7 ms·

Damn, the top comment on the article is about how you need to lie in tech interviews. How far have we fallen if we don't even have enough dignity to walk away f

Damn, the top comment on the article is about how you need to lie in tech interviews. How far have we fallen if we don't even have enough dignity to walk away from garbage tier companies who can't even put any real effort into hiring. Lying is not a solution, letting companies like Databricks die a slow painful death because they create toxic environments and all their programmers keep quitting is the solution.

RajT88 4y ago
> Lying is not a solution Agreed. You should not lie in interviews. A common way of avoiding having to lie is registering your own consulting company after getting laid off. No resume gap! As far as if it fools recruiters, no idea. It's got to sometimes, right? I see it too often on LinkedIn for it to be useless.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  I’d personally see that as lying.
  - smeagull 4y ago
    Just actually register the company. In my country you don't even need to register, you just do business as a contractor. As long as you're under certain revenue limits, there's no registration necessary.
  - atemerev 4y ago
    Well, you can actually, you know, consult. Or don’t, if you don’t feel like it. That’s the beauty of consulting.
  - fauigerzigerk 4y ago
    Perhaps in a very narrow sense, but I think it's more complicated than that. Let's assume that there are facts that a person has a legitimate right to conceal in a particular context. What if the only way to conceal such a fact is to create a false impression? I would hesitate to call that lying, because the word lying ususally implies that it is not legitimate, which contradicts the assumption.
  - CuriousCosmic 4y ago
    I mean as long as you have done some degree of contracting or consulting with the corp you made or at least can reasonably say that you planned to, it's not really lying. When pressed it can be as simple as "maintaining a corporation for any work I do (when not working as a FTE/salaried employee) is preferable for accounting purposes". Of course if they press further you should probably have your accounting in order/understand the topic so you can explain this without looking like an idiot but it's unlikely they'd press you much further than that.
  - thih9 4y ago
    I'd say it's reframing the problem in a way that makes the original question about resume gap pointless.
- ramesh31 4y ago
  >A common way of avoiding having to lie is registering your own consulting company after getting laid off. No resume gap! As far as if it fools recruiters, no idea. It's got to sometimes, right? I see it too often on LinkedIn for it to be useless. "Consulting" is the programmer equivalent of claiming "Entrepreneur" as a job title. Sure it exists, but it generally translates to "Unemployed".
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    This is false. Consultant is interchangeable with contractor for many people. Consultants and contractors are numerous in this industry.
  - RajT88 4y ago
    Wayyy more than programmers use this trick. It does not even seem to be limited to IT.
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    I’m consulting on a part-time contract while working on my own thing the rest of the week, am I doing it wrong?
  - kergonath 4y ago
    I’ve seen consultants make around £30,000 a month. Including at least one case where the person in question did that after being let go, consulting for the same people who were her customers when she was employed. Not too bad for unemployed people.
    - mcv 4y ago
      When my last employer went through a technical bankruptcy and had to fire some people, I volunteered because it would enable me to start my own business. I've been doing pretty well since then. Not 30k/month, but good enough.
      - kergonath 4y ago
        Congratulations! It is not for everyone, but I have friends thriving in this role. Now, to be clear they did not make £30,000 pcm year after year. Ups and downs average out over the long term, and the average certainly is lower than that. Still, they do complain about stress and such, but not really about the money.
- hapless 4y ago
  It doesn't fool anyone.
  - jfrbfbreudh 4y ago
    Fools lots of people in my experience.
    - Buttons840 4y ago
      Some people think, "he says he was consulting, whatever, he's got the skills and seems like a good guy". Are they really fooled? Or do they just not care? The real question is, will "consulting" fool the people who would reject you for a resume gap?
