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Man Posing as Delivery Person Hides Resumes in a Box of Donuts
- tdburn 10y agoCan't tell of this is an onion article or real life
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jedmeyers 10y agoIt's a clever marketing from Postmates. He's been working for them all along.
- brettproctor 10y agoAlso relevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaConspiracy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaConspiracy/ As well as: https://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/
- bemmu 10y agoAfter reading "Trust Me, I'm Lying", I can't help but view stuff I read online even vaguely relating to a company in this light.
- franciscop 10y agoSearched for it thinking it was a blog post; turns out it's a book I can buy. Hope you are not related nor getting a royalty from each sale (;
- jedmeyers 10y agoDoubt it. However I wouldn't trust any of his posts on how to get some tasty candy from Japan, cause he is the leading supplier of those.
- Tinyyy 10y agoHere’s the .epub, do support the author if you liked it though. https://instant.io/#a7f829dadaea43160bac71dbda4d0f7c4998d22a https://instant.io/#a7f829dadaea43160bac71dbda4d0f7c4998d22a
- brettproctor 10y agoRelevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion
- ReverseCold 10y agoI made a telegram bot that gives you a title from there OR a real onion article and lets you guess if it's a real onion article or not. Bot is dead now, but it was fun while it lasted.
- brettproctor 10y agoThat is awesome.
- brettproctor 10y agoCan someone explain why people hate this reply so much? This is a perfect subreddit describing this very scenario, and my submission there is now #2, indeed making this relevant r/nottheonion material. Is this just generic reddit hate or what?
- rmason 10y agoGuy's probably here on a tourist visa and won't be able to convert even if he receives an offer. He needs to be starting a company. Philippe Kahn started Borland while he was illegal alien. He got to a $500 million run rate without venture capital! It was only when Borland was going public that he was able to obtain a green card! http://articles.latimes.com/print/1992-02-23/business/fi-5118_1_borland-international-chairman-philippe-kahn http://articles.latimes.com/print/1992-02-23/business/fi-511...
- chrisper 10y agoHow do you even get permits and such if you are not in the system? If they catch you will be deported and banned from the US for I think 10 years. A year or two some music artist got banned for 10 years because he was on the wrong visa and was doing business in the US.
- tomjakubowski 10y agoChippy Nonstop got a 5 year ban from the US about a year and a half ago for a visa violation. https://web.archive.org/web/20160823205204/http://gawker.com/hipster-party-rapper-chippy-nonstop-has-been-deported-t-1687726187 https://web.archive.org/web/20160823205204/http://gawker.com...
- tedmiston 10y agoThe community seems conflicted on whether applying for work while visiting the U.S. vs actually performing work is beyond the scope of a tourist visa. http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/2157/can-you-search-for-a-job-when-using-a-tourist-visa-b-2-in-the-us http://travel.stackexchange.com/questions/2157/can-you-searc...
- madeofpalk 10y agoBy 'tourist visa' you mean ESTA, right. Lithuanians are eligible for this. While on the ESTA you can conduct 'business meetings'. I've (tried) to raise VC, interview at YC and conduct job interviews on the ESTA and it's been fine. At least the border patrol people didn't seem to mind.
- tracker1 10y agoThis is fairly brilliant for a marketing guy. What it comes down to, is he got the attention of the people he was trying to reach. In the end, it's like the guys that do very targeted advertising on LinkedIn and Facebook for similar goals. If you can reach the selective audience you are trying to for the job, in creative ways, odds are you can reach that company's audience as well.
- mherdeg 10y agoThis sounds like pretty high-quality penetration testing; maybe he should pivot his career and work in security.
- dzhiurgis 10y agoSocial engineering is a must for a marketer.
- eridius 10y agoI don't think so. People let delivery guys in so they can deliver something. They don't let delivery guys in and then leave them wholly unsupervised to do whatever the hell they want.
