People get scammed all the time; this is newsworthy here only because it indirectly involves a Y Combinator startup. I doubt you'd find another journalist interested in the story.
I feel for the people in the situation, but you have to use common sense particularly when you're using up the bulk of your runway in one payment. Part of business is sizing people up and making a decision about whether to trust them or not -- and when you make bad decisions there are consequences you have to live with.
Written in fortune.com where they sell their brand to anyone to publish their scam articles
Gee, I wonder why ppl don't trust the news. I would say ppl don't trust anything anymore, because most businesses are about scamming and gaslighting their customers these days.
Not sure about the scam, but my bayesian bullshit filter is triggered by the "unlike all the evil for-profit corporations, we're a white'n'fluffy company aiming for the greater good".
What does this have to do with Data Scientists? So you didn’t read up on how to log time, made unnecessary mistakes, and an inflexible collective of likely underpaid service reps didn’t care enough to go beyond the letter of the law. That’s hardly a scam. That’s you not knowing what you’re signing up for and then being upset when you didn’t get the outcome you wanted. Hardly deserves front page news.
Once I applied to a slightly sketchy indeed posting. The company was named something incredibly generic like WorldProgrammers or GlobalDevs. Within 60 seconds of posting my application, I got a phone call from a very pushy guy with a thick Indian accent, requesting that I fill out a separate application over email. When I didn't immediately respond (because I was at work), I got a series of calls from the 'manager' over and over until I blocked the number.
The listing was on the edge of too good to be true, and the immediate and desperate attempts to reel me in were a huge red flag.
I withdrew my application, did everything I could to block them, and reported the listing to indeed.
I have no idea what the scam was, but I'm absolutely convinced it was a scam. It was honestly pretty scary, and I'm sure that a slightly less vigilant person would get pulled in.
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