Y Combinator ghost jobs: what the sightings say.
82.5% of scored active Y Combinator postings carry at least one ghost-job warning sign, against 17.8% across all ten boards JobsPipe collects. Here is the full picture for Y Combinator: score bands, the reasons behind them, reposts, age and how quickly postings close.
How Y Combinator scores
Y Combinator company listings are re-listed continuously and stay open for months, so the board carries the largest long-open and reposted shares of any source. Founders keep hiring pages live between rounds, which is legitimate but reads as stale by every mechanical test.
| Ghost score band | Y Combinator | All boards |
|---|---|---|
| 0-24: looks live | 17.5% | 82.3% |
| 25-49: one warning sign | 9.4% | 16.4% |
| 50-74: several warning signs | 72.8% | 1.3% |
| 75-100: almost certainly stale | <0.5% | <0.5% |
- Posted date far behind first sighting88.4%
- Open for 45 days or more80.1%
- Reposted (seen again after a gap of 10+ days)76.2%
- No salary stated17.8%
- Thin description (under 400 characters)1.1%
- Posted by a mass poster (500+ open roles)0.7%
How long Y Combinator postings stay up
Y Combinator removals are detected from the board feed at every crawl, so days live is a real measure here. Among Y Combinator postings that closed in the last 60 days, the median was live for 33 days and three in four were gone within 47 days; 16.9% closed within a week and 43.4% within 30 days.
- Still open 30 days after first sighting86.8%
- Still open 14 days after first sighting98.0%
The cross-board comparison is on How long do job postings stay up?
Exclude Y Combinator ghost jobs from a feed
curl -X POST https://api.jobspipe.dev/v1/jobs/search \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $JOBSPIPE_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{ "source_or": ["ycombinator"], "max_ghost_score": 24, "status": "active", "posted_at_max_age_days": 30, "limit": 25 }'FAQ
How common are ghost jobs on Y Combinator?
82.5% of scored active Y Combinator postings carry at least one warning sign, against 17.8% across all ten boards JobsPipe collects. 63.6% of active Y Combinator postings were seen again after a gap of ten days or more, and 70.7% were first sighted more than 30 days ago.
Why does Y Combinator score the way it does?
Y Combinator company listings are re-listed continuously and stay open for months, so the board carries the largest long-open and reposted shares of any source. Founders keep hiring pages live between rounds, which is legitimate but reads as stale by every mechanical test.
How do I check whether a Y Combinator job is still open?
Use the JobsPipe jobs search endpoint with source_or set to ycombinator and status set to any; every record returns discovered_at, last_seen_at, status and ghost_score.
How do I exclude Y Combinator ghost jobs from an API feed?
Send max_ghost_score 24 with status active and source_or ["ycombinator"] to the jobs search endpoint. Raise the score cap to 49 if a missing salary is acceptable.