6 ms·

Ug... as someone that one day would like to work remote this is infuriating. Anyone who is doing this, you're destroying trust and making life hard for the res

by xupybd 4y ago

Ug... as someone that one day would like to work remote this is infuriating. Anyone who is doing this, you're destroying trust and making life hard for the rest of us.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
> Anyone who is doing this, you're destroying trust and making life hard for the rest of us. Sadly, they don't care. This is why we can't have nice things.
- xupybd 4y ago
  Yeah, I know. I'm just venting really.
- xwdv 4y ago
  Um we can still have nice things if people stop being naive. It’s not hard to verify someone actually exists… there are ways.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    I know. It was a joke. I'm old, and have seen plenty of rejection, even though I'm "the real deal." But that kind of behavior has been used as an excuse for ignoring me. The icing on the cake, was when I was told that "I probably faked" my portfolio. At that point, I realized that I am radioactive, and might as well just give up.
    - ghoward 4y ago
      Holy cow, you can't get a job? What?! That makes me feel better about not being able to.
      - foomatic 4y ago
        I don't feel better. What hope is there for me then!? Fuck-em and their stupid snobby jobs anyway.
        hnuser52395 4y ago
        It makes me think that the r/cscareerquestions tack of forgetting everything else and focusing on just leetcode may actually have merit. For what it's worth, I think Chris Marshall looks like a great developer and a professional I aspire to emulate. However, a lot of companies do make decisions based on metrics, keyword searches, and standardized tests like leetcode (aka stuff that misses out on the human element), so it makes sense to try and balance both if one hasn't done so already.
        ghoward 4y ago
        I'm sorry. There's no hope for me either; I'm not a "good cultural fit" most of the time. I agree with your last sentence, although I would word it a little differently. :)
        xupybd 4y ago
        From your blog I expect that you'd be a cultural fit for the kind of place I'd like to work in. Unfortunately those places are not the that common.
        ghoward 4y ago
        Unfortunately, you're correct that they are not that common. In fact, my last job was at a place where the salesman told me to not fix a bug I found until a customer ran into that bug so that "they'll remember why they need us." I was appalled. I'm glad there are more programmers like me out there though. Thank you. :)
      - irvingprime 4y ago
        I have been in the software industry, mostly writing code, for longer than some of the people interviewing me have been alive. It took me about a year of hunting to find my current job. I rejected a couple of offers. I walked away from a couple companies with too many red flags. And I got rejected over and over and over again. It's just the way things are. Shrug it off. Don't take it personally. Move on.
    - thrill 4y ago
      Yeah, I've got that t-shirt. One guy flat out told me "I think your resume is a fraud". I'd had enough, and flatly said "I really don't give a flying fuck what you believe." It was worth it watching his partner beside him choking while drinking his water. I followed up with a letter to the CEO with description of the event and proof of my credentials. No idea what happened to the interviewer, nor do I care.
    - mistrial9 4y ago
      a magazine cover from the 90s really stands out in my mind (I was a professional C++ coder at the time). It was about some latest-thing code team management and the cover illustration was hand-drawn, of seven gray-beard guys, looking somewhat sagacious with an aura of wisdom and insight, all gathered in a semi-circle around a single whiteboard (like an easle) solving some serious, high skill problem. Anyone with training in classical (european) arts would recognize the council of sages, and the drawing was good. There was no questioning that these (perl programmers?) were at the top of the game on that magazine cover. then came The Google ! haunting image
      - foomatic 4y ago
        Sorry what?
        wyclif 4y ago
        I think what he's trying to say is that ageism is real today, but things didn't used to be that way.
  - munk-a 4y ago
    The nice thing would be having a basic level of trust that the person you're interviewing is an actual person. If all job interviews need to start off with a CAPTCHA we'll be in a bad place. I imagine these shell-game interview tricks work really well at large companies where the HR screen is considered to be perfect and thus managers rejecting numerous candidates at the interview layer will be penalized in some manner. "Look, Polly on the Cloud-X-AI team accepted 80% of applicants that reached the interview phase - why is your team accepting just 20%? Is this a culture fit issue that we'll need to intervene on?"
  - csunbird 4y ago
