Ask HN: Is this take-home a scam?

Ask HN: Is this take-home a scam?(drive.google.com)

5 points by thatjoeoverthr 13 days ago | 9 comments

A Y-Combinator backed company, AutoAce AI, sent me this "take home" unsolicited, in which they ask for what appears to be a complete, "production ready", deployed internal tool. They want completed source for the service, and to have the "applicant" let them run large batches against it.

I can't tell if it's a deliberate hustle or slop. They attached a small test set with obviously incorrect labels, so I suspect the entire thing may be Claude-slop (it won't be able to label the audio itself).

Is this normal?

pavel_lishin 13 days ago | |

I wouldn't do any work of any kind before talking to a recruiter about the actual job - what's the salary and benefits? what are the expected hours? What kind of work would I be doing? etc.

I also wouldn't even open those files. God knows what's in there, or if it was actually sent by them. This is the equivalent of finding a USB stick in your job's parking lot.

thatjoeoverthr 13 days ago | | |

It looked interesting, so I studied a bit into it, but I asked to present something in a meeting (no source code) so they ghosted me.

andsoitis 13 days ago | |

Did you apply for a job there?

Looking at their website, I couldn't find a link to available jobs: https://www.autoace.ai

thatjoeoverthr 13 days ago | | |

No. It seems they found my profile on the Y Combinator job board and contacted me through that, referencing similar work on my CV.

https://www.ycombinator.com/launches/Oeo-autoace-ai-co-pilot...

This seems to be them.