[SoftwareMaven]

Yelp wasn't gaining anything by people attending. The attendees were gaining by attending (I would love to hear how Pinterest scaled). Should the whole class be punished for Yelp's stupidity?

Now, if Yelp gained anything other than "they gave us a spot to meet", I would agree with you 100%. I would give them no benefit for being moronic.

[timr]

"Yelp wasn't gaining anything by people attending"

Yelp doesn't host these events purely out of the goodness of its heart -- these are recruiting events. They also give Yelp employees preferential access to the speakers.

If people don't go to events at Yelp, people don't host events at Yelp.

[antihero]

I guess that the silver lining is that a young person starts to be switched on about how humiliating and insulting it is to be screwed by idiotic authorities and their pathetic rules.

[philwelch]

Every young person is switched onto that. It's the only useful thing some schools teach.

[larsberg]

Yes it was; Yelp is recruiting.

Yelp's stupidity can teach your whole class about the importance of working for conscientious, thoughtful corporations. Arguably, that's a more valuable lesson than whatever tricks pinterest used to scale (but I'm old, so take that with a grain of salt).