- dredmorbius 10y agoHaving personally witnessed a delivery guy walking out with a half-dozen or so engineering laptops (I realised this seconds too late, after walking into the office area), tucked into his messenger bag, it's been known to happen. Lax security was a confounding issue. Also: that guy had brass balls.
- eridius 10y agoIt may be known to happen, but what I'm saying is the act of letting a delivery person into a building does not equate to a lapse in security.
- dredmorbius 10y agoIt is an attack surface. An awareness of that fact is helpful.
- nchelluri 10y agoI would never be brave enough to try something like this.
- vecter 10y agoWhy not? The only thing preventing you from doing this is your self-formed limited beliefs in what you can or cannot do. You could literally decide to just do this and start doing this tomorrow. Don't sell yourself short, everyone else is already doing that for you.
- zhemao 10y agoAnd ... uh ... legality? If either Postmates or the companies he infiltrated took this the wrong way, he could end up in a bit of trouble.
- tedmiston 10y agoIt kind of makes me think of the Dumb Starbucks episode of Nathan for You (parody law). > Spectators and media commentators questioned the stunt's authenticity, viewing it variously as performance art, a statement on consumerism, a viral marketing achievement or the work of street artist Banksy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_Starbucks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumb_Starbucks
- vecter 10y agoYou're missing the forest for the trees. You can replace "brave enough to do this" with "brave enough to play at that open mic night" or "brave enough to talk to that cute girl in class". In all cases, the reason that the OP doesn't believe he can do this has to do solely with his false limiting self beliefs about his abilities.
- smallnamespace 10y ago> You can replace "brave enough to do this" with "brave enough to play at that open mic night" or "brave enough to talk to that cute girl in class". Seems like the potential downside to doing this is a lot higher than the examples you gave.
- ryandrake 10y agoFile this under "more evidence that hiring is broken". It's just so silly that companies set up elaborate HR departments and job postings and internal recruiters that collect resumes, and then when you look at how they actually hire it's through popularity/celebrity, friends of friends, and stunts like this.
- csallen 10y agoI don't disagree with your statement that "hiring is broken", but the evidence you use to come to that conclusion is not particularly convincing. It's essentially, "There are multiple hiring channels."
- dredmorbius 10y agoWhat are the mechanisms of those channels? What the resume-in-pizza-boxes channel offers over, say, the resumes-in-email channel, is a lot fewer resumes. You've got some intention signalling in the RIPB version (it's expensive in terms of time and other committments), but low informational signalling otherwise as to overt qualifications, outside some general concepts (hustle, motivation, time availability / opportunity costs, charisma, confidence, or simply having heard of the trick somewhere). There are a bunch of selection hueristics whose primary benefit is they eliminate a large component of the choice process. You'd do fairly well in simply randomly sampling from amongst the submissions, or applying some very rudimentary filters to eliminate the most obviously bad choices. This is why mechanisms such as racial, gender, age, and cultural bias are so common. They're easy to apply, aren't entirely wrong (relatively homogeneous groups tend to operate better than nonhomogeneous ones, though there are many arguments about resilience and creativity/diversity), and hugely reduce the decisionmaking costs of the selector. Unfortunately, knowledge / infotech / creative work hinges hugely on intangibles which are quite difficult to effectively communicate, especially to someone (say, an HR flunky) not intimately familiar with the field. Toss in a ton of employer biases and control incentives (e.g., anti-poaching, anti-union, and similar concerns) and the situation starts getting messy quickly. Sure, there might be some alterative opportunities created as a result, but these tend to have far less commercial/financial potential and viability.
- dev_by_force 10y agoThis been done on advertising field by interns since ages... come on.
- lloyddobbler 10y agoMy start in marketing was as a professional actor - where you spend 98% of your time doing marketing. If you do that well, you get to go to an audition. If you do that well, you get to go do your real job and get paid. (Eventually I moved into the tech world.) Funny thing - this technique is as old as Hollywood. I've heard of tons of similar stories over the years. Heck, Stephen Furst (Flounder from Animal House) got his role when the producer saw his headshot in a pizza box. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Furst#As_actor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Furst#As_actor
- Alex3917 10y agoUsing publicity stunts and showing up at people's offices with food are both classic job seeking tactics. But sneaking into people's offices dressed as a delivery person is a terrible idea. Some people might be receptive to it, but a lot of other people are going to feel unsafe and like their physical space has been violated.
