8 ms·

> We cannot find qualified applicants. Your company is incompetent. I've applied to hundreds of companies like yours within Huntsville, AL in the past year, re

> We cannot find qualified applicants. Your company is incompetent. I've applied to hundreds of companies like yours within Huntsville, AL in the past year, rejected or ghosted all the time. Defense morons will talk about how hard their work is and how they can't find anyone to do it. Completely skip over how prevalent affirmative action is in their hiring process; who were you guys interviewing in 2020? Why is the defense small business base completely dominated by veterans who stack 10% disability ratings and minorities with a preferred SBA sticker on their website? Complete joke of an industry.

yieldcrv 2y ago
that's an assumption its just as likely that their process is auto-rejecting candidates and nobody has looked yet "After his HR department hadn't found a single candidate for a job, the manager submitted his own resume. It was auto-rejected." syndicated here https://www.yourtango.com/self/manager-proves-hr-system-auto-rejecting-candidates-using-own-resume https://www.yourtango.com/self/manager-proves-hr-system-auto... and the associated reddit comment that the articles are based off here https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1f8x5ma/comment/llhpub8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1f8x5ma/comment/l... this is likely the more common practice
- chefandy 2y ago
  Not commenting on the rest of their assumptions, but to be clear, auto-rejecting candidates that could reasonably fill roles in your company isn’t a defense against incompetence accusations— it supports them.
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    I was referring to the discrimination rant even candidates that might fit a poorly implemented affirmative action program are likely getting auto-rejected nobody knows if its helpful to mention their race or disability, or whether its hurtful
    - 0086b416f103 2y ago
      My "discrimination rant" is informed by my ex-girlfriend being hired for an M&S/OpenCL job as a non-programming mech-e. Why? Because all the work was already done and it would look better to the government client to have a female, black engineer sit around in a SCIF doing nothing all day. Stuff like this is absolutely rampant.
      - nativeit 2y ago
        [flagged]
        0086b416f103 2y ago
        No, this is what I was told verbatim by her. Her next stop had marketing soliciting her to write BLM articles for the corporate blog! Please keep trying to gaslight me and all my fellow colleagues who have to commit fraud and claim their wives own 51% of their business entity that we're the racists though.
        HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
        I don't see anyone in this thread accusing you of being racist. Please don't flamebait.
        llm_trw 2y ago
        >wives own 51% of their business entity that we're the racists though. Hush, don't tell people of our sacred text.
      - briandear 2y ago
        This is absolutely true. Government contractors have what is effectively diversity quotas. People will get hired to fill the quota regardless of what they actually do. It’s absolutely not true that diversity hires are all useless, but there are significant incentives to create diversity numbers in order to gain a government contract. Hiring 100 people to do nothing and get the lucrative contract is better than hiring based on need and not getting the contract.
- pandaman 2y ago
  It's not an assumption, Affirmative Action along with many other requirements is mandated for the contractors working with the US. You can start from here https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/program-areas/employers/federal-contractor-requirements https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/program-areas/employers/fe...
  - yieldcrv 2y ago
    but its implementation different per organization and at any moment in time. it could just as easily be any other reason, like the one I identified its an assumption to know what's being applied to you. its obvious that the frustrated guy just wants to be heard, it is still an assumption. that doesn't mean its not happening. it means its an assumption about what exactly applied to you. unless they specifically said that and you won an employment discrimination case then you literally dont know.
  - flyingpenguin 2y ago
