6 ms·

Joblint – Test tech job posts for issues

58 points by pabs3 4y ago

pictur 4y ago
I wish problems in business life were always such naive things.
bawolff 4y ago
Kind of funny how using the term sluts is considered only twice as bad as using the word "she"
einpoklum 4y ago
I entered this job posting: > I need someone to inculcate my employees with rote > identity politics without doing anything genuinely > useful. Bonus points if they can also serve as a token > minority hire. and it passed with flying colors. (pun intended?)
KhalPanda 4y ago
I was hoping/expecting it would flag descriptions that don't mention a salary range, location or worthless perks. Maybe I'm jaded.
gumptionary 4y ago
I've built one of these before and the devil is so very much in the details, but really even more in the context. There's the easy stuff: "ninja" for example. Nobody, in the year 2023, should be using that word in a job post. But then there's the hard stuff that really matters. If you want someone who has experience being a "white hat" hacker, that's perfectly alright, but if you want "white people only" well that's obviously bad. If you don't flag the latter you look like a joke, but if you flag every instance of the word "white" then it feels overbearing and like the tool isn't very smart. I'm pretty sure these will never actually be useful on a superficial word-matching basis. They need to look at broader phrases and context. And then there's the real problem that even if the tool helps the hiring manager / recruiter sweep their inbuilt biases under the rug to get better applicants, they're still the ones making the hiring decisions.
- quadrifoliate 4y ago
  > If you want someone who has experience being a "white hat" hacker, that's perfectly alright Why is "white hat" hacker inherently used to mean "ethical" or "good"? Most normal people wear black hats.
  - snerbles 4y ago
    In Old Western films the hero would often wear a white cowboy hat, the villain a black one.
    - quadrifoliate 4y ago
      You should not need to know about Old Westerns to participate in security. This sounds like great terminology to replace with explicit terms.
      - jstanley 4y ago
        Good news: you don't need to know about Old Westerns. You just need to know that white hat is good and black hat is bad.
        zamnos 4y ago
        Oh. What's red hat then? Seriously though, if learning the meaning of two (three if you throw in grey hat) terms is too difficult, never mind the rest of the requisite knowledge to meaningfully participate, you may want to consider an alternate area of study.
        quadrifoliate 4y ago
        > You just need to know that white hat is good and black hat is bad. Yeah, anything that boils down to "you don't need to know about X, you just need to know that white X is good and black X is bad" is not a great look for technical terminology in the current context.
      - 4y ago
DeathArrow 4y ago
Issues according to self proclaimed standards? Not very useful.
LorenzA 4y ago
looks like a dead project last content change seems from 2016 https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/commits/master https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/commits/master
ar9av 4y ago
Is it me or your website is showing tally 0 for any input I put in? I dont see any submit button nor is enter working
- 8organicbits 4y ago
  The UI isn't great. It should flag text as you type. Try "bro". You'll need to enable javascript
Y_Y 4y ago
I get a warning for "fuck" but an error for "guys".
akerro 4y ago
Sooo I just put one of the most vulgar, sexist, racist, homophobic text I could think of, also said extra points for knowledge of NodeJS and I got score 0. No problems found.
chaps 4y ago
"We are looking for childless workers who will join our weekly event of snorting coke off of each other's necks until we pass out. We expect a minimum of 200 hours per week in the office, though we do not allow sleeping on the job. Perl nerds only!" Zero issues reported.
- ushtaritk421 4y ago
  “white childless workers” also doesn’t get flagged.
  - chaps 4y ago
    I think this is the main ruleset: https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rules.js https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule... There's such a striking lack of racist/homophobic rules that I'm almost willing to believe it's a satire project. Edit: this got me -2: "We provide seeds to local farming communities to ensure they always have the green fields they need to supply their local markets."
    - evilduck 4y ago
      It hasn't been updated in 7 years. I'm willing to believe it's an abandoned project that didn't see the desired traction to justify gold plating it.
      - chaps 4y ago
        Oh it totally is. But with the number of people in this thread (and past threads) talking about how nice this is, "all it needs is.." and such, it's not unwarranted to call out the system's obvious absurdity.
- donutshop 4y ago
  Missing the part about how it's built in Rust
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dmkirwan 4y ago
I built a similar one to test job descriptions for non-inclusive language[0]. These tools are helpful , particularly for people who are not native English speakers. I use open source tools like retext-equality[1] and retext-profanities[2] to help catch non-inclusive language. Inevitable there will be strings that are mislabeled or just plain wrong as many of these tools aren't capable of understanding context ("communicate clearly" is often flagged as "clearly" can be superfluous or patronising in certain contexts). Also - kudos for open sourcing it. I look forward to contributing and using the library. 0: https://devscreen.io/inclusive-language-check https://devscreen.io/inclusive-language-check 1: https://github.com/retextjs/retext-equality/blob/main/rules.md https://github.com/retextjs/retext-equality/blob/main/rules.... 2: https://github.com/retextjs/retext-profanities/blob/main/rules.md https://github.com/retextjs/retext-profanities/blob/main/rul... Edit: I have just noticed that this hasn't had any commits in 3 years, and no releases for much longer than that. OP: are you the author of the library? It would be good to hear what the plans are for it.