- Waterluvian 10y agoThat "Hi" after the headline just sucked all of the momentum out of it for me.
- lucaspiller 10y agoJust in case anyone is wondering about the startup in Lithuania, it's a car sharing scheme called CityBee: http://www.citybee.lt/en/ http://www.citybee.lt/en/ I've used various schemes around the world, but this has the best selection of cars and is the fastest growing. They now have over 500 cars, which given the size of Lithuania is crazy. Their emails have a real personal feel which is no doubt down to Lukas work!
- scottbcovert 10y agoI actually met Lukas a few days ago, very nice guy. I was in San Francisco for Salesforce's Dreamforce conference and was staying at a shared AirBnB where he was my roommate for the week. One night there was a party hosted by Salesforce that I thought Lukas was planning on attending so when I noticed it seemed like he was turning in soon I asked him what changed his mind; he told me he had an interview in the morning with ABC. Not knowing his situation I assumed it was for his startup so I told him congratulations and asked what kind of work his company did. He saw I was confused by his answer that he was actually looking for a job so he just showed me a clip from Good Morning America that talked about the story and said it was probably easier to understand if I just watched the video. I have a feeling I'll be seeing him again next year--leading a session on marketing at the conference.
- dammitcoetzee 10y agoHuh. If this works I should be way more aggressive about finding a ME/EE oriented product design engineer job in SF.
- holografix 10y agoThis is a brilliant insight into how little I understand the world. If I was applying to the same company I'd be VERY upset this guy gets an interview. If I was the person he got delivered the donuts I'd curse him out of the office and tell him to apply like everybody else. What makes him special or give him the right to basically break the rules and disrespect everyone who tries their best to get through the recruiting door? What would happen if everyone acted the same and started stalking execs and managers trying to "serve" them whimsical resumés? Clearly I'm the one who's strange since everyone else thinks it's great... maybe it's a cultural thing?
- chrismcb 10y agoBreak what rules?
- mlaretallack 10y agoIt would annoy me to know that someone has an interview because they bypassed the rules. For me, I think this is a difference between "engineering" and "marketing". For Marketing, this sort of thing is seen as a good characteristic. For engineering, no so much.
- chrisbennet 10y agoLike I told a previous poster, I think you are perceiving rules where there aren't any. Just because there is a dating web site doesn't mean that is the only way to ask someone on a date.
- davemel37 10y agoFirst, he was applying for a marketing position. A position that demands creativity and the ability to stand out and be noticed...so, essentially he proved himself with this gimmick. In other words, this wasnt just a gimmick but rather a demonstration of his skills. It just like an engineer getting interviewed after finding a bug in your code. On a more critical note, applying for a job is a zero sum game. Only one person gets hired. If you are more concerned with rules and respecting other applications by not standing out, you are just playing the game poorly. Your job as an applicant is to a)get noticed and b)beat out everyone else for the job. All this is to say that if followong the rules are so important in your organization, this guy is a bad fit. If it requires scrappiness, creativity, and "hacker" mentality, it is a perfect fit. In this case, as a marketer, it was brilliant!
- erdevs 10y agoGimmicks make for very poor hiring filters, though they make for great article clicks.
- losteverything 10y agoI'd hire this person just to improve his life for a while. Hiring him will probably help him more than someone else. If you can hire or promote or help someone, then do so. Recently had to choose to promote either a single mom (stable home) 11 yrs in the job or a part-time just graduated woman renting a house for free in exchange for child care. Both were equally qualified. Which would be helped more? The part time student. Once promoted into FT position she gets benefits. Easy choice. Plus, the company stresses helping employees as #1 priority. Even if this guy does not work out and he is termed after 90 days, he is better off trying and I improved his lot.