    I have worked for a few defense contractors in my time. There is significantly more diversity outside of defense than inside defense. I had a team of 14 with 2 women and 1 non-white male. I had a team of 10 with 0 women and 0 non-white male. I had a team of 20 with 1 women and 0 non-white male. Looking at it another way, thats 40 successful white male hires, and 4 successful non-white male hires. if only having access to 91% of jobs instead of 100% is the reason you can't get hired.... edit: To clarify, as a software developer of 10+ years both in defense and faang, I have never once had a team where there was less than 50% white men.
    - throwawaythekey 2y ago
      I haven't worked in FAANG but I recently applied to Amazon in Australia. I interviewed with 3 asians, 2 indians and 1 white guy. YMMV.
- biztos 2y ago
  Veering off topic a bit, but I wonder what would happen if a company required that for any new hiring filter for Role X, it must pass everyone currently in Role X or above.
  - usefulcat 2y ago
    Does it make sense, in general, to prevent the hiring process from becoming more selective in the future? If so, why? But if not then a rule like that wouldn't make sense.
    - biztos 2y ago
      I don't think it makes sense to prevent it becoming more selective, but I do think it makes sense to avoid passing over candidates who can do the job. And your best (only?) data on who can actually do the job is who is currently doing the job. If you really need everyone in Role X to have a PhD in Psychoergonomics, then what's up with Jane over there and her MD?
    - gpm 2y ago
      If you're hiring because you need someone? Yes? It makes sense to sort candidates with the more niche requirement to the top of the pile, but to require it? When you need to fill this role? There's also hiring because "wow, this candidate is great, we should find a place to fit them", and there it makes sense to become more selective going forwards... but when a company is saying "we need people and can't find them", that doesn't seem like the time to be more selective.
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    For some reason I fancy buying myself a new watch.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
  - coredog64 2y ago
    Anecdote: Amazon has a hiring bar that states that new hires have to be better than half of the current population in the role. Whether or not it’s adhered to, there’s a reasonable motive for doing so.
- more_corn 2y ago
  I couldn’t agree more. Hiring for tech workers is insanely broken. I was a hiring manager at a FAANG company. I wanted to hire my ex intern (he’d gotten stellar reviews, then gone on to finish his degree while attaining highly relevant additional skills) Since he’d already applied when I reached out I was told by my hr people that I had to wait for the process to complete. They flew him out for onsites (now mind you I’d worked with him previously and vouched for him and would have simply made an offer immediately) They sat him through the whole suite of interviews. You know the kind, panel interviews with people unrelated to the role asking stupid questions unrelated to the job. A few weeks later they rejected him. I opened up his packet (as an hiring manager I had access to ATS) and it was stellar. Every question answered perfectly. I called the guy whose name was on the rejection “why on earth did you reject? Did he say something so bad you couldn’t write it down?” “No we just feared he was so good he’d get bored and go do something else” This from a company that claims to hire the best and the brightest. I called him, apologized and asked him to be patient with us. I literally had to start the process over. Fly him out and pretend to interview him again. All the while knowing I was going to make him an offer. Shit like this is why companies and hiring managers have trouble finding candidates. Not because the talent pool is not there, it’s because your process is broken, absurd, and insane.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
Me001 2y ago
Defense morons should be a more common term. These guys have been given free money for generations in VA and can barely do anything other than suck cash from the government. I’m an American it’s disgraceful they are children compared to my Asian colleagues.
- testbjjl 2y ago
  Maybe, when you interview, they sense your anger and that you feel as you say, they are morons, so they move onto more desirable candidates?
- enkid 2y ago
  What a weird last sentence.
  - Me001 2y ago
    It’s just a fact it really changed my perspective. American as a people have a learned helplessness mostly because of wealth, when asked to do something they gripe about the boss making excuses and acting juvenile. Asians just do the thing.
