6 ms·

It is anecdotical, but I'm consulting with a startup in the Bay Area. We have 9 job openings listed on the website (and for some reason only 4 on LinkedIn). But

by gip 2y ago

It is anecdotical, but I'm consulting with a startup in the Bay Area. We have 9 job openings listed on the website (and for some reason only 4 on LinkedIn). But in reality one position (senior dev) is really open, and the bar is sky high. By that I mean that the founders would hire the right person. But the other 8 positions are just there for signaling and nobody looks at the applications we get (and for one of these positions we got 1k+ applications last time I checked). For when I'm asked, the CEO told me to say that we are prioritizing finding the senior dev first (and the position has been open for 6 months). I think the founders feel that it is the right posture to signal that the company is growing (external messaging) and that we are doing well (internal messaging).

taurath 2y ago
It should be illegal. Given how many regulations there are around hiring, there should also be some around job postings. Making people waste a bunch of time updating their resume and writing cover letters for a company thats not actually looking to fill a role is awful. Its creating shitty dynamics for both job seekers and job posters - seekers have to spreadfire apply to as many places as possible with quantity over any quality, get their inboxes obliterated with rejections that make very little sense. Job posters get 1000 applicants for every position because there's barely any reason to read the description anymore. Not to mention all the economic reporting that is completely messed up by this. Job openings are something that is tracked, and policy can't adapt if literally every company is saying they're hiring like gangbusters but nobody can get a job.
- webninja 2y ago
  It hurts future income tax dollars so it should be at the top of the priority list for all governments. Even if they don’t care about or prioritize their citizens, they usually at least care about receiving tax dollars and reducing fraud.
- RangerScience 2y ago
  Heh :) Enforcement would potentially look a lot like unemployment, but in reverse: you have to show you’ve been interviewing people, just like unemployment requires you to show you’ve been looking
  - mckn1ght 2y ago
    Not even that would be good enough because a lot of sham reqs still interview and then reject later.
    - trillic 2y ago
      Why? To burn money?
      - red-iron-pine 2y ago
        aye was my thought. interviewing is expensive and time consuming, and has a very small but greater than zero chance of turning into a lawsuit. throwing up a bunch of job adverts up on a low cost platform is comparatively simple and requires no real activity after putting them up; just ignore the emails.
    - taurath 2y ago
      If nobody should be forced to hire someone, then maybe they should be forced to give metrics on how many people are hired vs job reqs posted, and that information should be given to the candidates. Good luck hiring people if you don't actually want to fill 80% of your roles and candidates know it.
    - t-3 2y ago
      The way it works for the unemployed is if they don't take an offer, benefits get cut off. So it would be on the company to prove that each rejected application did not meet the standards they were looking for (trivial - just use the same unrealistic expectations many companies already have: 10 years experience in $5_year_old_tech).
  - twiceaday 2y ago
    The core issue is that the common metric is a bad proxy for the actual signal. Goodhearts law and all that. Enforcing that the proxy be good is weird. It would be better to enforce publicly sharing the actual signal.
  - meragrin_ 2y ago
- catchcatchcatch 2y ago
  Get an attorney and have a conversation about filing a lawsuit in civil court. There’s objective economic harm for not at least calling everyone that applies, in my opinion (I’m not an attorney) to Unfortunately there’s taxes for people not understanding computer science and wanting to be in “management.” Especially if people stare at the software newspaper all day. Entry level manager positions aren’t supposed to be glamorous….
  - catchcatchcatch 2y ago
    I know software managers and recruiters that don’t want to do fairly filter through 1000 applicants. When it’s a very large company that has over 100,000 global employees it’s a bit unfortunate.
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      When it’s a very large company that has over 100,000 global employees you should have HR tools that can do that filtering for you.
- hirvi74 2y ago
