Please don't spam people looking for employment. It's just cruel
Job-seeker criticizes spammers targeting "Who wants to be hired" threads with mass-generated recruitment emails.
A six-month unemployed person posted in Hacker News's "Who wants to be hired" thread seeking work in hospitality, food tech, and automation. Within hours, they received a mass-email from someone pitching TypeScript and Python LLM integration services. The author, facing financial pressure (rent, debt, dependent family), describes each such email as a burst of false hope followed by crushing disappointment. They call out the cruelty of targeting desperate job-seekers and sarcastically suggest the senders cultivate empathy or basic human consideration.
What HN community is saying
Commenters confirm this is a widespread problem spanning years, with scraped content and LLM-generated spam targeting the threads. The "Alya" bot (marketed as someone's "daughter") appears frequently and struck users as creepy. Some emails include outright scams offering income-splitting on contract work while asking for control of communication with clients, resembling known North Korean fraud schemes. Users report the spam has intensified in recent months. One practical note: posting email only in your HN profile rather than thread comments reduces spam volume, since scrapers focus on the easier targets. Commenters stress that unemployed people are prime targets for scammers exploiting desperation.