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Anyone affected by this and in the US might consider calling or writing to their congressman. The time to do that is now when the demand is high to bolster jobs

Anyone affected by this and in the US might consider calling or writing to their congressman. The time to do that is now when the demand is high to bolster jobs but low for excessive laws. Nobody innocent is going to be wronged if this is made into a crime or otherwise regulated to put a stop to. The fake job applicants are only siphoning resources from the economy at the high expense of all other parties involved. The ones who are getting screwed the most are the applicants, some of whom are concerned about making ends meet and getting auto-rejected constantly despite decades of experience. No one should stand for it.

redmajor12 2y ago
But this chaos fits Big Tech's claim that there are not enough American workers, so they can then turn around and onshore H1Bs from the hiring manager's hometown back in the old country.
- geye1234 2y ago
  Hundreds of comments, and this is the first one that mentions perhaps the primary root cause of the situation.
  - brookst 2y ago
    Do you work in tech? Have you ever seen any pressure to create LLM-driven chaos with the goal of increasing support for encouraging immigration in future years? It’s too elaborate of a Rube Goldberg strategy to take very seriously. Companies struggle to achieve simple, clear, short-term goals in tight-knit, well-aligned teams. Ain’t nobody got the skill to pull off that level of conspiracy.
    - Slava_Propanei 2y ago
      [dead]
  - robertlagrant 2y ago
    There often isn't a nefarious scheme. Humans are better at spotting patterns than they are at mass coordination.
- prmoustache 2y ago
  then move abroad and get your dream job there?
  - idiotsecant 2y ago
    Huh? Is this a 'love it or leave it' comment? I genuinely don't understand what you're meaning to say here.
    - prmoustache 2y ago
      What I mean is unless your ideal is autarky or USSR under Joseph Stalin, it is hypocritical or ingenuous to expect having a market where you can sell goods and services worldwide but not allowing workers applying and getting jobs worldwide for same companies. That is called free market. So if you happen to think you are missing jobs because they are given to people living in another country, you also have the choice to play by the same rules, relocate there and apply for the same job. Or ask for a lower salary where you already are to be competitive. This is fair competition.
      - bdangubic 2y ago
        ha lets see… In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any other external authority. if you think america is “free market” I have some Enron stock to sell to you :)
      - idiotsecant 2y ago
        Lol wat. 'Free market' is a spherical cow in a vacuum. Its an abstraction that people like to make to reduce complex reality to something small and comfortable. In reality, the world is not driven only (or even mostly) by market forces. All players in modern economies are subsidized by and beholden to governance by nation states. That wildly warps what actually happens outside the textbook.
      - Slava_Propanei 2y ago
roenxi 2y ago
If I didn't know better I'd think this was satire. As far as I can tell the advocacy is for either companies to be empowered to sue people who apply to work with them (seems like madness) or to set up a situation where the government enforcement arm pro-actively goes out and harasses unemployed job seekers. Either way that sounds like a recipe for disaster for unemployed persons.
- DecoySalamander 2y ago
  > situation where the government enforcement arm pro-actively goes out and harasses unemployed job seekers Why wouldn't this be a desired outcome? Unemployment doesn't give a carte blanche to send spam.
- belinder 2y ago
  AI has made hiring especially in technical industry an absolute shit show. I agree with parent comment that ideally government could do something about it but agree with you on how would you even do that. Maybe if they required all the job board companies like indeed and glassdoor and LinkedIn to properly vet candidates else those companies would be fined, but it's hard to imagine a solution that doesn't also hurt unemployed legit human beings
  - coldtrait 2y ago
    Hiring in tech has been pretty awful even before AI.
  - aperrien 2y ago
    And then you run into problems on the corporate side: fake job listings to build up resume databases for comparison shopping of applicants. Regulations in this area should have to cut both ways.
    - chefandy 2y ago
      This the end game that Silicon Valley created. An automation arms race between two competing groups that were initially trying to save a little time or cut down on staffing but escalated it to the point where the default approach would be considered unforgivably assholish 15 years ago, people that don’t buy into it at least somewhat are drowning in bullshit, and nobody’s happy— but on paper everybody’s got record productivity! With LLMs, this same exact scenario is playing out in other realms. Look at writing and publishing. Sure you’re on top of the world before everyone else catches up, but when they do, there’s now just a boilerplate of exponentially expanding bullshit and counter-bullshit that everyone has to circumvent to do anything.
Aurornis 2y ago
> Nobody innocent is going to be wronged if this is made into a crime or otherwise regulated to put a stop to. Good luck. The applicants doing fake job applications do not care about your laws at all. Many might be in foreign countries. They might plan on applying with stolen identities. Making a law isn’t going to change a thing. Even if you did, what company is going to spend resources tracking down the likely fake identity of someone applying for a job just to hand it to law enforcement for them to ignore in their backlog forever?
- saagarjha 2y ago
  How exactly does someone who applies with a stolen identity get anything out of doing so?
- Tteriffic 2y ago
  Absolutely correct, just making laws themselves have little effect over anything. Enforcement is the key. For most laws that step is an afterthought. But there are creative ways to do it.
- ddalex 2y ago
  > applicants doing fake job applications … stolen identities What I don’t get is what’s the economic incentive for this behaviour
  - BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
    - It can be a side effect to keep your unemployment insurance which is conditional upon proving you are sending applications at a given pace. I'd probably need to apply to random jobs if I qualified for it because there isn't a role opening in my niche weekly to fullfil the criteria here. I never had to because I was ineligible for other reasons every time I was unemployed and could have used support but that's a whole other can of worms) - I heard its a thing to get n jobs you're not qualified for to get at least the first few month salary "for free" (as an individual or as a pawn from a larger organized fraud). Not sure how common or how much truth there is to it though.
- 2y ago

redmajor12 2y ago

But this chaos fits Big Tech's claim that there are not enough American workers, so they can then turn around and onshore H1Bs from the hiring manager's hometown back in the old country.

