[ia]

Saying that the alternative is "a stiff and sterile ad" is a fallacy of false dichotomy.

fair enough. to clarify--"a stiff and sterile ad" is the only type of add that won't alienate any possible subgroup.

the goal of a job ad is not simply to "attract talent". it's to attract the right kind of talent. to that end, a job ad that emphasizes culture is one way to look for it. these guys made a choice, and it looks like their (imo) poorly-worded job ad isn't being well received by the majority of people on hn. but unless we know that no suitable candidates resulted from it, i don't think we can claim it a failure.

To be fair, it's not a job ad that fails here, it's the culture that came up with that job ad.

agree, in the sense that if people react adversely to this job ad, they would have a similar reaction to the company culture.

[jessedhillon]

The point is not to avoid alienating a subset of the population. An ad can and should filter out candidates through its use of language and expression of culture. It cannot, however, filter people out on the basis of whether or not they have penises. That is the only question here: does this ad do that? Many think it does.

[jubbam]

Probably not a success from their point of view but from my point of view it's a great ad. It convinced me immediately not to waste any time pursuing the opportunity.

In addition, I can say that the only reason I'd care to know who the stealth company is is so I can avoid giving any thought to working for/with them later on or reading any later (probably toned down) job postings.