Tell HN: Aden, A YC company, is growth hacking by luring devs with paid work

by theblazehenon 1/26/2026, 10:49 AMwith 4 comments

I received the following message on YC's workatastartup program

> Looking to Hire Contributors for an Open-Source Project

> Hi [Name], I just reviewed your experience and background, and I think you might be a good fit for our open-source project (github.com/adenhq/hive). It’s a development platform for self-evolving AI agents that run business processes autonomously.

> If you’re interested, please star, fork, and watch the repo, and please create issues and submit pull requests. We’ll review your contributions and follow up with a contract. We pay $25–$55/hour, paid weekly.

> Best,

> Vincent

Today I saw their repo on GitHub's trending repositories page. I checked their star history, and the repo star count more than doubled in the past day.

https://www.star-history.com/#adenhq/hive&type=date&legend=top-left

by kingkongsatanon 2/2/2026, 8:31 PM

We're building a self-evolving AI agents development platform. If you're interested in exploring our Applied AI Engineer opportunity, please review our open-source repository first to get familiar with our product.

If you’re interested, please follow the steps below to proceed:

1. Please Star, Fork, and Watch this repo (https://github.com/adenhq/hive).

2. Inside the repo, you will find our core product framework. Please review and create issues (https://github.com/adenhq/hive/issues).

3. Propose changes and submit pull requests (https://github.com/adenhq/hive/pulls). Our tech leads will review your PRs and reach out via email if they are insightful.

Happy to share this opportunity with you, and I’d love to explore working together.

Best,

Vincent

and also I got this reply again,

we are planning to close this job posting next Friday. If you haven't yet starred and reviewed our GitHub repo (https://github.com/adenhq/hive), please do so by next week. We look forward to reviewing your PR!

If you have already submitted it, a member of our engineering team will reach out shortly regarding the next steps.

Can someone say is it legit or fake are they really hiring?

by archnightton 1/29/2026, 2:10 PM

I received the same message. It's obvious they're using AI to send out these messages. When I replied to the initial message I received a message with text that got repeated three times in the same message

by manuel_pngon 1/29/2026, 6:37 AM

I signed up in the workatastartup site yesterday and today I got this exact email. Really suspicious...

by chrisjjon 1/26/2026, 11:14 AM

> please create issues and submit pull requests. We’ll review your contributions and follow up with a contract.

Getting @shitoberfest vibes...