  I remember reading something within the past month about how the SEC is looking to crack down on companies using fake job postings as a way to fake their growth. It's still technically an attempt to fraud shareholders. Edit: I can't find the article. Maybe I am confusing it with this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41112855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41112855
  - taurath 2y ago
    My least favorite thing about this day and age is that we have to justify things primarily by whether it effects shareholders or not, not whether its causing a bunch of harm to people looking for work.
    - pas 2y ago
      We don't have to, but it's easier, more clear cut, less politicized, etc.
- aguaviva 2y ago
  It should be illegal. Indeed. And handsome whistleblower bonuses (i.e. enough to retire on) should be paid to individuals who are in a position to report the company principals to appropriate authorities (with easily obtainable evidence of course), so that they can be dealt with accordingly. Instead of just casually mentioning to others at the water cooler that this is what their client/employer was doing, as if it were just one of those things.
  - paulcole 2y ago
    > handsome whistleblower bonuses (i.e. enough to retire on) should be paid to individuals Is this money coming from the government or the company? Because I’m guessing the startup using fake job postings to signal growth probably doesn’t have enough runway to cover the handsome retirement of a 30-year old.
    - mway 2y ago
      Sounds like a "them problem". If it weren't punitive, it wouldn't be a deterrent.
      - paulcole 2y ago
        I mean it’s not a them problem if they just can’t afford to pay it. What are you going to do, rat on your employer to get money from them they know they can’t pay so they just go out of business and you lose your job?
        mway 2y ago
        I mean, yeah. It's still a them problem, because they can choose to engage or not engage in those practices while knowing the consequences. What are you going to do, never penalize companies when it might hurt their bottom line? Just because they can't pay it doesn't mean there shouldn't be repercussions. That would be like saying that a person can't be fined because they don't have the money. AFAIK the judicial system will happily levy costs on you that you can't afford, and it is 100% a "you problem".
- edanm 2y ago
  > It should be illegal. Not everything we don't like should be illegal. This sounds like the kind of thing that is incredibly unenforceable anyway. How do you differentiate between "we're not actually hiring" and "we simply have a very high bar"? How do you do it in a way that doesn't impact the economy too much (like forcing employers to do stupid things like auto-write everyone back and waste even more of their time in order to appear to actually be hiring)?
  - polski-g 2y ago
    They want to turn the US into the EU: a dying, poor, over-regulated museum of decline.
  - skeaker 2y ago
    Easy, you offer a hotline where people can report it when they see it and then sue/fine the company for defrauding their investors by faking growth. If the case is legitimate, you reward the person that called in to the hotline with a bounty. Everybody wins except the fraudulent company, as it should be.
    - edanm 2y ago
      So now every company does a technical screen that weeds out a large percentage of people, then randomly chooses to waste some more people's time by dragging them through an interview. Everyone wastes more time but they can say they interviewed a lot of people. I'm not saying this behavior isn't bad, to the extent that it actually really exists. I'm just not sure making it illegal is the right move. Why not let the market take care of it? You can usually see if a company is growing or not. If this becomes such a common phenomenon that that's a problem, you can usually explicitly ask, or there will be industry sources that can tell you if a company is growing or not.
      - skeaker 2y ago
        As if people's time isn't already wasted by fake job listings? The market isn't actually very good at fixing issues like these, and in fact caused the issue in this case (defrauding investors makes number go up which makes market happy but people sad), which is why you would regulate it.
dicjsnw 2y ago
Name names.
galfarragem 2y ago
TIL. I supposed this was mostly a "conspiracy theory" but I just acknowledged that this is true and even a standard practice. This explains a lot on some past job searches. It degrades job seekers mental health and the HR ability to manual screen CVs once job seekers adapt and shoot CVs everywhere.
zerr 2y ago
That's why one should spend less than a second for applying to positions.