    I mean, I had a company asking me to send pictures of my passport and my residence permit by email in the first interview for a remote role. They acted very surprised when I flat out said "No, you can have them when you approach me with an offer. Then you can decide if my papers in order, not before" Ended up not continuing the interview, as giving out very sensitive information like candies to companies on the first interviews is not a good idea at all.
- SavageBeast 4y ago
  On the other hand, next time I'm on a 30 minute screening and end up getting left with 10 minutes to show them I can write a functional program they will be too worn out to ding me for silly stuff like concatenating Strings instead of properly using StringBuilder. "You really should have used the enhanced for loop for that .." or "You really should have used a Lambda there" etc. After years of tech screens like this over the course of my coding career I can't say Im not enjoying a little schadenfreude over this.
  - ImaCake 4y ago
    I get the feeling from this comment that tech interviewers would be very upset with how I write scripts in research. Part of the reason I will never shift to developer as a job is that the interview process is ridiculous. In universities, the uni hiring process is so imposing on the researcher's time that they just hire people they meet through informal processes outside the formal system. The informal system is usually a single interview, send your resume through, and the researcher checks your references to make sure you aren't lying scum.
    - strken 4y ago
      This is frequently how it works in smaller tech companies as well, although it's usually just getting sent straight through to the same final interview as everyone else.
    - ThePadawan 4y ago
      > and the researcher checks your references to make sure you aren't lying scum. That sounds way more professional than any interviewing process I've gone through in the industry /hj.
      - ImaCake 4y ago
        Interesting! Maybe the stereotype of a tech interview is not the common experience of most developers? This would make more sense and leads me to think that HR is just justifying it's own existence with baroque processes that then make it even less relevant and useful.
gedy 4y ago
I'm not sure if it's just "remote" or also aiming for cheap overseas contractors. As a senior remote US employee I don't see how any of the companies I interviewed with would even allow past screening not turning on camera or other tricks like this.
- xupybd 4y ago
  As a New Zealander, unfortunately, I fall into the category of cheap overseas contractor. With our weak dollar working for a US company is a good way to earn above average. We're still much more expensive than some of the cheaper countries. In fact we're currently working with a Vietnamese contractor. He is very good and much cheaper than a local hire.
  - LAC-Tech 4y ago
    Please don't go into remote work with this attitude. We speak fluent English and if we get up early we have a great timezone overlap with the US. There's no reason to settle for NZ rates with a US company.
    - xupybd 4y ago
      If I were to get a job with a US company I'd be expecting US rates. That would be the point. That was kind of my point that while getting US rates is still and advantage for us here in NZ we can't compete based on price.
      - godmode2019 4y ago
        What is a US rate? I get $120NZD per hr from local companies
        xupybd 4y ago
        Is that for a salaried position? If so well done!
defterGoose 4y ago
As a current job searcher, I literally tried to explain this to my mother a few hours ago. Basically, "I can't get anyone to hire me despite the fact that I interview very well because there's literally no trust that I've done the things I say I've done/worked on, and that are hard to substantiate because of the simple fact that I was making the products instead of making landing pages for the products."
- FpUser 4y ago
  >"I was making the products instead of making landing pages for the products" Designing and making products is what I do for living as my own business. Never really had people's distrust when explaining them what / how I've done things. Of course I also have list of clients and reference letters from them along with phone numbers so if someone is in doubt they can check.
odshoifsdhfs 4y ago
Maybe if companies haven't been fucking over people, colluding to keep wages low, offshoring, unpaid overtime, layoffs to protect investors and not employees, etc etc, maybe, just maybe I would feel like I should be honest/hard working. But since in 20+ years the amount of shit I've seen companies do to their employees, I seriously don't care anymore. And guess what, when I decided to be an asshole, think only of myself and not give a fuck about the companies, voila, my renumeration started to go up and up and up (making 10x more now than when I was a 'company man'). Stop being an idiot (not parent, in general) and start looking for yourself only, in a few years you will see the rewards.
- xupybd 4y ago
  You have to look out for yourself but fraud is not the way to go

by xupybd 4y ago

Ug... as someone that one day would like to work remote this is infuriating. Anyone who is doing this, you're destroying trust and making life hard for the rest of us.

ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago

> Anyone who is doing this, you're destroying trust and making life hard for the rest of us. Sadly, they don't care. This is why we can't have nice things.

xupybd 4y ago
Yeah, I know. I'm just venting really.
xwdv 4y ago
Um we can still have nice things if people stop being naive. It’s not hard to verify someone actually exists… there are ways.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
  I know. It was a joke. I'm old, and have seen plenty of rejection, even though I'm "the real deal." But that kind of behavior has been used as an excuse for ignoring me. The icing on the cake, was when I was told that "I probably faked" my portfolio. At that point, I realized that I am radioactive, and might as well just give up.
  - ghoward 4y ago
    Holy cow, you can't get a job? What?! That makes me feel better about not being able to.
    - foomatic 4y ago
      I don't feel better. What hope is there for me then!? Fuck-em and their stupid snobby jobs anyway.
      - hnuser52395 4y ago
        It makes me think that the r/cscareerquestions tack of forgetting everything else and focusing on just leetcode may actually have merit. For what it's worth, I think Chris Marshall looks like a great developer and a professional I aspire to emulate. However, a lot of companies do make decisions based on metrics, keyword searches, and standardized tests like leetcode (aka stuff that misses out on the human element), so it makes sense to try and balance both if one hasn't done so already.
      - ghoward 4y ago
        I'm sorry. There's no hope for me either; I'm not a "good cultural fit" most of the time. I agree with your last sentence, although I would word it a little differently. :)
        xupybd 4y ago
        From your blog I expect that you'd be a cultural fit for the kind of place I'd like to work in. Unfortunately those places are not the that common.
        ghoward 4y ago
        Unfortunately, you're correct that they are not that common. In fact, my last job was at a place where the salesman told me to not fix a bug I found until a customer ran into that bug so that "they'll remember why they need us." I was appalled. I'm glad there are more programmers like me out there though. Thank you. :)
    - irvingprime 4y ago
      I have been in the software industry, mostly writing code, for longer than some of the people interviewing me have been alive. It took me about a year of hunting to find my current job. I rejected a couple of offers. I walked away from a couple companies with too many red flags. And I got rejected over and over and over again. It's just the way things are. Shrug it off. Don't take it personally. Move on.
  - thrill 4y ago
    Yeah, I've got that t-shirt. One guy flat out told me "I think your resume is a fraud". I'd had enough, and flatly said "I really don't give a flying fuck what you believe." It was worth it watching his partner beside him choking while drinking his water. I followed up with a letter to the CEO with description of the event and proof of my credentials. No idea what happened to the interviewer, nor do I care.
  - mistrial9 4y ago
    a magazine cover from the 90s really stands out in my mind (I was a professional C++ coder at the time). It was about some latest-thing code team management and the cover illustration was hand-drawn, of seven gray-beard guys, looking somewhat sagacious with an aura of wisdom and insight, all gathered in a semi-circle around a single whiteboard (like an easle) solving some serious, high skill problem. Anyone with training in classical (european) arts would recognize the council of sages, and the drawing was good. There was no questioning that these (perl programmers?) were at the top of the game on that magazine cover. then came The Google ! haunting image
    - foomatic 4y ago
      Sorry what?
      - wyclif 4y ago
        I think what he's trying to say is that ageism is real today, but things didn't used to be that way.
- munk-a 4y ago
  The nice thing would be having a basic level of trust that the person you're interviewing is an actual person. If all job interviews need to start off with a CAPTCHA we'll be in a bad place. I imagine these shell-game interview tricks work really well at large companies where the HR screen is considered to be perfect and thus managers rejecting numerous candidates at the interview layer will be penalized in some manner. "Look, Polly on the Cloud-X-AI team accepted 80% of applicants that reached the interview phase - why is your team accepting just 20%? Is this a culture fit issue that we'll need to intervene on?"
- csunbird 4y ago
  I mean, I had a company asking me to send pictures of my passport and my residence permit by email in the first interview for a remote role. They acted very surprised when I flat out said "No, you can have them when you approach me with an offer. Then you can decide if my papers in order, not before" Ended up not continuing the interview, as giving out very sensitive information like candies to companies on the first interviews is not a good idea at all.
SavageBeast 4y ago
On the other hand, next time I'm on a 30 minute screening and end up getting left with 10 minutes to show them I can write a functional program they will be too worn out to ding me for silly stuff like concatenating Strings instead of properly using StringBuilder. "You really should have used the enhanced for loop for that .." or "You really should have used a Lambda there" etc. After years of tech screens like this over the course of my coding career I can't say Im not enjoying a little schadenfreude over this.
- ImaCake 4y ago
  I get the feeling from this comment that tech interviewers would be very upset with how I write scripts in research. Part of the reason I will never shift to developer as a job is that the interview process is ridiculous. In universities, the uni hiring process is so imposing on the researcher's time that they just hire people they meet through informal processes outside the formal system. The informal system is usually a single interview, send your resume through, and the researcher checks your references to make sure you aren't lying scum.
  - strken 4y ago
    This is frequently how it works in smaller tech companies as well, although it's usually just getting sent straight through to the same final interview as everyone else.
  - ThePadawan 4y ago
    > and the researcher checks your references to make sure you aren't lying scum. That sounds way more professional than any interviewing process I've gone through in the industry /hj.
    - ImaCake 4y ago
      Interesting! Maybe the stereotype of a tech interview is not the common experience of most developers? This would make more sense and leads me to think that HR is just justifying it's own existence with baroque processes that then make it even less relevant and useful.