      - apelapan 4y ago
        You would obviously need to give an overview of the types of customers and assignments and you had while consulting. And provide references on request. No different to any other job.
    - RajT88 4y ago
      At the very least it seems like it's useful for fooling the first tier recruiters who filter people out based on things like resume gaps or not having a particular keyword. It keeps your resume out of the wastebin, at least until you get to chat with the next tier recruiter.
- smeagull 4y ago
  That's just another way of lying. If it makes you feel better about it, then fine I guess.
  - flangola7 4y ago
    It's lying but it's a lie that is backed up by your history when they search your previous jobs
  - lmm 4y ago
    I've had plenty of employers tell me something in the interview that was technically true but very misleading. They seem to think that's quite different from lying.
    - kergonath 4y ago
      It’s a lie if you get caught and are in a position to be punished. You cannot do anything against a recruiter, ergo they cannot lie. Or rather, even if they lie they can give as many bad faith explanations or further lies as necessary and there is nothing you can do about it. Unless it is so egregious that you can sue them, in which case you have either a fat settlement or a court that demonstrates that they did in fact lie.
      - autoexec 4y ago
        If you can't do anything against them, but they can do many things against you, there's not much hope for a fair agreement/outcome. I don't know what the fix would be, but it sure seems like there's something fundamental that needs fixing to make it so that when a would-be employer and a would-be employee meet to decide if they want to work together they meet on equal ground.
        kergonath 4y ago
        > If you can't do anything against them, but they can do many things against you, there's not much hope for a fair agreement/outcome. Yeah, I tend to agree. It is depressing, but we are where we are. That said, I might be naive but I think things are fair most of the time. But mostly because people tend to do the right thing, often nudged by laws and regulations and not because they cannot get away with figurative murder, which some employers do. > I don't know what the fix would be, but it sure seems like there's something fundamental that needs fixing to make it so that when a would-be employer and a would-be employee meet to decide if they want to work together they meet on equal ground. I am not sure either. A good step would be to increase the bargaining power of the employees, which implies strong trade unions and a working social safety net. Employers have no qualm making informal agreements and coordinating hiring policies. Otherwise employees or would-be employees have intrinsically the lower hand: if they don’t work, they starve but employers don’t lose sleep over a worker’s life. In an ideal world, this would be unnecessary because a bad employer would soon have trouble finding workers and an equilibrium could get established. We are not in an ideal world, and the equilibrium is unstable.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
gedy 4y ago
Is there any drawback to just leaving your last company active on LinkedIn, etc? I did that one time when I quit for a 4 month break, no one seemed to ask if I had quit yet and interviews went fine?
- mcv 4y ago
  I sometimes don't update LinkedIn for years. Sometimes I get calls from recruiters who think I'm still at a previous company.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I've been led to believe that there are brokers who have information on your employment history and that it will likely show up in a background check. Famously, employment dates are the only thing a typical HR department will give out when cold called by a potential new employer. Basically, it's not something I'd fluff beyond a month or two. I'd find something else to fill a big gap on a resume if needed (sabbatical, volunteering, consulting, whatever) just in case it's something that an automated filter is tossing out.
  - gedy 4y ago
    Yes if it gets to filling out background check documents, I don't fudge dates. I have though typically only needed to do those after offer has been made, etc.
smeagull 4y ago
Interviews are all lies. Sure, some people would claim "It's just about putting your best foot forward and presenting yourself in the best possible light," but those people are such liars they lie about lying. Lying by admission is still lying.
- ianlevesque 4y ago
