Ask HN: Why is there some sort of a scam website being advertised on HN?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48506575
Clearly seems like something dodgy and most likely a scam, why would it be on the first page? From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html: Another kind of job ad is reserved for YC-funded startups. These appear on the front page, but are not stories: they have no vote arrows, points, or comments. They begin part-way down and fall steadily. Only one is on the front page at a time. The rest are listed at https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs. Also, from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html: Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Send it to hn@ycombinator.com. I've deleted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48506575 now because technically it wasn't a job ad. You can see from https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs the sort of thing that usually appears in this category. > because technically it wasn't a job ad Were steps taken to disincentivise Gauntlet AI from posting a similar not-a-job-ad again? If there's one company that will gladly exploit that gray area, it's them. "Email us" versus a public Ask HN does not exude confidence in stopping a HN-backed scammer. Thankfully, theres enough sites and accounts that scrape HN, that all new posts are immediately posted via @hackersnews@mastodon.cesium.pw So damage control (ala deletion/hiding) can be found. Now, YC should consider cleaning their ranks from companies that use their name for legitimacy in running scam operations. There are mirrors of HN all over the place, and nobody is trying to hide anything. We don't do things that aren't defensible to the community [1], unless we make a mistake, and in that case we acknowledge, correct it, and try not to make it again. As we've been at this for 15+ years, it happens more rarely than it used to. There are a couple of reasons why we run HN this way. First, the only value HN has is the community, meaning community goodwill is our only real asset. Second, if we don't, we never hear the end of it until we do, and operant conditioning is a hell of a drug. [2] [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... It’s a /jobs post. Link to all job postings, the Gauntlet AI one is at the top of the list: https://news.ycombinator.com/jobs Gauntlet AI I believe is correlated originally with Lambda School (YC S17). YC founders I believe are able to post job postings on Hacker News, although this might stretch the definition a bit... Austen Allred started GauntletAI after his Lambda School bootcamp (now BloomTech) was fined, banned from participating in lending activities, and became too toxic to escape their old brand. It's not clear to me why he gets to post privileged ads on Hacker News. Is GauntletAI a division of BloomTech, and therefore considered a YC portfolio company? These aren't even job ads. GauntletAI is a recruiting play. They make money by getting strong candidates to apply and then collecting recruiting fees from companies for placement. They really do have people travel to Austin for some disorganized vibecoding classes with their vibecoded output used for resume building to increase their odds of getting placed (and therefore GauntletAI getting paid). It's just the evolution of their bootcamp model updated for AI and the fact that their founder was banned from participating in lending agreements due to their deceptive practices. Now they're trying to collect money from the companies instead. So this isn't even a job ad. It's a recruiter soliciting candidates. I didn't think YC companies were allowed to use their postings to advertise services. Gauntlet AI was a mask of BloomTech initially at least.[1] Anyone who joins Gauntlet should know 70 percent of cohort 1 lost their job in under 7 months, and roughly 1/3 of each cohort does not get a job. As one of Austen’s haters, he’s fun to follow. End of last year he announced that he was going to relaunch a bankrupt company called Marin Software and have a documentary crew follow them and do it all with AI in a month or something. A few weeks later, wow, they’ve booked $1.2m of revenue! And then he never mentioned it again. Documentary never surfaced. Website doesn’t work. https://xcancel.com/Austen/status/2001357051541491717 Austen is the perfect representation of the AI world. A grifter with zero substance and happy to lie. 1.2m of revenue was 120k in the first month, a lot of the money came from Joe Liemandt and alpha school affiliates. Austen is a snake oil salesman. Very weird I cannot flag it. It's definitely a scam. Normally one cannot flag ads. Did HN pay for this advertisement? Is this a YC company? I really doubt they would be funding a company like this. > Is this a YC company? I really doubt they would be funding a company like this. Gauntlet AI was a mask of BloomTech initially at least.