denysvitali 4y ago
IMHO this is missing one key check: salary range. I think it's stupid for candidates to get through the interview process just to discover after many wasted hours that the salary range of the position is incompatible with their expectations
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
I’ve been helping college students navigate their job searches through a local program. I’ve noticed a continuous dilution of the criteria for what people consider to be “red flags” in their job searches. When I started doing this, we had to teach people to watch for red flags like unpaid internships, companies with extreme turnover, or jobs trying to demand full-time employment but paying people as contractors without benefits. In recent years, I feel like I spend more time talking people out of simple things they’ve determined are “red flags”, such as job postings that don’t use exactly the right words or interviews that don’t proceed exactly like the student imagines they should. In the past year, I’ve had students tell me that their “red flags” include things like any interview process that takes more than 1 hour total (this is for college grads) or any job that doesn’t pay FAANG level compensation, or any job that requires them to do any on-call for their own work. We spend a lot of time resetting expectations to get students aligned with healthy jobs that won’t take advantage of them, but nevertheless can’t match their unrealistically perfect ideals. This tool has good intentions, but I’m afraid it might contribute to some of these unrealistic expectations about job searching. I often have to remind people that the job posting is never perfect and might be written by someone who doesn’t know how to write well. It might be written by an HR person who was copying things from some bad boilerplate text. You should always be wary of issues in job listings, but if you’re interested in the job it’s worth spending 20-60 minutes communicating with the company to learn more details first. I’ve also noticed a secondary trend wherein some of the most toxic local companies have become very good at signaling: They know how to say all the right things in job listings, sponsor all the right events, and present themselves as exactly the “right” company to work for, but everyone who goes their ends up burned out and depressed by the toxic environment. Ironically, they’ve become experts at recruiting because they’re constantly recruiting to backfill their high turnover rates. What I’m trying to say is: Be on the lookout for issues in your job search, but try to get the full picture before you rule companies out or select an employer.
Eumenes 4y ago
if anything, I'd run jobs thru this, and if it came back with "issues", I'd be interested in applying
rowanmanning 4y ago
lol it's nice to see Hacker News is still a bastion of reasoned communication and friendly discourse between tech people. I should really log in more. I built Joblint literally 10 years ago as a fun side project. I was fed up with a spate of really terrible job ads and decided to write something to help me as an engineer vet whether I wanted to work at a company. It's not a solid tool, it doesn't represent the way I'd build things now, and it codifies my fairly limited view of what made a bad job when I was a bright-eyed 20-something. I should probably add a note to the repo and site to express this but I'm always surprised when it gets dug up tbh. If I were building it again then yeah it'd spot a lot more issues, it wouldn't be built using a massive RegExp , and it'd probably go harder on trying to spot red flags around homophobia and racism. I'm sure some of the foaming gammons here on HN would be overjoyed. Anyway, see you all in another 10 years. Lots of love
- dotcode 4y ago
  But Rowan why didn't joblint prevent the outbreak of war in Ukraine? I see this as a major failing, and really speaks to the nature of your character.
- ctvo 4y ago
  > lol it's nice to see Hacker News is still a bastion of reasoned communication and friendly discourse between tech people. I should really log in more > ... > I'm sure some of the foaming gammons here on HN would be overjoyed. The comments here don't feel that out of line that you need to be this defensive / thin skinned. It's an interesting idea, and worth expanding on, even if it's been languishing.
  - Nekobai 4y ago
    > The comments here don't feel that out of line that you need to be this defensive / thin skinned. It's not the first time that this tool is discussed and, unfortunately, looking at the comments made in the past, I would definitely consider them out of line. So I'm not surprised that the parent poster feels like that about this place.
  - eindiran 4y ago

58 points by pabs3 4y ago

pictur 4y ago

I wish problems in business life were always such naive things.

bawolff 4y ago

Kind of funny how using the term sluts is considered only twice as bad as using the word "she"

einpoklum 4y ago

I entered this job posting: > I need someone to inculcate my employees with rote > identity politics without doing anything genuinely > useful. Bonus points if they can also serve as a token > minority hire. and it passed with flying colors. (pun intended?)

