring the hammer down.
Switzerland has laws against behavioral surveillance too, although I'm not sure how the enforcement mechanisms look in practice. But I expect something like this to be too blatant for employers to get away with it. (https://www.edoeb.admin.ch/en/video-surveillance-in-the-work..., "The use of video surveillance systems for the targeted monitoring of employee behaviour is prohibited".) These rules are explicitly considered health & safety rules due to the psychological harm (stress etc.) that this kind of surveillance causes.
Where is something like this illegal?
"The European Court of Human Rights has consistently held that video surveillance of an employee in the workplace, whether hidden or not, as well as interception of the content of employee conversations on a work phone, constitutes interference within the meaning of Article 8 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms."
https://legalitgroup.com/en/employee-monitoring-what-employe...
I've posted a detailed answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43180709#43180723