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An explanation that isn't brought up by the article is plain mismanagement. I briefly ran a platform/SRE team that desperately needed another hire to keep up w
by kqr 3y ago
An explanation that isn't brought up by the article is plain mismanagement.
I briefly ran a platform/SRE team that desperately needed another hire to keep up with the constant stream of interrupting demands from the rest of the organisation while simultaneously being able to dig its way out of the bad conditions that lead to constant interruptions in the first place.
Everyone I talked to in the company (including the interim CTO, finance, and HR) agreed this was a good idea and I had a solid plan for how to do it. I put out all the feelers, wrote kick-ass job ads, got many applications, interviewed some and sent short initial tests to some. Did more in-depth interviews with a few.
Then when it came to discussing concrete relocation plans, benefits, etc. with HR, I got ghosted – by my own HR department! When they finally sat down with me, it was to explain that no, we cannot hire $applicant_category because $bullshit_reason. "But if you find someone within the smaller category we can allow, go ahead!"
So that narrowed down the field and I almost had to start over entirely. And then the same thing happened again! They always found a reason not to hire whatever great person I had discovered. I think in the end – months later – they admitted they didn't want to hire for that position anyway and took down the job ad from the company site. By that point I had realised what a weird place that organisation was and started leaving it.
- mdorazio 3y agoWas this a small company? Getting confirmation from HR of an available headcount and budget is usually step 1 in a hiring manager’s process.
- kqr 3y agoIt was in the hundreds of employees, but upper management liked to run it as if it was in the thousands. I don't know which of those answers is more meaningful as an answer to your question. Either way, HR was completely on board right up until I had a good candidate! They were actually very helpful to begin with, assisting me in summarising information about the company, sorting out potential legal issues ahead of time, finding places to publish job ads, etc.
- charlie0 3y agoIt's the need to look busy.
- naijaboiler 3y agothere was never money to pay the new hire. they just had you waste your time
- tbrownaw 3y ago> explain that no, we cannot hire $applicant_category because $bullshit_reason But they couldn't just tell you whatever applicant attributes they wanted when you talked to them before writing up the listing?
- kqr 3y agoThis was also one of my first questions. They made it sound like there were a lot of small nuances and they could not afford to spend the time working them out in detail ahead of time.
- commandlinefan 3y ago> they couldn't just tell you whatever applicant attributes they wanted It's possible that the applicant attributes they wanted were a violation of U.S. labor law, but they also knew that as long as they didn't explicitly say it, they couldn't be found guilty of violating the law later, so they leave it to you to guess.
- DonsDiscountGas 3y agoThey were lying. They didn't actually want to hire anybody, but wanted to pretend they were, so they change requirements whenever it looks like somebody might actually meet them.