gedy 4y ago

I'm not sure if it's just "remote" or also aiming for cheap overseas contractors. As a senior remote US employee I don't see how any of the companies I interviewed with would even allow past screening not turning on camera or other tricks like this.

xupybd 4y ago
As a New Zealander, unfortunately, I fall into the category of cheap overseas contractor. With our weak dollar working for a US company is a good way to earn above average. We're still much more expensive than some of the cheaper countries. In fact we're currently working with a Vietnamese contractor. He is very good and much cheaper than a local hire.
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  Please don't go into remote work with this attitude. We speak fluent English and if we get up early we have a great timezone overlap with the US. There's no reason to settle for NZ rates with a US company.
  - xupybd 4y ago
    If I were to get a job with a US company I'd be expecting US rates. That would be the point. That was kind of my point that while getting US rates is still and advantage for us here in NZ we can't compete based on price.
    - godmode2019 4y ago
      What is a US rate? I get $120NZD per hr from local companies
      - xupybd 4y ago
        Is that for a salaried position? If so well done!

defterGoose 4y ago

As a current job searcher, I literally tried to explain this to my mother a few hours ago. Basically, "I can't get anyone to hire me despite the fact that I interview very well because there's literally no trust that I've done the things I say I've done/worked on, and that are hard to substantiate because of the simple fact that I was making the products instead of making landing pages for the products."

FpUser 4y ago
>"I was making the products instead of making landing pages for the products" Designing and making products is what I do for living as my own business. Never really had people's distrust when explaining them what / how I've done things. Of course I also have list of clients and reference letters from them along with phone numbers so if someone is in doubt they can check.

odshoifsdhfs 4y ago

Maybe if companies haven't been fucking over people, colluding to keep wages low, offshoring, unpaid overtime, layoffs to protect investors and not employees, etc etc, maybe, just maybe I would feel like I should be honest/hard working. But since in 20+ years the amount of shit I've seen companies do to their employees, I seriously don't care anymore. And guess what, when I decided to be an asshole, think only of myself and not give a fuck about the companies, voila, my renumeration started to go up and up and up (making 10x more now than when I was a 'company man'). Stop being an idiot (not parent, in general) and start looking for yourself only, in a few years you will see the rewards.

xupybd 4y ago
You have to look out for yourself but fraud is not the way to go