4 ms·

You get to choose what games to play in life, and how to play them. When I was younger and the internet was new and exciting, I had more of an online presence.

• solardev 2y ago
  Exactly. At a certain point in your career (and life) you get to be more picky, and start seeing jobs as a two way street. Employers who make candidates jump through unnecessary hoops will filter out some of the unqualified people, sure, but they'll also filter out people who are qualified but have no interest in playing stupid games with their time. One employer asked me to take a long, automated personality test for cultural fit before we've even had a conversation. I scoffed and walked away with a polite rejection. That was enough of a test for both of us. I feel sorry for anyone who has to work there. Another job had me do a long take home that was actually realistic for the kind of work I was expected to do (build data driven frontends). I loved the take home, did well on it, got the job and loved that too. It was a good test for both of us. Most of the jobs I've enjoyed were like that. Reasonable interviews and reasonable assessments that respect the candidate while still giving the company useful information. The job/client I'm interviewing for right now explicitly asked for a LinkedIn profile. I simply told them I don't have one, but they looked at my resume anyway and scheduled an interview despite that. We'll see how that goes.
  • JohnFen 2y ago
    > One employer asked me to take a long, automated personality test for cultural fit before we've even had a conversation. I've only been asked this once, and my reply was (paraphrasing) "that you require this already tells me that I'm a poor cultural fit here."
    • solardev 2y ago
      Heh, well done. (And much more concise than mine.) Mine was something like (also paraphrased) you can't be serious, reference to rodents in a maze, incredulous chuckle, sorry you have to be there, no thank you, kthxbye. It really rubbed me the wrong way. Even as a teenager interviewing for Starbucks in a group setting for a minimum wage job that started at 3am every day, they treated everyone with more humanity and respect. I don't know how this company manages to hire anyone at all. Maybe they're specifically filtering for compliant minions who never question authority. Shrug.
  • bruce511 2y ago
    I'm posting this not because I disagree with you, but rather to just clarify one point you made; >> Employers who make candidates jump through unnecessary hoops will filter out some of the unqualified people, sure, but they'll also filter out people who are qualified but have no interest in playing stupid games with their time. It's worth noting that from an employer perspective missing some qualified people is not a problem (because they'll usually have plenty of qualified people applying for the post.) Whereas hiring an unqualified person is disastrous. In other words given the choice of "reducing to a subset of all good" or "reducing to all good plus possibly a few bad" the goal is the former. This can be galling if you are an "excluded good one", but its worth understanding this because being filtered out doesn't mean you're bad. (It might mean that, but not necessarily so.) As to your main point, being compatible with your employer in terms of style (the interview works both ways) is important. Generally speaking the hiring process is often unrelated to the work process (for both sides of the table) so some discernment is necessary but I'm a big believer in "when someone shows you who there are, believe them".
    • solardev 2y ago
      > It's worth noting that from an employer perspective missing some qualified people is not a problem Yeah, that's a great point. And helps with the two way street. It's a self-selecting match between employers and applicants who each are looking for particular things. At least when the employment market is healthy.
• bruce511 2y ago
  >> You get to choose what games to play in life, and how to play them Absolutely. But you don't get to change the rules of the game you choose. You can absolutely have your own rules to your own game. But naturally you can't expect others to play by those rules unless they want to. My expectation is that I'm happy to be flexible with the rules, but I've figured out what game I want to play. I'd make a terrible employee so I chose the "own business" game. I'm not into excessive control so I chose the "hire good people" game. My recommendation is to figure out the big things, and not sweat the small stuff. Be honest, but not overly picky.
• cloudedcordial 2y ago
  > You get to choose what games to play in life Word. At one point in my post-secondary education career, I rebelled against being present online as a Computer Science major. I rejected LinkedIn. I met like-minded people at school and got my first job after dropping out of school. One of my good friends never post anything online. He rejected the game of selling yourselves to the employers altogether. He thought the game was meaningless and the prospective employers should see through her talent without the game. After a few years, I became discontent in my job. My network was only from the like-minded people offline. Some folks did the job for decades and didn't see any reason to change. Eventually I chose to play the game: I joined in-person networking events, signed up a LinkedIn account and created a web development portfolio. I had good job leads and learned about the companies and the positions through the events and LinkedIn. Note that LinkedIn was only for professional purposes: I didn't broadcast my opinions via posts or comments but simply clicked "like" for the connections' new job announcements. I got jobs that paid 40% more than my old one which afforded me to get air conditioning at home finally. My friend still lives in her parents' home and has no career prospects for almost 2 decades now.