6 ms·

This reminds me of why I don't use reddit. I can see not liking this idea, but a subreddit dedicated to recognizing how terrible hiring is should also recognize

This reminds me of why I don't use reddit. I can see not liking this idea, but a subreddit dedicated to recognizing how terrible hiring is should also recognize people working to improve it - even if they aren't at a workable solution yet. Instead, it's just toxic insults, dunks, and preaching to the choir. On top of this, the criticism from reddit is mostly unfounded and suggests they didn't even bother to read the company's landing page. Multiple redditors say things like "I'd never pay fifty dollars to refer a colleague. What's in it for me?" The landing page clearly states you double your money if they get hired. Another complaint is that it's racist because black people have black friends and apparently black people can't afford to refer their friends. This complaint relies on a racist argument "black people in general have less money, therefore the black software engineers doing the referrals will have less money." I don't think that's how it works. In the company's model you'd need referrals not from your random friends and acquaintances, but from coworkers who knew you and would be willing to be on you. Presumably your coworkers can come up with fifty dollars. I think this is a poor idea because it would be awkward to bet on people like this. I'd have to tell my colleagues I didn't think they were good enough to bet on, or bet the minimum, or would I get mad at them if they blew an interview? It's not a good system, but the idea that referrals are broken because they cost nothing to give seems right and it's worthwhile to try and fix important things that are broken.

jmull 5y ago
> The landing page clearly states you double your money if they get hired. That should be a warning sign to you that this is a scam.
- Xisiqomelir 5y ago
  If he used reddit he’d have access to r/antiMLM
baby 5y ago
> should also recognize people working to improve it are you talking about this "skip the interview" thing? If so, what?
rrix2 5y ago
> Another complaint is that it's racist because black people have black friends and apparently black people can't afford to refer their friends. This complaint relies on a racist argument "black people in general have less money, therefore the black software engineers doing the referrals will have less money." I don't think that's how it works. In the company's model you'd need referrals not from your random friends and acquaintances, but from coworkers who knew you and would be willing to be on you. Presumably your coworkers can come up with fifty dollars. This is a lot of words to say "i haven't tried to understand what systemic racism is"!
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  Please explain how a black software engineer is at a disadvantage asking his or her co-workers for referral money relative to a white counterpart.
  - Misdicorl 5y ago
    I think the argument would go something like this Context 1) Black person more likely to have a higher percentage of friends/close co-workers who are also black Context 2) Black persons are often coming from disadvantaged backgrounds Conclusion) Black person's network is less able to gamble on their future success as they may be paying off significant personal or familial debt
    - jlawson 5y ago
      There's no fundamental difference between this and any other area of life where a wealthy network aids in success. Which is pretty much all of them. Your standard seems to be that we eliminate the differential effects of wealthy relationships on success. You don't really seem to be registering how deep we need to cut and how many fundamental social structures we need to destroy to even attempt to make this happen. The entire educational system, entire economy and all extant hiring practices everywhere, all social practices based around economic status. Fundamentally the issue is that you've redefined racism from discriminatory acts to differential outcomes. It's a path to insanity and evil.
MrStonedOne 5y ago
It unbalances access to jobs by family wealth and creates yet another:tm: skip annoying thing if you are rich enough and/or have enough friends who are rich enough. Somebody coming out of a life hiccup like family issues or health issues is gonna have a harder time skipping the interview while also having a harder time interviewing. The return on investment aspect could just get gamed by companies being excessively selective on which candidates they allow to stay past 2 months. And finally it extends the worse thing that exists in our society: "It's easier to make money if you have money." This is what creates and enforces our class system, this is what makes it harder for historically disadvantaged groups to get a head, and such a product would just extend this, while benefiting the company. The anger is justified, such systems can not be allowed to exist.
_6hmp 5y ago
In the US there is in fact a disparity in wealth between black households and white households in aggregate as a consequence of slavery, a lack of reparations for slavery, Jim Crow laws, and ongoing discrimination (see, redlining). So it's not a racist argument that paying for job opportunities could perpetuate racial disparities in the workforce. It's a reasonable one. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disparities-in-wealth-by-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-2019-survey-of-consumer-finances-20200928.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disp...
- jlawson 5y ago
  Strange to use "redlining" as an example of "ongoing" discrimination. It was banned by the Fair Housing Act of 1968 - 53 years ago. This reminds me of when people use the murder of Emmett Till to argue how evil white people are. He was furtively killed in 1955 - 66 years ago. When the best latest examples are this old it kind of cuts against the whole accusation. It's like saying Joe is such a jerk, look, he kicked a dog 50 years ago.
  - _6hmp 5y ago
    I meant it in the sense of the long now. 53 years ago isn't long ago in the arc of human history. There are people alive who grew up where they grew up or live where they live because of it. The rest of your post doesn't merit a response as it has nothing to do with what I wrote.
    - jlawson 5y ago
      "The long now" isn't the right model for how humans actually live in the world. In reality, people find their level very quickly and historical circumstances don't hold people down for long. Lots of examples: -Vietnamese boat people arrived in the mid-70's with nothing. They quickly became successful and still are. -Jews lost so much in WW2, including half their families. They quickly became successful after the war and still are. They didn't sit around in ghettos forever. -Nigerian immigrants to America often come with little wealth and yet do better than American whites economically. -Iranian immigrants arrived after the 1979 revolution with nothing. Now they do very well - better than average whites. If "the long now" was real, none of these would be possible and all immigrant groups who arrived poor in the last 50 years would still be poor. This is actually a really important thing to learn because it's critical in your mental model of the world. You think some event 50+ years ago will keep families in poverty for literal multiple generations - it's not true at all. Families rise and fall much much quicker than this. If someone is in poverty that long (in the context of a somewhat free society) it is because of internal issues, not circumstances. Society at large treats slave-descended blacks no worse than African-immigrant blacks (or other nonwhite immigrants); the difference in outcomes comes from their own internal issues. The sooner we can acknowledge the actual source the problem the sooner we can make progress on solving it.
kevingadd 5y ago
> This complaint relies on a racist argument "black people in general have less money, therefore the black software engineers doing the referrals will have less money." It's not a racist argument, it's factually true. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=average+us+wealth+by+race https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=average... https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disparities-in-wealth-by-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-2019-survey-of-consumer-finances-20200928.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disp...
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  The racist part is taking a generalization and applying it to a specific subset. Black software engineers and managers probably have enough money to play this game if they wanted. The "software engineers" is the specific subset that the generalization is being applied to.
  - kevingadd 5y ago
    Based on https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/S..., while the average income for a software engineer is pretty good, the low end of their reported scale is 63k/yr. Personally, my first salaried job as a software engineer paid 40k. I can attest that I was not able to save much money on that income after expenses like rent, food, and gas. I think it is unreasonable to assume that racial disparities in wealth will vanish just because someone writes code.
Igelau 5y ago
> Presumably your coworkers can come up with fifty dollars. It's nastier than that. It'd be one thing if it was just a handful of references. There's a link in the Reddit post to a Twitter thread where someone was posting listings. The lowest one from that sample was $3000. If you're trying to get just the $50 minimum out of former colleagues, then you'd need to have 60 of those. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't have 60 former colleagues that I know who would be willing to bet $50 that a company hiring this way isn't a den of vipers that will cut me before the payout.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  To be clear, the company is not workable in it's current form. I think they're right to shut down and rethink things. I think the core concept of figuring out a way to get skin in the game for referrals makes sense though. I also don't think the people behind the company should be derided for trying this. And I think it's not racist.