  God that's cynical. In the final round of my last FAANG interview after bumbling through part of it, at a very senior level, the interviewer flat out asked me "so uh, how long has it been since you did Android?", presumably due to my poor performance. I admitted I'd spent the majority of the last 2 years on iOS even though I'd done Android in the past too, and lo and behold, hired. Honesty and respect are valued where it counts, and if they're not, find another employer.
  - snozolli 4y ago
    I admitted I'd spent the majority of the last 2 years on iOS even though I'd done Android in the past too How would it be any different if you had simply lied about Android experience? As in, you simply were never remotely competent at it and you just said it had been awhile? Fake it until you make it is age-old advice and you being lucky enough to have an interviewer who cared isn't really an argument against it.
  - anon7725 4y ago
    Congratulations on finding an empathetic and wise interviewer among the legions of smug know-it-alls who are enthused to watch you twist in the wind with their trick questions.
- wombatpm 4y ago
  I like to quite Dave Barry: A resume is not just a piece of paper, it’s a piece of paper covered in lies. And it can be the difference between not getting a job, and not even coming close
cranium 4y ago
The Blind format rewards edgy comments. I don't think anyone would really advocate for lying during the recruiting process.
- KaiserPro 4y ago
  Them: "why did you leave previous company?" You: "because I wanted a new challenge" We all know that in most cases thats a lie. But if you were to tell the truth you would stand a high chance of being punished.
  - mcv 4y ago
    And sometimes the company really does prefer people who know how to package uncomfortable facts in a more diplomatic manner. Nobody wants blatant liars, but giving a positive spin on things is a surprisingly valued skill.
- oh_nonono 4y ago
  > I don't think anyone would really advocate for lying during the recruiting process. Why?
  - cranium 4y ago
    Other than questionable ethics, it can lead to immediate termination. But as always, there's lying and "lying". Saying you quit when you were laid off, I would consider lying. Telling you needed new challenges when in fact your boss was so toxic you wanted to quit the universe, not lying. In the end, a job interview is a courting dance and you'd want to put your colorful feathers on, but at least they should reflect your reality.
saos 4y ago
> letting companies like Databricks die a slow painful death because they create toxic environments and all their programmers keep quitting is the solution. True, these places eventually fall away, whether it takes 2,4,6 10+ years. They eventually perish.
mcv 4y ago
Will hiring liars not eventually accomplish them same thing?
blitzar 4y ago
> is about how you need to lie in tech interviews. Doing recruiting rounds as a candidate in the early 00's taught me that you have to lie in interviews. All the questions were "give an example of a time when ... " - everyone displayed leadership when they were captain of the national championship winning football team, and overcame adversity when they climbed the three mountains taller than everest in the same day. At the end of the day ... it worked. Much like social media etc today - real life cant compete with the fantasy of the 100x coder who added $50mil of sales to the bottom line of their last employer. You should also consider lying to your doctor when they ask how much you drink / smoke / exercise. They will just assume that you are so 2x whatever you say for drinking and 1/10th the amount of exercise you self report - because everybody lies.
- mickelsen 4y ago
  Good one, House. https://youtu.be/HgXpvzt7Qg8?t=108 https://youtu.be/HgXpvzt7Qg8?t=108
daniel-thompson 4y ago
> How far have we fallen if we don't even have enough dignity to walk away from garbage tier companies who can't even put any real effort into hiring. On the one hand I agree with you, on the other, you can't pay your mortgage with dignity.
- anon7725 4y ago
  Indeed. This is not a categorical issue since, as noted elsewhere in the thread, employers lie and obfuscate all the time. Would I judge someone for fudging the dates of their last employment to get around a ridiculous recruiter screen like this? Absolutely not. Would I judge someone for directly lying about their experience or knowledge? Yes, that’s unethical.
thaumasiotes 4y ago
> Damn, the top comment on the article is about how you need to lie in tech interviews. My favorite piece of advice from interview.io's interview coaching was an emphatic "There is no place for honesty in a behavioral interview."