KhalPanda 4y ago

I was hoping/expecting it would flag descriptions that don't mention a salary range, location or worthless perks. Maybe I'm jaded.

gumptionary 4y ago

I've built one of these before and the devil is so very much in the details, but really even more in the context. There's the easy stuff: "ninja" for example. Nobody, in the year 2023, should be using that word in a job post. But then there's the hard stuff that really matters. If you want someone who has experience being a "white hat" hacker, that's perfectly alright, but if you want "white people only" well that's obviously bad. If you don't flag the latter you look like a joke, but if you flag every instance of the word "white" then it feels overbearing and like the tool isn't very smart. I'm pretty sure these will never actually be useful on a superficial word-matching basis. They need to look at broader phrases and context. And then there's the real problem that even if the tool helps the hiring manager / recruiter sweep their inbuilt biases under the rug to get better applicants, they're still the ones making the hiring decisions.

quadrifoliate 4y ago
> If you want someone who has experience being a "white hat" hacker, that's perfectly alright Why is "white hat" hacker inherently used to mean "ethical" or "good"? Most normal people wear black hats.
- snerbles 4y ago
  In Old Western films the hero would often wear a white cowboy hat, the villain a black one.
  - quadrifoliate 4y ago
    You should not need to know about Old Westerns to participate in security. This sounds like great terminology to replace with explicit terms.
    - jstanley 4y ago
      Good news: you don't need to know about Old Westerns. You just need to know that white hat is good and black hat is bad.
      - zamnos 4y ago
        Oh. What's red hat then? Seriously though, if learning the meaning of two (three if you throw in grey hat) terms is too difficult, never mind the rest of the requisite knowledge to meaningfully participate, you may want to consider an alternate area of study.
      - quadrifoliate 4y ago
        > You just need to know that white hat is good and black hat is bad. Yeah, anything that boils down to "you don't need to know about X, you just need to know that white X is good and black X is bad" is not a great look for technical terminology in the current context.
    - 4y ago

DeathArrow 4y ago

Issues according to self proclaimed standards? Not very useful.

LorenzA 4y ago

looks like a dead project last content change seems from 2016 https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/commits/master https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/commits/master

ar9av 4y ago

Is it me or your website is showing tally 0 for any input I put in? I dont see any submit button nor is enter working

8organicbits 4y ago
The UI isn't great. It should flag text as you type. Try "bro". You'll need to enable javascript

Y_Y 4y ago

I get a warning for "fuck" but an error for "guys".

akerro 4y ago

Sooo I just put one of the most vulgar, sexist, racist, homophobic text I could think of, also said extra points for knowledge of NodeJS and I got score 0. No problems found.

chaps 4y ago

"We are looking for childless workers who will join our weekly event of snorting coke off of each other's necks until we pass out. We expect a minimum of 200 hours per week in the office, though we do not allow sleeping on the job. Perl nerds only!" Zero issues reported.

ushtaritk421 4y ago
“white childless workers” also doesn’t get flagged.
- chaps 4y ago
  I think this is the main ruleset: https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rules.js https://github.com/rowanmanning/joblint/blob/master/lib/rule... There's such a striking lack of racist/homophobic rules that I'm almost willing to believe it's a satire project. Edit: this got me -2: "We provide seeds to local farming communities to ensure they always have the green fields they need to supply their local markets."
  - evilduck 4y ago
    It hasn't been updated in 7 years. I'm willing to believe it's an abandoned project that didn't see the desired traction to justify gold plating it.
    - chaps 4y ago
      Oh it totally is. But with the number of people in this thread (and past threads) talking about how nice this is, "all it needs is.." and such, it's not unwarranted to call out the system's obvious absurdity.
donutshop 4y ago
Missing the part about how it's built in Rust
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

