9 ms·

It sounds more like your friend has found a way to justify deceptively stealing/wasting time and resources by labeling people as morally repugnant. Yes, it's l

It sounds more like your friend has found a way to justify deceptively stealing/wasting time and resources by labeling people as morally repugnant. Yes, it's legal to do, but isn't it a shade hypocritical?

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
jrm4 5y ago
I can't meaningfully distinguish this from "Trying a free sample at Costco with no intent to buy the product." Aka, who cares?
- thfuran 5y ago
  >I can't meaningfully distinguish this from "Trying a free sample at Costco with no intent to buy the product." Are you serious? >Aka, who cares? Surely the company would rather not waste the money.
  - boring_twenties 5y ago
    Not to Godwin the thread, but surely e.g. Nazi Germany would rather not have their factories bombed and their personnel shot at?
    - jrm4 5y ago
      What in the entire fresh heck is this supposed to even mean?
      - boring_twenties 5y ago
        It means that if the company in question is in fact sufficiently morally repugnant, acting counter to their preferences is a good thing.
        jrm4 5y ago
        haha okay. YES! I literally didn't understand. And misread.
  - jrm4 5y ago
    And that is solely the company's problem. You either accept that "people who take your free stuff might not be profitable" or you do a better job screening who you give free stuff to. Zoom exists.
    - thfuran 5y ago
      Yeah, and libraries are suckers too. I mean, they don't even try to check my bag to see if I'm walking out with a bunch of extra books.
      - jrm4 5y ago
        Cute, but nope. With no intent to return the books, that would be theft. The library owns the book and you would be stealing them. Hard to find the crime or tort in the other thing? I've been flown places for interviews, I don't recall ever contractually agreeing to consider working at the place, and I can't imagine how the heck you'd prove that (unless your interviewee was an absolute idiot and tweeted "Woo free trip!"). I suppose you'd be jerk or something if it were a non-profit, but I don't think anyone ought to lose sleep over this high-risk business decision being abused, given the razor thin line between "I'm going to screw this company" and "Oh, looks like this place isn't for me."
- Jiro 5y ago
  If you walked up to the person at Costco and said "I have no intent to buy the product; will you give me a free sample anyway?" They're likely to say "sure, I don't care". This is not a likely response if you were to do the analogous thing with an interview, particularly one where the company has to spend some resources on it.
  - jrm4 5y ago
    Yes. Because free samples are not that costly, so the company doesn't have to be careful. Interviews are, so the company should be careful.
    - Jiro 5y ago
      That's not a refutation of the difference, just an explanation of the difference.
tannedNerd 5y ago
While I personally wouldn’t do it, I could see the argument that tying up resources of a morally repugnant company is a worthwhile act because it prevents them being as terrible for a day?
alasdair_ 5y ago
I think it depends. When the Iraq war was starting, I could see the justification for wasting a bunch of Haliburton's time as a form of civil disobedience or protest, for example. Personally though, I don't do this, nor would I. I think it's too easy become corrupt from doing things this way.
remram 5y ago
If a company does shady enough business that it has problems hiring developers, and decides to spend money on flying and lodging remote candidates rather than improve its practices, why should we feel bad about having them spend that money? You don't force them to do it, you don't lie in your resume that they decided was a desirable candidate. If they can't convince you to come on board, that's on them; hiring is a mutual negotiation.
- Jiro 5y ago
  >You don't force them to do it, you don't lie in your resume that they decided was a desirable candidate. When you apply, the implication is that you might accept an offer and that if you don't, it will be based on things that you learn during the interview, rather than on things you've determined before the interview. Just because you didn't sign a piece of paper saying 'I claim there is some chance of my accepting an offer' and just because you didn't literally utter any untrue words doesn't change that; human society depends on these unsaid implications to function. If you deliberately flout them, you are abusing social trust for your own benefit. (And enough of abusing trust leads to a low trust world. If enough people thought like you, companies would start requiring signed statements that you agree with the ethics of the company and that you could be sued if you are found to have wasted the company's money.) >If they can't convince you to come on board, that's on them; hiring is a mutual negotiation. If you know very well, ahead of time, that there's nothing practical that they could do to hire you, coming to an interview is abusing the system. The fact that it's not literally impossible for them to convince you to take the job doesn't change this.
  - remram 5y ago
    I get your point, but on the other hand this is money the company chose to spend. This is a cost they factored into their HR budget in an attempt to impress and retain better employees; it is not done because companies are nice. They are also always free to change their circumstances to hire you; it is never "literally impossible" to hire someone... If I was really interested in the job, and they end up hiring another candidate, I just wasted 4 days flying to New York while they never told me my odds, what they thought of other candidates' resumes before I flew out, or even how many there were. Probably not even give me feedback on their final decision. Is that fair? Because they chose to spend some money, candidates have to repay them with complete honesty through the process, even when they don't have to do the same? This is not a fair negotiation scheme either. At some point, you have to accept that both sides understand how the system work, and are making deliberate decisions to get the most they can out of it. Don't forget that one side gets to do that professionally full time out of a dedicated budget, and that's not you.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago

jrm4 5y ago

I can't meaningfully distinguish this from "Trying a free sample at Costco with no intent to buy the product." Aka, who cares?