[1] BloomTech was a mask of Lambda School. Y Combinator funded Lambda School. YC funds a lot of dodgy companies these days. It is either a YC company or the poster was (or is) a YC founder. When I saw this, I thought it was a paid advertisement on HN. yuck. At least when other companies do the jobs post it always includes "is hiring" to make it clear what it's for. Some YC companies have more creative/curiosity gap titles for their hiring ads, which I dislike. There was once a job ad which was just a terminal command that pulled their job information, which was one of the few times I had to email hn@ycombinator.com to suggest that HN not encourage users to run arbitrary code. I could be wrong, but I thought the "is hiring" posts are from a mechanism specifically for Ycombinator companies (which is why they also don't have comments on them) These guys are run by Bloomtech, one of those scammy coding bootcamp things. Originally "Lambda School" if BloomTech doesn't ring a bell Wow, this doesn’t even look like the normal “hiring”/jobs post. Just a funnel straight into a potential scam :/ Shocking to see it here. It looks like they might be using a loophole since their product is training for jobs they are using that as a substitute for, “we’re hiring.” > Just a funnel straight into a potential scam They claim that they do not charge you anything. So, how can they scam you? Of course, besides your hours and the potential outcome (code). Just curious. Research the issues Lambda School had, particularly how "free" turned out to not be free. To be fair they also claim they will give you $200k... Hijacking your comment to reply to a dead post: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48506817> The proper way to deal with such issues is to email the mods at hn@ycombinator.com. This is in the HN guidelines: "Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something. Send it to hn@ycombinator.com." <https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> The post yours linked to appears to have been removed, so the immediate problem has been resolved. (Not a mod, just an active participant.) Not cash! Tell HN: Gauntlet AI Is BloomTech/Lambda School - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42761972 - January 2025 (8 comments) Gauntlet AI is an intensive 12-week AI training - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42759459 - January 2025 (6 comments) Gauntlet AI – An intensive 12-week AI training - Automatic $200k/yr job - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42410277 - December 2024 (2 comments) https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (TLDR Gauntlet AI -> LambdaSchool & BloomTech | YC S17) This looks like an unrepentant scammer. It's kind of upsetting, for me to see these, because they prey on folks that are out of work, or afraid they will be out of work. I guess it makes money (from desperate people), so I guess that it's "legit," as far as this site goes? I have a problem with folks that scam desperate people (because of the extracurricular work that I do), but hey, I guess I'm in the minority. This is normal for YC companies launching, though traditionally they would say (YC W26) or something like that My guess is that they realized that was bad for conversion and just did a regular post I think more interesting is that the product comes across like a scam and so all those things together make it look like a big scam Needs to be a post mortem on how this was allowed to happen. Gauntlet AI was a mask of BloomTech initially at least.[1] BloomTech was a mask of Lambda School. Y Combinator funded Lambda School. And Paul Graham admired Austen Allred's persistence to scam people.[2] The sycophancy in the replies to Graham gives me second-hand embarrassment. I haven't used Twitter since the mid naughties, but I see that startup culture of ingratiating yourself to whomever is successful in the space is still alive and well. It's been happening for some time now. I saw this pop up over 6 months ago. After searching I can find some dating back at least a year. Even more reason for post-mortem. I'm pretty sure I reported this some time ago, I remember the bullshit headline salary and non-headline hours: 80–100 hrs / week of production building I may be misremembering but I think it got positive comments from pg on X[1] which was disappointing. This website and company seem dubious to be polite. Ah, here you go: [1] ...I've never seen a company with such dedicated haters. ... https://x.com/paulg/status/2019770359830949961 https://xcancel.com/paulg/status/2019770359830949961 I have enough admiration for him to be willing to hear the argument and have my mind changed, but they clearly have friends at YC and on the surface it doesn't look good. Last time I found a spam account only posting links to scam websites, I sent an email to HN and they banned the account. If it sounds too good to be true, then it usually is. Was about to ask the same The greed index is off the frickin' charts right now across the board, that's why Funny seeing that post, looking into it, asking the same question, and arriving here. Grifters gonna grift. I saw the original post first and thought it looked fishy so wanted to see what the comments looked like. My muscle memory for immediately clicking the last link on the right under the post to check out the comments just hid the post, and I figured nothing of value was lost and moved on (to this post which was right underneath it). sending a ping to /dang - is this post expected to be where it is at? @dang Alright, the post is down now. Quality of YC investments are nose diving. Gauntlet AI is a mask of Lambda School effectively. Y Combinator funded Lambda School in 2017. Quality of _____ is nose diving. I can vouch that this is not a scam. My wife enrolled with them and went through the first weeks of their program, though she couldn't complete due to some exigency. They were trained on how to vibe-code, and then asked to build complex apps using AI with all the costs borne by Gauntlet. Her friends did fly to Austin and went through the complete program. ...and are all now on 200k, right? A few of them have jobs at other places. No idea of their salary. But, they didn't had any binding clause - you could attend the course to your best and could leave without any penalty. They didn't ask my wife to refund any expense when she dropped midway - nor did my wife pay anything. PS: My wife joined their cohort an year back. Folks today may have different experiences.