YC founder asks desperate job seekers to tattoo themselves for an interview
A San Francisco-based AI startup, LemonLime, faced backlash after offering job interviews to candidates who agreed to get a permanent company tattoo. The CEO has since apologized and offered to pay for removal services after the stunt was widely criticized as unprofessional and exploitative.
Why it matters
This incident highlights the extreme lengths some startups go to for branding and the ethical boundaries of recruitment practices in the competitive tech industry.
Today in novel sentences: A San Francisco AI startup CEO is apologizing for asking people to permanently tattoo themselves in exchange for a job interview. One of San Francisco’s many difficult-to-explain AI startups, LemonLime, recently offered hopeful (desperate?) applicants an instant job interview, but only if they got its logo or a related design permanently tattooed on their bodies. Seven people took the company up on the offer, according to CEO Jordan Zietz. The logo resembles a wedge of lemon, or perhaps Pac-Man mid-bite — a permanent reminder of a company that, according to its website, “learns your business and then automates your team’s busywork in a single click.” “We hosted a YC Startup School afterparty at the LemonLime office to meet exceptional people, and find out which of them are just as crazy as we are,” Zietz wrote Tuesday in an upbeat LinkedIn post that for obvious reasons has…
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in