jmull 5y ago

> The landing page clearly states you double your money if they get hired. That should be a warning sign to you that this is a scam.

Xisiqomelir 5y ago
If he used reddit he’d have access to r/antiMLM

baby 5y ago

> should also recognize people working to improve it are you talking about this "skip the interview" thing? If so, what?

rrix2 5y ago

> Another complaint is that it's racist because black people have black friends and apparently black people can't afford to refer their friends. This complaint relies on a racist argument "black people in general have less money, therefore the black software engineers doing the referrals will have less money." I don't think that's how it works. In the company's model you'd need referrals not from your random friends and acquaintances, but from coworkers who knew you and would be willing to be on you. Presumably your coworkers can come up with fifty dollars. This is a lot of words to say "i haven't tried to understand what systemic racism is"!

ALittleLight 5y ago
Please explain how a black software engineer is at a disadvantage asking his or her co-workers for referral money relative to a white counterpart.
- Misdicorl 5y ago
  I think the argument would go something like this Context 1) Black person more likely to have a higher percentage of friends/close co-workers who are also black Context 2) Black persons are often coming from disadvantaged backgrounds Conclusion) Black person's network is less able to gamble on their future success as they may be paying off significant personal or familial debt
  - jlawson 5y ago
    There's no fundamental difference between this and any other area of life where a wealthy network aids in success. Which is pretty much all of them. Your standard seems to be that we eliminate the differential effects of wealthy relationships on success. You don't really seem to be registering how deep we need to cut and how many fundamental social structures we need to destroy to even attempt to make this happen. The entire educational system, entire economy and all extant hiring practices everywhere, all social practices based around economic status. Fundamentally the issue is that you've redefined racism from discriminatory acts to differential outcomes. It's a path to insanity and evil.