- exe34 2y ago
  if they're getting free money, they're not morons! humans think we're the most intelligent because we built New York while the dolphins have just been hanging around having a good time. the dolphins think they're the most intelligent for the same reason.
  - harvey9 2y ago
    I'm picturing a lot of corp execs boarding a spaceship and saying 'so long and thanks for all the tax breaks'
mcmcmc 2y ago
Have you considered that it might be your attitude costing you job opportunities? Anti-woke baby raging isn’t exactly exactly an attractive quality in a potential candidate
- phendrenad2 2y ago
  [flagged]
Ardren 2y ago
Wow, I can't imagine why companies don't want to hire you
- dijit 2y ago
  its perfectly acceptable to be bitter and express it sometimes when you have the perception that life has been unfair to you for half a decade. It doesn’t necessarily speak to the parent’s attitude before becoming bitter. Hard to draw such a direct conclusion for me.
  - enkid 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - dijit 2y ago
      I work in video games, if I didn’t I would have no pool of candidates to choose from. However if you read what I wrote: 1) Current attitude is not necessarily prior attitude 2) A histrionic tirade is not indicative of an outwardly perceptible attitude, in fact, its more common that these kinds of outburts are from a person who is not outwardly bitter enough day-to-day and is forced to be positive. (thus it boils inside them and becomes venomous) 3) Bitterness is usually the combination of a (often still) motivated person who feels let down. Your companies most negative voices are very often the ones who are passionate but sad about things. Its the “checked-outs” who you really don’t want if you’re building something you want to be good.
    - buran77 2y ago
      It's very unlikely that people just start by being bitter against an industry, but extremely likely that an industry gave people reason to become bitter in time. People tend to start their careers fresh and free of preconceptions, while industries keep carrying their "blemishes" through decades and many generations of people. You're applying the circular reasoning of "of course I treat you like crap because you have a bad attitude (because I treat you like crap)", while ignoring the part in the bracket.
    - 2y ago
DanielHB 2y ago
They want top tier talent to work on crappy quality products/code Meaning people who can unravel all the crap they have to maintain but with no agency to enact any sort of long term fix. Plenty of this kind of work going around, the older the codebase is the less willing people are to work on it. Soon good engineers don't want to anymore and mid engineers are not good enough to even tweak it. Leaving the only lever these companies can pull being salary and they can't compete with FAANG on that. Reminds me of those anecdotes you hear from Oracle and ASML engineers. The difference there is that they can still use the salary lever.
- jrs235 2y ago
  This. "You can't pay me enough to work on something where I have almost no agency to do anything without constantly raising my hand, asking if I can improve something, then having to wait and wait and wait for approval to consistently be told 'No.'". Unless I'm allowed to be free to do other things while waiting or allowed to work remote/asynchronously (not tethered/shackled to a desk/keyboard), then I might be open to doing it, but still for a lot of money to deal with the redtape/bs.
  - chipsrafferty 2y ago
    The last sentence is key. A quality dev can do all the work required to make par with 5-10 hours of work a week. They can be happy if the salary is good enough and they approach it from a "don't care, getting paid" mindset. However, if they're forced to be in an office instead of remote, where they can do as they please with an extra 25-30 hours a week vs. a standard job, they will be miserable.
    - jrs235 2y ago
      I think I understand what you're trying to say but as I read what you wrote it's a bit confusing. Please correct me if I got it wrong. What I think you're saying is, if a developer is forced to be in an office/at a desk when/where no "real work" can be accomplished (that's to management gates/bottlenecks) then they will be miserable. Is that correct?
jensensbutton 2y ago
[flagged]
GolberThorce 2y ago
Defense industry has lower standards and higher salaries for tech jobs, because they're restricted to nationals only. Not sure about AA
azernik 2y ago
How exactly does affirmative action lead to a company being unable to fill a position at all?