RajT88 4y ago

> Lying is not a solution Agreed. You should not lie in interviews. A common way of avoiding having to lie is registering your own consulting company after getting laid off. No resume gap! As far as if it fools recruiters, no idea. It's got to sometimes, right? I see it too often on LinkedIn for it to be useless.

Waterluvian 4y ago
I’d personally see that as lying.
- smeagull 4y ago
  Just actually register the company. In my country you don't even need to register, you just do business as a contractor. As long as you're under certain revenue limits, there's no registration necessary.
- atemerev 4y ago
  Well, you can actually, you know, consult. Or don’t, if you don’t feel like it. That’s the beauty of consulting.
- fauigerzigerk 4y ago
  Perhaps in a very narrow sense, but I think it's more complicated than that. Let's assume that there are facts that a person has a legitimate right to conceal in a particular context. What if the only way to conceal such a fact is to create a false impression? I would hesitate to call that lying, because the word lying ususally implies that it is not legitimate, which contradicts the assumption.
- CuriousCosmic 4y ago
  I mean as long as you have done some degree of contracting or consulting with the corp you made or at least can reasonably say that you planned to, it's not really lying. When pressed it can be as simple as "maintaining a corporation for any work I do (when not working as a FTE/salaried employee) is preferable for accounting purposes". Of course if they press further you should probably have your accounting in order/understand the topic so you can explain this without looking like an idiot but it's unlikely they'd press you much further than that.
- thih9 4y ago
  I'd say it's reframing the problem in a way that makes the original question about resume gap pointless.
ramesh31 4y ago
>A common way of avoiding having to lie is registering your own consulting company after getting laid off. No resume gap! As far as if it fools recruiters, no idea. It's got to sometimes, right? I see it too often on LinkedIn for it to be useless. "Consulting" is the programmer equivalent of claiming "Entrepreneur" as a job title. Sure it exists, but it generally translates to "Unemployed".
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  This is false. Consultant is interchangeable with contractor for many people. Consultants and contractors are numerous in this industry.
- RajT88 4y ago
  Wayyy more than programmers use this trick. It does not even seem to be limited to IT.
- dilyevsky 4y ago
  I’m consulting on a part-time contract while working on my own thing the rest of the week, am I doing it wrong?
- kergonath 4y ago
  I’ve seen consultants make around £30,000 a month. Including at least one case where the person in question did that after being let go, consulting for the same people who were her customers when she was employed. Not too bad for unemployed people.
  - mcv 4y ago
    When my last employer went through a technical bankruptcy and had to fire some people, I volunteered because it would enable me to start my own business. I've been doing pretty well since then. Not 30k/month, but good enough.
    - kergonath 4y ago
      Congratulations! It is not for everyone, but I have friends thriving in this role. Now, to be clear they did not make £30,000 pcm year after year. Ups and downs average out over the long term, and the average certainly is lower than that. Still, they do complain about stress and such, but not really about the money.
hapless 4y ago
It doesn't fool anyone.
- jfrbfbreudh 4y ago
  Fools lots of people in my experience.
  - Buttons840 4y ago
    Some people think, "he says he was consulting, whatever, he's got the skills and seems like a good guy". Are they really fooled? Or do they just not care? The real question is, will "consulting" fool the people who would reject you for a resume gap?
    - apelapan 4y ago
      You would obviously need to give an overview of the types of customers and assignments and you had while consulting. And provide references on request. No different to any other job.
  - RajT88 4y ago
    At the very least it seems like it's useful for fooling the first tier recruiters who filter people out based on things like resume gaps or not having a particular keyword. It keeps your resume out of the wastebin, at least until you get to chat with the next tier recruiter.
smeagull 4y ago
That's just another way of lying. If it makes you feel better about it, then fine I guess.
- flangola7 4y ago
  It's lying but it's a lie that is backed up by your history when they search your previous jobs
- lmm 4y ago
  I've had plenty of employers tell me something in the interview that was technically true but very misleading. They seem to think that's quite different from lying.
  - kergonath 4y ago
    It’s a lie if you get caught and are in a position to be punished. You cannot do anything against a recruiter, ergo they cannot lie. Or rather, even if they lie they can give as many bad faith explanations or further lies as necessary and there is nothing you can do about it. Unless it is so egregious that you can sue them, in which case you have either a fat settlement or a court that demonstrates that they did in fact lie.
    - autoexec 4y ago
      If you can't do anything against them, but they can do many things against you, there's not much hope for a fair agreement/outcome. I don't know what the fix would be, but it sure seems like there's something fundamental that needs fixing to make it so that when a would-be employer and a would-be employee meet to decide if they want to work together they meet on equal ground.
      - kergonath 4y ago
        > If you can't do anything against them, but they can do many things against you, there's not much hope for a fair agreement/outcome. Yeah, I tend to agree. It is depressing, but we are where we are. That said, I might be naive but I think things are fair most of the time. But mostly because people tend to do the right thing, often nudged by laws and regulations and not because they cannot get away with figurative murder, which some employers do. > I don't know what the fix would be, but it sure seems like there's something fundamental that needs fixing to make it so that when a would-be employer and a would-be employee meet to decide if they want to work together they meet on equal ground. I am not sure either. A good step would be to increase the bargaining power of the employees, which implies strong trade unions and a working social safety net. Employers have no qualm making informal agreements and coordinating hiring policies. Otherwise employees or would-be employees have intrinsically the lower hand: if they don’t work, they starve but employers don’t lose sleep over a worker’s life. In an ideal world, this would be unnecessary because a bad employer would soon have trouble finding workers and an equilibrium could get established. We are not in an ideal world, and the equilibrium is unstable.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

gedy 4y ago

Is there any drawback to just leaving your last company active on LinkedIn, etc? I did that one time when I quit for a 4 month break, no one seemed to ask if I had quit yet and interviews went fine?

mcv 4y ago
I sometimes don't update LinkedIn for years. Sometimes I get calls from recruiters who think I'm still at a previous company.
hotpotamus 4y ago
I've been led to believe that there are brokers who have information on your employment history and that it will likely show up in a background check. Famously, employment dates are the only thing a typical HR department will give out when cold called by a potential new employer. Basically, it's not something I'd fluff beyond a month or two. I'd find something else to fill a big gap on a resume if needed (sabbatical, volunteering, consulting, whatever) just in case it's something that an automated filter is tossing out.
- gedy 4y ago
  Yes if it gets to filling out background check documents, I don't fudge dates. I have though typically only needed to do those after offer has been made, etc.