MrStonedOne 5y ago

It unbalances access to jobs by family wealth and creates yet another:tm: skip annoying thing if you are rich enough and/or have enough friends who are rich enough. Somebody coming out of a life hiccup like family issues or health issues is gonna have a harder time skipping the interview while also having a harder time interviewing. The return on investment aspect could just get gamed by companies being excessively selective on which candidates they allow to stay past 2 months. And finally it extends the worse thing that exists in our society: "It's easier to make money if you have money." This is what creates and enforces our class system, this is what makes it harder for historically disadvantaged groups to get a head, and such a product would just extend this, while benefiting the company. The anger is justified, such systems can not be allowed to exist.

_6hmp 5y ago

In the US there is in fact a disparity in wealth between black households and white households in aggregate as a consequence of slavery, a lack of reparations for slavery, Jim Crow laws, and ongoing discrimination (see, redlining). So it's not a racist argument that paying for job opportunities could perpetuate racial disparities in the workforce. It's a reasonable one. https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disparities-in-wealth-by-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-2019-survey-of-consumer-finances-20200928.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disp...

jlawson 5y ago
Strange to use "redlining" as an example of "ongoing" discrimination. It was banned by the Fair Housing Act of 1968 - 53 years ago. This reminds me of when people use the murder of Emmett Till to argue how evil white people are. He was furtively killed in 1955 - 66 years ago. When the best latest examples are this old it kind of cuts against the whole accusation. It's like saying Joe is such a jerk, look, he kicked a dog 50 years ago.
- _6hmp 5y ago
  I meant it in the sense of the long now. 53 years ago isn't long ago in the arc of human history. There are people alive who grew up where they grew up or live where they live because of it. The rest of your post doesn't merit a response as it has nothing to do with what I wrote.
  - jlawson 5y ago
    "The long now" isn't the right model for how humans actually live in the world. In reality, people find their level very quickly and historical circumstances don't hold people down for long. Lots of examples: -Vietnamese boat people arrived in the mid-70's with nothing. They quickly became successful and still are. -Jews lost so much in WW2, including half their families. They quickly became successful after the war and still are. They didn't sit around in ghettos forever. -Nigerian immigrants to America often come with little wealth and yet do better than American whites economically. -Iranian immigrants arrived after the 1979 revolution with nothing. Now they do very well - better than average whites. If "the long now" was real, none of these would be possible and all immigrant groups who arrived poor in the last 50 years would still be poor. This is actually a really important thing to learn because it's critical in your mental model of the world. You think some event 50+ years ago will keep families in poverty for literal multiple generations - it's not true at all. Families rise and fall much much quicker than this. If someone is in poverty that long (in the context of a somewhat free society) it is because of internal issues, not circumstances. Society at large treats slave-descended blacks no worse than African-immigrant blacks (or other nonwhite immigrants); the difference in outcomes comes from their own internal issues. The sooner we can acknowledge the actual source the problem the sooner we can make progress on solving it.

kevingadd 5y ago

> This complaint relies on a racist argument "black people in general have less money, therefore the black software engineers doing the referrals will have less money." It's not a racist argument, it's factually true. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=average+us+wealth+by+race https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=average... https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disparities-in-wealth-by-race-and-ethnicity-in-the-2019-survey-of-consumer-finances-20200928.htm https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/disp...

ALittleLight 5y ago
The racist part is taking a generalization and applying it to a specific subset. Black software engineers and managers probably have enough money to play this game if they wanted. The "software engineers" is the specific subset that the generalization is being applied to.
- kevingadd 5y ago
  Based on https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/S..., while the average income for a software engineer is pretty good, the low end of their reported scale is 63k/yr. Personally, my first salaried job as a software engineer paid 40k. I can attest that I was not able to save much money on that income after expenses like rent, food, and gas. I think it is unreasonable to assume that racial disparities in wealth will vanish just because someone writes code.

Igelau 5y ago

> Presumably your coworkers can come up with fifty dollars. It's nastier than that. It'd be one thing if it was just a handful of references. There's a link in the Reddit post to a Twitter thread where someone was posting listings. The lowest one from that sample was $3000. If you're trying to get just the $50 minimum out of former colleagues, then you'd need to have 60 of those. I don't know about you, but I sure as hell don't have 60 former colleagues that I know who would be willing to bet $50 that a company hiring this way isn't a den of vipers that will cut me before the payout.

ALittleLight 5y ago
To be clear, the company is not workable in it's current form. I think they're right to shut down and rethink things. I think the core concept of figuring out a way to get skin in the game for referrals makes sense though. I also don't think the people behind the company should be derided for trying this. And I think it's not racist.