dmkirwan 4y ago

I built a similar one to test job descriptions for non-inclusive language[0]. These tools are helpful , particularly for people who are not native English speakers. I use open source tools like retext-equality[1] and retext-profanities[2] to help catch non-inclusive language. Inevitable there will be strings that are mislabeled or just plain wrong as many of these tools aren't capable of understanding context ("communicate clearly" is often flagged as "clearly" can be superfluous or patronising in certain contexts). Also - kudos for open sourcing it. I look forward to contributing and using the library. 0: https://devscreen.io/inclusive-language-check https://devscreen.io/inclusive-language-check 1: https://github.com/retextjs/retext-equality/blob/main/rules.md https://github.com/retextjs/retext-equality/blob/main/rules.... 2: https://github.com/retextjs/retext-profanities/blob/main/rules.md https://github.com/retextjs/retext-profanities/blob/main/rul... Edit: I have just noticed that this hasn't had any commits in 3 years, and no releases for much longer than that. OP: are you the author of the library? It would be good to hear what the plans are for it.

denysvitali 4y ago

IMHO this is missing one key check: salary range. I think it's stupid for candidates to get through the interview process just to discover after many wasted hours that the salary range of the position is incompatible with their expectations

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

I’ve been helping college students navigate their job searches through a local program. I’ve noticed a continuous dilution of the criteria for what people consider to be “red flags” in their job searches. When I started doing this, we had to teach people to watch for red flags like unpaid internships, companies with extreme turnover, or jobs trying to demand full-time employment but paying people as contractors without benefits. In recent years, I feel like I spend more time talking people out of simple things they’ve determined are “red flags”, such as job postings that don’t use exactly the right words or interviews that don’t proceed exactly like the student imagines they should. In the past year, I’ve had students tell me that their “red flags” include things like any interview process that takes more than 1 hour total (this is for college grads) or any job that doesn’t pay FAANG level compensation, or any job that requires them to do any on-call for their own work. We spend a lot of time resetting expectations to get students aligned with healthy jobs that won’t take advantage of them, but nevertheless can’t match their unrealistically perfect ideals. This tool has good intentions, but I’m afraid it might contribute to some of these unrealistic expectations about job searching. I often have to remind people that the job posting is never perfect and might be written by someone who doesn’t know how to write well. It might be written by an HR person who was copying things from some bad boilerplate text. You should always be wary of issues in job listings, but if you’re interested in the job it’s worth spending 20-60 minutes communicating with the company to learn more details first. I’ve also noticed a secondary trend wherein some of the most toxic local companies have become very good at signaling: They know how to say all the right things in job listings, sponsor all the right events, and present themselves as exactly the “right” company to work for, but everyone who goes their ends up burned out and depressed by the toxic environment. Ironically, they’ve become experts at recruiting because they’re constantly recruiting to backfill their high turnover rates. What I’m trying to say is: Be on the lookout for issues in your job search, but try to get the full picture before you rule companies out or select an employer.

Eumenes 4y ago

if anything, I'd run jobs thru this, and if it came back with "issues", I'd be interested in applying

rowanmanning 4y ago

lol it's nice to see Hacker News is still a bastion of reasoned communication and friendly discourse between tech people. I should really log in more. I built Joblint literally 10 years ago as a fun side project. I was fed up with a spate of really terrible job ads and decided to write something to help me as an engineer vet whether I wanted to work at a company. It's not a solid tool, it doesn't represent the way I'd build things now, and it codifies my fairly limited view of what made a bad job when I was a bright-eyed 20-something. I should probably add a note to the repo and site to express this but I'm always surprised when it gets dug up tbh. If I were building it again then yeah it'd spot a lot more issues, it wouldn't be built using a massive RegExp , and it'd probably go harder on trying to spot red flags around homophobia and racism. I'm sure some of the foaming gammons here on HN would be overjoyed. Anyway, see you all in another 10 years. Lots of love

dotcode 4y ago
But Rowan why didn't joblint prevent the outbreak of war in Ukraine? I see this as a major failing, and really speaks to the nature of your character.
ctvo 4y ago
> lol it's nice to see Hacker News is still a bastion of reasoned communication and friendly discourse between tech people. I should really log in more > ... > I'm sure some of the foaming gammons here on HN would be overjoyed. The comments here don't feel that out of line that you need to be this defensive / thin skinned. It's an interesting idea, and worth expanding on, even if it's been languishing.
- Nekobai 4y ago
  > The comments here don't feel that out of line that you need to be this defensive / thin skinned. It's not the first time that this tool is discussed and, unfortunately, looking at the comments made in the past, I would definitely consider them out of line. So I'm not surprised that the parent poster feels like that about this place.
- eindiran 4y ago