6 ms·

I work with a lot of economists. As such, I'd argue that people respond to incentives. Famous example being the cobra effect (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pe

I work with a lot of economists. As such, I'd argue that people respond to incentives. Famous example being the cobra effect (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive) The job market is hell to apply in. Job seekers are incentivised to come up with strategies and techniques to make mass application simpler, and sure enough, they have. Go team humanity.

agilob 2y ago
Go team humanity until you're the one being under DDoS by irrelevant CVs written by bots and the only way to filter them out is write even more strict filters (we all hate) and use LLMs (increasing our hiring costs).
- rangerelf 2y ago
  There would be no need for people attempting to circumvent stupid restrictions if stupid restrictions didn't exist in the first place.
  - agilob 2y ago
    Unless people are expecting the market and companies to bend to their needs and the cost to apply to 1000 jobs is low, because "you miss all the shots you don't take"? Like Intrinsic is... combating spam. Would spam not exist if there were no spam filters?
  - paxys 2y ago
    Having to fill out a job application is now a "stupid restriction"?
    - mmh0000 2y ago
      Usually, yes. Everything the application asks for is on my resume. And required cover letters are ridiculous, "please write 10 paragraphs fluffing our company and HR department". Of course I'm going to automate the shit out of that.
      - rangerelf 2y ago
        Thanks, I was wondering how to explain it :-)
- danaris 2y ago
  It seems to me that both job seekers and employers hiring now are largely victims of the arms race that's been going on for over a decade now. The LLM angle is just the latest note in it. The thing is, it is not a symmetric situation. Barring serious outliers, the worst that's going to happen to a company that can't find "the perfect candidate" is that they hire someone who is suboptimal. Maybe they even don't have the skills they claimed at all. Oh no, efficiency will be down and the execs' stock options might not be worth quite as much. On the other hand, the worst thing that's going to happen to a typical job seeker who can't find a company that will hire them is that they will run through their savings—wait, do they have savings? this is America we're talking about, so probably not!—and be unable to pay their bills, causing them to become homeless. So forgive me for having exactly zero sympathy for the companies that perpetuate this ugly arms race.
  - ThrowawayR2 2y ago
    > "Oh no, efficiency will be down and the execs' stock options might not be worth quite as much." Translation: employees have to work with someone who is not pulling their weight (always unpleasant) and their own stock based compensation might not be worth quite as much (hurting the income of individual programmers) and the manager has to deal with the hassle of a termination process. So forgive me for having exactly zero sympathy with candidates trying to use AI slop to game the system.
    - rachofsunshine 2y ago
      Both sides of the process have real skin in the game, but the difference is that employers (and not employees) typically control the structure of the hiring process. So insofar as the hiring process becomes degenerate, that's something companies can do something about, but not something candidates can do much about (except in this case fail to follow their own obvious incentives). I'm not exactly cheering for LLM-driven spam here, but the way applications work has incentivized candidates to be maximally spammy for a very long time.
    - danaris 2y ago
      Again: The other side of this is that the candidate who the hiring managers ignore for not fitting their hopelessly-unrealistic criteria (and not having the good sense to have a family member or golfing buddy in the C-suite) is risking homelessness. This is not a hypothetical situation; even just here on HN I've seen many people post about dealing with that kind of problem for months or years at a time, let alone other sites. This is not equivalent to having to work with people who aren't pulling their weight and having slightly lower stock-based compensation—which is, in nearly all cases, either on top of significant regular salary, or being given in such quantities, and to someone with so much existing wealth, that it basically doesn't matter.

agilob 2y ago

Go team humanity until you're the one being under DDoS by irrelevant CVs written by bots and the only way to filter them out is write even more strict filters (we all hate) and use LLMs (increasing our hiring costs).

rangerelf 2y ago
There would be no need for people attempting to circumvent stupid restrictions if stupid restrictions didn't exist in the first place.
- agilob 2y ago
  Unless people are expecting the market and companies to bend to their needs and the cost to apply to 1000 jobs is low, because "you miss all the shots you don't take"? Like Intrinsic is... combating spam. Would spam not exist if there were no spam filters?
- paxys 2y ago
  Having to fill out a job application is now a "stupid restriction"?
  - mmh0000 2y ago
    Usually, yes. Everything the application asks for is on my resume. And required cover letters are ridiculous, "please write 10 paragraphs fluffing our company and HR department". Of course I'm going to automate the shit out of that.
    - rangerelf 2y ago
      Thanks, I was wondering how to explain it :-)
danaris 2y ago
It seems to me that both job seekers and employers hiring now are largely victims of the arms race that's been going on for over a decade now. The LLM angle is just the latest note in it. The thing is, it is not a symmetric situation. Barring serious outliers, the worst that's going to happen to a company that can't find "the perfect candidate" is that they hire someone who is suboptimal. Maybe they even don't have the skills they claimed at all. Oh no, efficiency will be down and the execs' stock options might not be worth quite as much. On the other hand, the worst thing that's going to happen to a typical job seeker who can't find a company that will hire them is that they will run through their savings—wait, do they have savings? this is America we're talking about, so probably not!—and be unable to pay their bills, causing them to become homeless. So forgive me for having exactly zero sympathy for the companies that perpetuate this ugly arms race.
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago
  > "Oh no, efficiency will be down and the execs' stock options might not be worth quite as much." Translation: employees have to work with someone who is not pulling their weight (always unpleasant) and their own stock based compensation might not be worth quite as much (hurting the income of individual programmers) and the manager has to deal with the hassle of a termination process. So forgive me for having exactly zero sympathy with candidates trying to use AI slop to game the system.
  - rachofsunshine 2y ago
    Both sides of the process have real skin in the game, but the difference is that employers (and not employees) typically control the structure of the hiring process. So insofar as the hiring process becomes degenerate, that's something companies can do something about, but not something candidates can do much about (except in this case fail to follow their own obvious incentives). I'm not exactly cheering for LLM-driven spam here, but the way applications work has incentivized candidates to be maximally spammy for a very long time.
  - danaris 2y ago
    Again: The other side of this is that the candidate who the hiring managers ignore for not fitting their hopelessly-unrealistic criteria (and not having the good sense to have a family member or golfing buddy in the C-suite) is risking homelessness. This is not a hypothetical situation; even just here on HN I've seen many people post about dealing with that kind of problem for months or years at a time, let alone other sites. This is not equivalent to having to work with people who aren't pulling their weight and having slightly lower stock-based compensation—which is, in nearly all cases, either on top of significant regular salary, or being given in such quantities, and to someone with so much existing wealth, that it basically doesn't matter.