Ask HN: Why is there some sort of a scam website being advertised on HN?

pqtyw 133 points 51 comments June 12, 2026
View on Hacker News

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?

Discussion Highlights (19 comments)

site-packages1

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.

toomuchtodo

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)

quickthrowman

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

cgh

These guys are run by Bloomtech, one of those scammy coding bootcamp things.

deadbabe

Needs to be a post mortem on how this was allowed to happen.

mikesurowiec

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.

hootz

Last time I found a spam account only posting links to scam websites, I sent an email to HN and they banned the account.

dartharva

Was about to ask the same

tyleo

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.”

mellosouls

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.

eggbrain

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...

fsniper

Quality of YC investments are nose diving.

tequila_shot

sending a ping to /dang - is this post expected to be where it is at? @dang Alright, the post is down now.

pbjerkeseth

Funny seeing that post, looking into it, asking the same question, and arriving here. Grifters gonna grift.

AndrewKemendo

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

sangupta

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.

saadn92

If it sounds too good to be true, then it usually is.

jddj

The greed index is off the frickin' charts right now across the board, that's why

dang

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.

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