smeagull 4y ago

Interviews are all lies. Sure, some people would claim "It's just about putting your best foot forward and presenting yourself in the best possible light," but those people are such liars they lie about lying. Lying by admission is still lying.

ianlevesque 4y ago
God that's cynical. In the final round of my last FAANG interview after bumbling through part of it, at a very senior level, the interviewer flat out asked me "so uh, how long has it been since you did Android?", presumably due to my poor performance. I admitted I'd spent the majority of the last 2 years on iOS even though I'd done Android in the past too, and lo and behold, hired. Honesty and respect are valued where it counts, and if they're not, find another employer.
- snozolli 4y ago
  I admitted I'd spent the majority of the last 2 years on iOS even though I'd done Android in the past too How would it be any different if you had simply lied about Android experience? As in, you simply were never remotely competent at it and you just said it had been awhile? Fake it until you make it is age-old advice and you being lucky enough to have an interviewer who cared isn't really an argument against it.
- anon7725 4y ago
  Congratulations on finding an empathetic and wise interviewer among the legions of smug know-it-alls who are enthused to watch you twist in the wind with their trick questions.
wombatpm 4y ago
I like to quite Dave Barry: A resume is not just a piece of paper, it’s a piece of paper covered in lies. And it can be the difference between not getting a job, and not even coming close

cranium 4y ago

The Blind format rewards edgy comments. I don't think anyone would really advocate for lying during the recruiting process.

KaiserPro 4y ago
Them: "why did you leave previous company?" You: "because I wanted a new challenge" We all know that in most cases thats a lie. But if you were to tell the truth you would stand a high chance of being punished.
- mcv 4y ago
  And sometimes the company really does prefer people who know how to package uncomfortable facts in a more diplomatic manner. Nobody wants blatant liars, but giving a positive spin on things is a surprisingly valued skill.
oh_nonono 4y ago
> I don't think anyone would really advocate for lying during the recruiting process. Why?
- cranium 4y ago
  Other than questionable ethics, it can lead to immediate termination. But as always, there's lying and "lying". Saying you quit when you were laid off, I would consider lying. Telling you needed new challenges when in fact your boss was so toxic you wanted to quit the universe, not lying. In the end, a job interview is a courting dance and you'd want to put your colorful feathers on, but at least they should reflect your reality.

saos 4y ago

> letting companies like Databricks die a slow painful death because they create toxic environments and all their programmers keep quitting is the solution. True, these places eventually fall away, whether it takes 2,4,6 10+ years. They eventually perish.

mcv 4y ago

Will hiring liars not eventually accomplish them same thing?

blitzar 4y ago

> is about how you need to lie in tech interviews. Doing recruiting rounds as a candidate in the early 00's taught me that you have to lie in interviews. All the questions were "give an example of a time when ... " - everyone displayed leadership when they were captain of the national championship winning football team, and overcame adversity when they climbed the three mountains taller than everest in the same day. At the end of the day ... it worked. Much like social media etc today - real life cant compete with the fantasy of the 100x coder who added $50mil of sales to the bottom line of their last employer. You should also consider lying to your doctor when they ask how much you drink / smoke / exercise. They will just assume that you are so 2x whatever you say for drinking and 1/10th the amount of exercise you self report - because everybody lies.

mickelsen 4y ago
Good one, House. https://youtu.be/HgXpvzt7Qg8?t=108 https://youtu.be/HgXpvzt7Qg8?t=108

daniel-thompson 4y ago

> How far have we fallen if we don't even have enough dignity to walk away from garbage tier companies who can't even put any real effort into hiring. On the one hand I agree with you, on the other, you can't pay your mortgage with dignity.

anon7725 4y ago
Indeed. This is not a categorical issue since, as noted elsewhere in the thread, employers lie and obfuscate all the time. Would I judge someone for fudging the dates of their last employment to get around a ridiculous recruiter screen like this? Absolutely not. Would I judge someone for directly lying about their experience or knowledge? Yes, that’s unethical.

thaumasiotes 4y ago

> Damn, the top comment on the article is about how you need to lie in tech interviews. My favorite piece of advice from interview.io's interview coaching was an emphatic "There is no place for honesty in a behavioral interview."