yieldcrv 2y ago

that's an assumption its just as likely that their process is auto-rejecting candidates and nobody has looked yet "After his HR department hadn't found a single candidate for a job, the manager submitted his own resume. It was auto-rejected." syndicated here https://www.yourtango.com/self/manager-proves-hr-system-auto-rejecting-candidates-using-own-resume https://www.yourtango.com/self/manager-proves-hr-system-auto... and the associated reddit comment that the articles are based off here https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1f8x5ma/comment/llhpub8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1f8x5ma/comment/l... this is likely the more common practice

chefandy 2y ago
Not commenting on the rest of their assumptions, but to be clear, auto-rejecting candidates that could reasonably fill roles in your company isn’t a defense against incompetence accusations— it supports them.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  I was referring to the discrimination rant even candidates that might fit a poorly implemented affirmative action program are likely getting auto-rejected nobody knows if its helpful to mention their race or disability, or whether its hurtful
  - 0086b416f103 2y ago
    My "discrimination rant" is informed by my ex-girlfriend being hired for an M&S/OpenCL job as a non-programming mech-e. Why? Because all the work was already done and it would look better to the government client to have a female, black engineer sit around in a SCIF doing nothing all day. Stuff like this is absolutely rampant.
    - nativeit 2y ago
      [flagged]
      - 0086b416f103 2y ago
        No, this is what I was told verbatim by her. Her next stop had marketing soliciting her to write BLM articles for the corporate blog! Please keep trying to gaslight me and all my fellow colleagues who have to commit fraud and claim their wives own 51% of their business entity that we're the racists though.
        HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
        I don't see anyone in this thread accusing you of being racist. Please don't flamebait.
        llm_trw 2y ago
        >wives own 51% of their business entity that we're the racists though. Hush, don't tell people of our sacred text.
    - briandear 2y ago
      This is absolutely true. Government contractors have what is effectively diversity quotas. People will get hired to fill the quota regardless of what they actually do. It’s absolutely not true that diversity hires are all useless, but there are significant incentives to create diversity numbers in order to gain a government contract. Hiring 100 people to do nothing and get the lucrative contract is better than hiring based on need and not getting the contract.
pandaman 2y ago
It's not an assumption, Affirmative Action along with many other requirements is mandated for the contractors working with the US. You can start from here https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/program-areas/employers/federal-contractor-requirements https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/program-areas/employers/fe...
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  but its implementation different per organization and at any moment in time. it could just as easily be any other reason, like the one I identified its an assumption to know what's being applied to you. its obvious that the frustrated guy just wants to be heard, it is still an assumption. that doesn't mean its not happening. it means its an assumption about what exactly applied to you. unless they specifically said that and you won an employment discrimination case then you literally dont know.
- flyingpenguin 2y ago
  I have worked for a few defense contractors in my time. There is significantly more diversity outside of defense than inside defense. I had a team of 14 with 2 women and 1 non-white male. I had a team of 10 with 0 women and 0 non-white male. I had a team of 20 with 1 women and 0 non-white male. Looking at it another way, thats 40 successful white male hires, and 4 successful non-white male hires. if only having access to 91% of jobs instead of 100% is the reason you can't get hired.... edit: To clarify, as a software developer of 10+ years both in defense and faang, I have never once had a team where there was less than 50% white men.
  - throwawaythekey 2y ago
    I haven't worked in FAANG but I recently applied to Amazon in Australia. I interviewed with 3 asians, 2 indians and 1 white guy. YMMV.
biztos 2y ago
Veering off topic a bit, but I wonder what would happen if a company required that for any new hiring filter for Role X, it must pass everyone currently in Role X or above.
- usefulcat 2y ago
  Does it make sense, in general, to prevent the hiring process from becoming more selective in the future? If so, why? But if not then a rule like that wouldn't make sense.
  - biztos 2y ago
    I don't think it makes sense to prevent it becoming more selective, but I do think it makes sense to avoid passing over candidates who can do the job. And your best (only?) data on who can actually do the job is who is currently doing the job. If you really need everyone in Role X to have a PhD in Psychoergonomics, then what's up with Jane over there and her MD?
  - gpm 2y ago
    If you're hiring because you need someone? Yes? It makes sense to sort candidates with the more niche requirement to the top of the pile, but to require it? When you need to fill this role? There's also hiring because "wow, this candidate is great, we should find a place to fit them", and there it makes sense to become more selective going forwards... but when a company is saying "we need people and can't find them", that doesn't seem like the time to be more selective.
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  For some reason I fancy buying myself a new watch.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- coredog64 2y ago
  Anecdote: Amazon has a hiring bar that states that new hires have to be better than half of the current population in the role. Whether or not it’s adhered to, there’s a reasonable motive for doing so.
more_corn 2y ago
I couldn’t agree more. Hiring for tech workers is insanely broken. I was a hiring manager at a FAANG company. I wanted to hire my ex intern (he’d gotten stellar reviews, then gone on to finish his degree while attaining highly relevant additional skills) Since he’d already applied when I reached out I was told by my hr people that I had to wait for the process to complete. They flew him out for onsites (now mind you I’d worked with him previously and vouched for him and would have simply made an offer immediately) They sat him through the whole suite of interviews. You know the kind, panel interviews with people unrelated to the role asking stupid questions unrelated to the job. A few weeks later they rejected him. I opened up his packet (as an hiring manager I had access to ATS) and it was stellar. Every question answered perfectly. I called the guy whose name was on the rejection “why on earth did you reject? Did he say something so bad you couldn’t write it down?” “No we just feared he was so good he’d get bored and go do something else” This from a company that claims to hire the best and the brightest. I called him, apologized and asked him to be patient with us. I literally had to start the process over. Fly him out and pretend to interview him again. All the while knowing I was going to make him an offer. Shit like this is why companies and hiring managers have trouble finding candidates. Not because the talent pool is not there, it’s because your process is broken, absurd, and insane.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Me001 2y ago

Defense morons should be a more common term. These guys have been given free money for generations in VA and can barely do anything other than suck cash from the government. I’m an American it’s disgraceful they are children compared to my Asian colleagues.