geye1234 2y ago
Hundreds of comments, and this is the first one that mentions perhaps the primary root cause of the situation.
- brookst 2y ago
  Do you work in tech? Have you ever seen any pressure to create LLM-driven chaos with the goal of increasing support for encouraging immigration in future years? It’s too elaborate of a Rube Goldberg strategy to take very seriously. Companies struggle to achieve simple, clear, short-term goals in tight-knit, well-aligned teams. Ain’t nobody got the skill to pull off that level of conspiracy.
  - Slava_Propanei 2y ago
    [dead]
- robertlagrant 2y ago
  There often isn't a nefarious scheme. Humans are better at spotting patterns than they are at mass coordination.
prmoustache 2y ago
then move abroad and get your dream job there?
- idiotsecant 2y ago
  Huh? Is this a 'love it or leave it' comment? I genuinely don't understand what you're meaning to say here.
  - prmoustache 2y ago
    What I mean is unless your ideal is autarky or USSR under Joseph Stalin, it is hypocritical or ingenuous to expect having a market where you can sell goods and services worldwide but not allowing workers applying and getting jobs worldwide for same companies. That is called free market. So if you happen to think you are missing jobs because they are given to people living in another country, you also have the choice to play by the same rules, relocate there and apply for the same job. Or ask for a lower salary where you already are to be competitive. This is fair competition.
    - bdangubic 2y ago
      ha lets see… In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any other external authority. if you think america is “free market” I have some Enron stock to sell to you :)
    - idiotsecant 2y ago
      Lol wat. 'Free market' is a spherical cow in a vacuum. Its an abstraction that people like to make to reduce complex reality to something small and comfortable. In reality, the world is not driven only (or even mostly) by market forces. All players in modern economies are subsidized by and beholden to governance by nation states. That wildly warps what actually happens outside the textbook.
    - Slava_Propanei 2y ago

roenxi 2y ago

If I didn't know better I'd think this was satire. As far as I can tell the advocacy is for either companies to be empowered to sue people who apply to work with them (seems like madness) or to set up a situation where the government enforcement arm pro-actively goes out and harasses unemployed job seekers. Either way that sounds like a recipe for disaster for unemployed persons.

DecoySalamander 2y ago
> situation where the government enforcement arm pro-actively goes out and harasses unemployed job seekers Why wouldn't this be a desired outcome? Unemployment doesn't give a carte blanche to send spam.
belinder 2y ago
AI has made hiring especially in technical industry an absolute shit show. I agree with parent comment that ideally government could do something about it but agree with you on how would you even do that. Maybe if they required all the job board companies like indeed and glassdoor and LinkedIn to properly vet candidates else those companies would be fined, but it's hard to imagine a solution that doesn't also hurt unemployed legit human beings
- coldtrait 2y ago
  Hiring in tech has been pretty awful even before AI.
- aperrien 2y ago
  And then you run into problems on the corporate side: fake job listings to build up resume databases for comparison shopping of applicants. Regulations in this area should have to cut both ways.
  - chefandy 2y ago
    This the end game that Silicon Valley created. An automation arms race between two competing groups that were initially trying to save a little time or cut down on staffing but escalated it to the point where the default approach would be considered unforgivably assholish 15 years ago, people that don’t buy into it at least somewhat are drowning in bullshit, and nobody’s happy— but on paper everybody’s got record productivity! With LLMs, this same exact scenario is playing out in other realms. Look at writing and publishing. Sure you’re on top of the world before everyone else catches up, but when they do, there’s now just a boilerplate of exponentially expanding bullshit and counter-bullshit that everyone has to circumvent to do anything.

Aurornis 2y ago

> Nobody innocent is going to be wronged if this is made into a crime or otherwise regulated to put a stop to. Good luck. The applicants doing fake job applications do not care about your laws at all. Many might be in foreign countries. They might plan on applying with stolen identities. Making a law isn’t going to change a thing. Even if you did, what company is going to spend resources tracking down the likely fake identity of someone applying for a job just to hand it to law enforcement for them to ignore in their backlog forever?

saagarjha 2y ago
How exactly does someone who applies with a stolen identity get anything out of doing so?
Tteriffic 2y ago
Absolutely correct, just making laws themselves have little effect over anything. Enforcement is the key. For most laws that step is an afterthought. But there are creative ways to do it.
ddalex 2y ago
> applicants doing fake job applications … stolen identities What I don’t get is what’s the economic incentive for this behaviour
- BehindBlueEyes 2y ago
  - It can be a side effect to keep your unemployment insurance which is conditional upon proving you are sending applications at a given pace. I'd probably need to apply to random jobs if I qualified for it because there isn't a role opening in my niche weekly to fullfil the criteria here. I never had to because I was ineligible for other reasons every time I was unemployed and could have used support but that's a whole other can of worms) - I heard its a thing to get n jobs you're not qualified for to get at least the first few month salary "for free" (as an individual or as a pawn from a larger organized fraud). Not sure how common or how much truth there is to it though.
2y ago