Back to stories
news.ycombinator.com

Tell HN: Don't mass spam employers with LLM generated emails

7points bykaramazov1d
If you're looking for a job, do -not- have Claude bulk email every company on "Who's Hiring".

These things all look the same and your message is just going to get marked spam.

For example, it's painfully obvious that our staff eng role's "combination of distributed execution, workload optimization, and cost-aware infrastructure" is not, in fact, "unusually close" to whatever line on your resume Claude decided is tangentially relevant.

Just write a normal email by hand and send it. If you it looks like you spent 5 minutes looking up what we do and are actually excited I'll at least look at your resume; if you spent 0 minutes thinking about the job posting I'm going to spend 0 minutes on this too.

Open articleView on Hacker News

Comments

4 total · 4 loaded

Ranked by HN
dang12hon HN
We're not an employer, but I've been referring to these links lately, when trying to persuade emailers not to do that to us either. (It doesn't seem to have helped much, so far...)

It will be an uncommon choice not to have LLMs write for you, but it won't be a merely idiosyncratic one. It will be what all the people who care about thinking well do. Not using LLMs to write for you won't be like not using Google Maps in a new city. It will be like choosing to run and lift weights, even though we now have machines that can transport us and lift weights for us. In fact, since it will be what all the smartest people do, it will probably be prestigious to write for oneself. Which in turn means more people will claim to do it than will actually do it.

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/2070184265942548978

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/2058844147092488401

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/2058855820121498037

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/2058871512451412457

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/2058863028523659390

https://twitter.com/paulg/status/2068994868412629467

https://paulgraham.com/writes.html

oliculipolicula10hon HN
Could my model of Terry Tao now be updated to generate,

  In fact, since it will be what all the smartest [mathematicians] do, it will probably be prestigious to [math without AI]. Which in turn means more people will claim to do it than will actually do it.
That'll show them! That mathematicians are truly dumb!

Or that LLMs for writing need work and funding too..

legitster1don HN
I'm employed, but have been in the job market for over a year.

Right now, any job opening is like fighting for a seat on the last helicopter out of Saigon. Whenever I do get an interview - I'm one of over a dozen applicants interviewing for the same position. Everyone is desperate, hiring managers have extreme power, and the bar is constantly being raised on how much you need to be willing to do be considered.

The irony is everyone wants to see a portfolio of AI work, but if you use AI for any part of the hiring process it's a demerit against you.

gokuljs1don HN
That doesn't mean that you have to send shitty emails to founders right