by gip 2y ago

taurath 2y ago

It should be illegal. Given how many regulations there are around hiring, there should also be some around job postings. Making people waste a bunch of time updating their resume and writing cover letters for a company thats not actually looking to fill a role is awful. Its creating shitty dynamics for both job seekers and job posters - seekers have to spreadfire apply to as many places as possible with quantity over any quality, get their inboxes obliterated with rejections that make very little sense. Job posters get 1000 applicants for every position because there's barely any reason to read the description anymore. Not to mention all the economic reporting that is completely messed up by this. Job openings are something that is tracked, and policy can't adapt if literally every company is saying they're hiring like gangbusters but nobody can get a job.

webninja 2y ago
It hurts future income tax dollars so it should be at the top of the priority list for all governments. Even if they don’t care about or prioritize their citizens, they usually at least care about receiving tax dollars and reducing fraud.
RangerScience 2y ago
Heh :) Enforcement would potentially look a lot like unemployment, but in reverse: you have to show you’ve been interviewing people, just like unemployment requires you to show you’ve been looking
- mckn1ght 2y ago
  Not even that would be good enough because a lot of sham reqs still interview and then reject later.
  - trillic 2y ago
    Why? To burn money?
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      aye was my thought. interviewing is expensive and time consuming, and has a very small but greater than zero chance of turning into a lawsuit. throwing up a bunch of job adverts up on a low cost platform is comparatively simple and requires no real activity after putting them up; just ignore the emails.
  - taurath 2y ago
    If nobody should be forced to hire someone, then maybe they should be forced to give metrics on how many people are hired vs job reqs posted, and that information should be given to the candidates. Good luck hiring people if you don't actually want to fill 80% of your roles and candidates know it.
  - t-3 2y ago
    The way it works for the unemployed is if they don't take an offer, benefits get cut off. So it would be on the company to prove that each rejected application did not meet the standards they were looking for (trivial - just use the same unrealistic expectations many companies already have: 10 years experience in $5_year_old_tech).
- twiceaday 2y ago
  The core issue is that the common metric is a bad proxy for the actual signal. Goodhearts law and all that. Enforcing that the proxy be good is weird. It would be better to enforce publicly sharing the actual signal.
- meragrin_ 2y ago
catchcatchcatch 2y ago
Get an attorney and have a conversation about filing a lawsuit in civil court. There’s objective economic harm for not at least calling everyone that applies, in my opinion (I’m not an attorney) to Unfortunately there’s taxes for people not understanding computer science and wanting to be in “management.” Especially if people stare at the software newspaper all day. Entry level manager positions aren’t supposed to be glamorous….
- catchcatchcatch 2y ago
  I know software managers and recruiters that don’t want to do fairly filter through 1000 applicants. When it’s a very large company that has over 100,000 global employees it’s a bit unfortunate.
  - red-iron-pine 2y ago
    When it’s a very large company that has over 100,000 global employees you should have HR tools that can do that filtering for you.
hirvi74 2y ago
I remember reading something within the past month about how the SEC is looking to crack down on companies using fake job postings as a way to fake their growth. It's still technically an attempt to fraud shareholders. Edit: I can't find the article. Maybe I am confusing it with this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41112855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41112855
- taurath 2y ago
  My least favorite thing about this day and age is that we have to justify things primarily by whether it effects shareholders or not, not whether its causing a bunch of harm to people looking for work.
  - pas 2y ago
    We don't have to, but it's easier, more clear cut, less politicized, etc.
aguaviva 2y ago
It should be illegal. Indeed. And handsome whistleblower bonuses (i.e. enough to retire on) should be paid to individuals who are in a position to report the company principals to appropriate authorities (with easily obtainable evidence of course), so that they can be dealt with accordingly. Instead of just casually mentioning to others at the water cooler that this is what their client/employer was doing, as if it were just one of those things.
- paulcole 2y ago
  > handsome whistleblower bonuses (i.e. enough to retire on) should be paid to individuals Is this money coming from the government or the company? Because I’m guessing the startup using fake job postings to signal growth probably doesn’t have enough runway to cover the handsome retirement of a 30-year old.
  - mway 2y ago
    Sounds like a "them problem". If it weren't punitive, it wouldn't be a deterrent.
    - paulcole 2y ago
      I mean it’s not a them problem if they just can’t afford to pay it. What are you going to do, rat on your employer to get money from them they know they can’t pay so they just go out of business and you lose your job?
      - mway 2y ago
        I mean, yeah. It's still a them problem, because they can choose to engage or not engage in those practices while knowing the consequences. What are you going to do, never penalize companies when it might hurt their bottom line? Just because they can't pay it doesn't mean there shouldn't be repercussions. That would be like saying that a person can't be fined because they don't have the money. AFAIK the judicial system will happily levy costs on you that you can't afford, and it is 100% a "you problem".
edanm 2y ago
> It should be illegal. Not everything we don't like should be illegal. This sounds like the kind of thing that is incredibly unenforceable anyway. How do you differentiate between "we're not actually hiring" and "we simply have a very high bar"? How do you do it in a way that doesn't impact the economy too much (like forcing employers to do stupid things like auto-write everyone back and waste even more of their time in order to appear to actually be hiring)?
- polski-g 2y ago
  They want to turn the US into the EU: a dying, poor, over-regulated museum of decline.
- skeaker 2y ago
  Easy, you offer a hotline where people can report it when they see it and then sue/fine the company for defrauding their investors by faking growth. If the case is legitimate, you reward the person that called in to the hotline with a bounty. Everybody wins except the fraudulent company, as it should be.
  - edanm 2y ago
    So now every company does a technical screen that weeds out a large percentage of people, then randomly chooses to waste some more people's time by dragging them through an interview. Everyone wastes more time but they can say they interviewed a lot of people. I'm not saying this behavior isn't bad, to the extent that it actually really exists. I'm just not sure making it illegal is the right move. Why not let the market take care of it? You can usually see if a company is growing or not. If this becomes such a common phenomenon that that's a problem, you can usually explicitly ask, or there will be industry sources that can tell you if a company is growing or not.
    - skeaker 2y ago
      As if people's time isn't already wasted by fake job listings? The market isn't actually very good at fixing issues like these, and in fact caused the issue in this case (defrauding investors makes number go up which makes market happy but people sad), which is why you would regulate it.

dicjsnw 2y ago

Name names.

galfarragem 2y ago

TIL. I supposed this was mostly a "conspiracy theory" but I just acknowledged that this is true and even a standard practice. This explains a lot on some past job searches. It degrades job seekers mental health and the HR ability to manual screen CVs once job seekers adapt and shoot CVs everywhere.

zerr 2y ago

That's why one should spend less than a second for applying to positions.