thfuran 5y ago
>I can't meaningfully distinguish this from "Trying a free sample at Costco with no intent to buy the product." Are you serious? >Aka, who cares? Surely the company would rather not waste the money.
- boring_twenties 5y ago
  Not to Godwin the thread, but surely e.g. Nazi Germany would rather not have their factories bombed and their personnel shot at?
  - jrm4 5y ago
    What in the entire fresh heck is this supposed to even mean?
    - boring_twenties 5y ago
      It means that if the company in question is in fact sufficiently morally repugnant, acting counter to their preferences is a good thing.
      - jrm4 5y ago
        haha okay. YES! I literally didn't understand. And misread.
- jrm4 5y ago
  And that is solely the company's problem. You either accept that "people who take your free stuff might not be profitable" or you do a better job screening who you give free stuff to. Zoom exists.
  - thfuran 5y ago
    Yeah, and libraries are suckers too. I mean, they don't even try to check my bag to see if I'm walking out with a bunch of extra books.
    - jrm4 5y ago
      Cute, but nope. With no intent to return the books, that would be theft. The library owns the book and you would be stealing them. Hard to find the crime or tort in the other thing? I've been flown places for interviews, I don't recall ever contractually agreeing to consider working at the place, and I can't imagine how the heck you'd prove that (unless your interviewee was an absolute idiot and tweeted "Woo free trip!"). I suppose you'd be jerk or something if it were a non-profit, but I don't think anyone ought to lose sleep over this high-risk business decision being abused, given the razor thin line between "I'm going to screw this company" and "Oh, looks like this place isn't for me."
Jiro 5y ago
If you walked up to the person at Costco and said "I have no intent to buy the product; will you give me a free sample anyway?" They're likely to say "sure, I don't care". This is not a likely response if you were to do the analogous thing with an interview, particularly one where the company has to spend some resources on it.
- jrm4 5y ago
  Yes. Because free samples are not that costly, so the company doesn't have to be careful. Interviews are, so the company should be careful.
  - Jiro 5y ago
    That's not a refutation of the difference, just an explanation of the difference.

tannedNerd 5y ago

While I personally wouldn’t do it, I could see the argument that tying up resources of a morally repugnant company is a worthwhile act because it prevents them being as terrible for a day?

alasdair_ 5y ago

I think it depends. When the Iraq war was starting, I could see the justification for wasting a bunch of Haliburton's time as a form of civil disobedience or protest, for example. Personally though, I don't do this, nor would I. I think it's too easy become corrupt from doing things this way.

remram 5y ago

If a company does shady enough business that it has problems hiring developers, and decides to spend money on flying and lodging remote candidates rather than improve its practices, why should we feel bad about having them spend that money? You don't force them to do it, you don't lie in your resume that they decided was a desirable candidate. If they can't convince you to come on board, that's on them; hiring is a mutual negotiation.

Jiro 5y ago
>You don't force them to do it, you don't lie in your resume that they decided was a desirable candidate. When you apply, the implication is that you might accept an offer and that if you don't, it will be based on things that you learn during the interview, rather than on things you've determined before the interview. Just because you didn't sign a piece of paper saying 'I claim there is some chance of my accepting an offer' and just because you didn't literally utter any untrue words doesn't change that; human society depends on these unsaid implications to function. If you deliberately flout them, you are abusing social trust for your own benefit. (And enough of abusing trust leads to a low trust world. If enough people thought like you, companies would start requiring signed statements that you agree with the ethics of the company and that you could be sued if you are found to have wasted the company's money.) >If they can't convince you to come on board, that's on them; hiring is a mutual negotiation. If you know very well, ahead of time, that there's nothing practical that they could do to hire you, coming to an interview is abusing the system. The fact that it's not literally impossible for them to convince you to take the job doesn't change this.
- remram 5y ago
  I get your point, but on the other hand this is money the company chose to spend. This is a cost they factored into their HR budget in an attempt to impress and retain better employees; it is not done because companies are nice. They are also always free to change their circumstances to hire you; it is never "literally impossible" to hire someone... If I was really interested in the job, and they end up hiring another candidate, I just wasted 4 days flying to New York while they never told me my odds, what they thought of other candidates' resumes before I flew out, or even how many there were. Probably not even give me feedback on their final decision. Is that fair? Because they chose to spend some money, candidates have to repay them with complete honesty through the process, even when they don't have to do the same? This is not a fair negotiation scheme either. At some point, you have to accept that both sides understand how the system work, and are making deliberate decisions to get the most they can out of it. Don't forget that one side gets to do that professionally full time out of a dedicated budget, and that's not you.