testbjjl 2y ago
Maybe, when you interview, they sense your anger and that you feel as you say, they are morons, so they move onto more desirable candidates?
enkid 2y ago
What a weird last sentence.
- Me001 2y ago
  It’s just a fact it really changed my perspective. American as a people have a learned helplessness mostly because of wealth, when asked to do something they gripe about the boss making excuses and acting juvenile. Asians just do the thing.
exe34 2y ago
if they're getting free money, they're not morons! humans think we're the most intelligent because we built New York while the dolphins have just been hanging around having a good time. the dolphins think they're the most intelligent for the same reason.
- harvey9 2y ago
  I'm picturing a lot of corp execs boarding a spaceship and saying 'so long and thanks for all the tax breaks'

mcmcmc 2y ago

Have you considered that it might be your attitude costing you job opportunities? Anti-woke baby raging isn’t exactly exactly an attractive quality in a potential candidate

phendrenad2 2y ago
[flagged]

Ardren 2y ago

Wow, I can't imagine why companies don't want to hire you

dijit 2y ago
its perfectly acceptable to be bitter and express it sometimes when you have the perception that life has been unfair to you for half a decade. It doesn’t necessarily speak to the parent’s attitude before becoming bitter. Hard to draw such a direct conclusion for me.
- enkid 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - dijit 2y ago
    I work in video games, if I didn’t I would have no pool of candidates to choose from. However if you read what I wrote: 1) Current attitude is not necessarily prior attitude 2) A histrionic tirade is not indicative of an outwardly perceptible attitude, in fact, its more common that these kinds of outburts are from a person who is not outwardly bitter enough day-to-day and is forced to be positive. (thus it boils inside them and becomes venomous) 3) Bitterness is usually the combination of a (often still) motivated person who feels let down. Your companies most negative voices are very often the ones who are passionate but sad about things. Its the “checked-outs” who you really don’t want if you’re building something you want to be good.
  - buran77 2y ago
    It's very unlikely that people just start by being bitter against an industry, but extremely likely that an industry gave people reason to become bitter in time. People tend to start their careers fresh and free of preconceptions, while industries keep carrying their "blemishes" through decades and many generations of people. You're applying the circular reasoning of "of course I treat you like crap because you have a bad attitude (because I treat you like crap)", while ignoring the part in the bracket.
  - 2y ago

DanielHB 2y ago

They want top tier talent to work on crappy quality products/code Meaning people who can unravel all the crap they have to maintain but with no agency to enact any sort of long term fix. Plenty of this kind of work going around, the older the codebase is the less willing people are to work on it. Soon good engineers don't want to anymore and mid engineers are not good enough to even tweak it. Leaving the only lever these companies can pull being salary and they can't compete with FAANG on that. Reminds me of those anecdotes you hear from Oracle and ASML engineers. The difference there is that they can still use the salary lever.

jrs235 2y ago
This. "You can't pay me enough to work on something where I have almost no agency to do anything without constantly raising my hand, asking if I can improve something, then having to wait and wait and wait for approval to consistently be told 'No.'". Unless I'm allowed to be free to do other things while waiting or allowed to work remote/asynchronously (not tethered/shackled to a desk/keyboard), then I might be open to doing it, but still for a lot of money to deal with the redtape/bs.
- chipsrafferty 2y ago
  The last sentence is key. A quality dev can do all the work required to make par with 5-10 hours of work a week. They can be happy if the salary is good enough and they approach it from a "don't care, getting paid" mindset. However, if they're forced to be in an office instead of remote, where they can do as they please with an extra 25-30 hours a week vs. a standard job, they will be miserable.
  - jrs235 2y ago
    I think I understand what you're trying to say but as I read what you wrote it's a bit confusing. Please correct me if I got it wrong. What I think you're saying is, if a developer is forced to be in an office/at a desk when/where no "real work" can be accomplished (that's to management gates/bottlenecks) then they will be miserable. Is that correct?

jensensbutton 2y ago

[flagged]

GolberThorce 2y ago

Defense industry has lower standards and higher salaries for tech jobs, because they're restricted to nationals only. Not sure about AA

azernik 2y ago

How exactly does affirmative action lead to a company being unable to fill a position at all?