Thank you for standing up and saying that!

The only occasion I've ever found justified for hiding the company name is when you're hiring in a town where the unemployment rate is > 25% and you can't manage the unemployment mob that inevitably forms outside the store.

There is only one reason those anonymous job postings exist - lazy hiring managers. I really wish pg would put his foot down and tell people to start standing up for their brand rather than hiding from it.

I don't think that's true. AFAIK, the anonymous listings are usually companies that haven't publicly launched yet and don't want to burn through their TechCrunch coverage early. It's PR, not HR. I do agree, though, that they're kind of annoying to read and I have trouble imagining what kind of desperate souls apply to these employment-roulette positions.

It's not the anonymity that is bothersome, they're just horribly written job posts. And worse still: comments are disabled so we can't ask any further questions.

I personally do find the anonymity bothersome.

If an organization expects me to send a detailed resume to them without knowing the first thing about them, that starts the entire relationship off in a profoundly asymmetrical way.

If your company's success largely hinges on a TechCruch article, you have much, much larger problems.

People will have a different opinion of you based on the order in which you tell them facts about yourself. Dan Ariely did some good research into this phenomenon on online dating sites. If a company tells you "we have great pay!...but we sell cigarettes" you're going to have a better response than if the company tells you "we sell cigarettes...but hey, great pay!" That's life. Companies hide negative facts about themselves behind these sorts of ordering tricks because, well, they work.

Now, YC companies seem the least likely to have anything to hide about themselves. That said, when I see an ad like this, my first reaction is to shy away - because even if they do have some legit reason for staying stealth (competitiveness, hiding YC funding, etc), they could also be doing this just to hide some fact that I might find negative later in the interview process. I've been burned one too many times by non-YC companies doing this to me, that I'm concerned to see YC companies doing it too.

Why can't you email and ask them who they are?

The onus should be on the hiring company to tell about themselves because they're the ones who want something. If I'm looking for a job, I can either look at the 99% of job listings (both startup and more mainstream) that will tell me exactly what I'll be working on and who I'll be working with or I can ask someone who's already been vague for clarification to decide whether I even want to apply. The incentive just isn't there for the job-seeker.

What you're suggesting is that it's perfectly reasonable for someone to post a help-wanted ad in the classifieds saying "I need help! Call me to find out what with!" and to expect people to call you instead of the ads all around yours.

Because the market for skilled software folk is very much tilted in favor of employees right now. Demand far outstrips supply. Why would a prospective (and presumably talented/in-demand) employee jump through your hoops?

When the inevitable crash comes and the supply of tech jobs tanks through the floor... then we will put up with these crappy HR shenanigans.

It's kind of like online dating. You could email a potential candidate and ask for a photo, but it's really not worth it since everyone else posts a photo. You just naturally assume that posting a generic description without a photo means they have something to hide.

explanation: stealth mode and/or 20-somethings