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The part that's really sad is that we have tons of out of work devs right now. This sort of thing only makes it harder for the legitimate people to get hired. A

The part that's really sad is that we have tons of out of work devs right now. This sort of thing only makes it harder for the legitimate people to get hired. An easy fix for this is for a place like Pearson to set up verified interview centers, which will allow for verified virtual interviews (on both sides of the table).

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
Not sure why that comment got downvoted. It doesn't seem to detract from the topic at hand. Not sure if it's feasible, but it's definitely something to consider.
lend000 1y ago
Interesting idea! This seems like a natural extension of the coworking space business concept.
- giantg2 1y ago
  Yeah, I was thinking of the Pearson testing centers because they're already prpctored to prevent cheating and setup for identity verification. But co-working spacings could certainly work too. That might be even more viable in Europe.
mjevans 1y ago
Another solution might be UNIONS that would have __membership verification__ including things like citizenship (which country(ies) are they a citizen of?), skills tests and training, etc. Just like competition requires 5+ similarly sized entities for a healthy marketplace of companies, my informal opinion is that unions probably similarly shouldn't have overwhelming market share. However my feeling on contracts between unions and corporations is that the contract should be negotiated between multiple companies and multiple unions to produce the most level playing field possible.
- jacob_a_dev 1y ago
  At least in the US, I like that software engineering doesnt require/encourage unions, contrary to other big industries. As unions mature they protect the employment of their members, not prospective members who are unemployed applying for jobs. One great thing about being a dev in the US, u dont need a degree, learn a lot, can apply and get a great job. Ive previpusly been in a union for a company and the experience did not encourage a competitive working environment. When layoffs came, Jr employees get sacked before more senior union members (not neccesarily the best technical staff just becuase they worked there long time). I have family/friends in unions (non software devs) that have had similar experiences to mine.
  - Henchman21 1y ago
    You trot out all the familiar retorts. None of this is a reason to not organize to better represent the interests of labor.
    - appreciatorBus 1y ago
      A retort being familiar does not mean it isn't true or real. Millions upon millions of ppl at every income level have experienced working in and around unions and not all of them came away with a positive experience.
      - antonvs 1y ago
        You can say the same thing about democratic governments, or capitalism, etc. etc. By itself that's not a meaningful observation.
        nothrabannosir 1y ago
        It didn’t come by itself, it came in the wake of a comment that outlined a process whereby unions have a negative effect on new applicants in the job market. The disagreement then was “I’ve heard that argument before.” - “ok that doesn’t make it wrong” <— that last sentence is what you’re replying to.
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
The interview process in US is already insanely ridiculous, but this would only add an additional level of crazy to it. Honestly, licensing would be less bad by comparison.
- ahepp 1y ago
  Can you describe what you see as the insanely ridiculous interview process? Most of the interviews I have initiated are something like: - 30 minute recruiter call - 30-60 minute manager call - 2x 60 minute leetcode easy/medium - 1x 60 minute STAR behavioral - 1x 60 minute systems design or maybe doubling up on a previous category So for a total investment of what, 6 hours, I can go from a cold call to an offer of something like 150k-300k/y? And I'm not even playing in the FAANG ecosystem. I'm not sure if we are experiencing different processes, or we have different opinions about what kind of time / reward tradeoff is reasonable.
  - snackbroken 1y ago
    Everything except the 30-60 minute manager call is a waste of time and money for everyone involved. You just need to ask a couple of open-ended questions about the candidate's preferred programming language and/or some technical details of a past project they've worked on to get an idea of whether they are reasonably competent or not. It shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes to go through. The majority of rest of the meeting can consist of the candidate asking you questions and/or chit-chatting to make sure the vibes aren't off. What you are trying to judge is whether or not they can do the job, which you can really only tell once they are actually doing the job anyways. So you pay extra attention to what they do for the first couple of days/weeks after you've hired them and if it's obvious things are not going to work out you let them go. Most places have laws that are amenable to hiring someone on an initial trial period before stronger employee protections kick in. In general, most of the pathologies of the hiring process can be solved by treating it as a satisfier problem instead of an optimizer problem.
    - ahepp 1y ago
      There's a wide spectrum between "extremely efficient" and "insanely ridiculous". To keep it short, I think the incentives are pretty well aligned here. There's not much of an incentive for either party to waste our collective time. I would be interested to explore a "quick hire, quick fire" philosophy, but I'm not sure it would lead to overall greater satisfaction. Employers don't like to fire people and employees don't like to be fired.
MangoToupe 1y ago
I don't really see north korean workers as any less deserving of work
- acdha 1y ago
  That’s not the question: it’s about trust and honesty. The problem with North Korean workers is that they are a huge security risk because they aren’t working as free people but as agents of their government. That might not be a guaranteed disaster if they’re just generating cash revenue but it’s a huge security risk if the North Korean government has any reason to subvert your company or customers.
- mcv 1y ago
  Maybe first give them freedom. As long as their CVs are fake, their faces and experience are fake, and they're spying for their government, nobody should be hiring them.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    Eh we're all victims of where we were born. I'm not about to hold someone's state against them. Unless i suppose it's a certain state that didn't exist 100 years ago and had to forcibly move people to make room.
    - confidantlake 1y ago
      Why make the exception for that state? None of the people applying for jobs were involved or even alive when it happened.
      - MangoToupe 1y ago
        Just like I don't blame people for hating me because I'm a symbol of ongoing colonization, I expect people to be ok if I blame them for ongoing atrocities carried out in their name in public with no shame or believable justification. If North Korea is just as bad, at least they're smart enough to not let me see evidence that invades my dreams.
mosdl 1y ago
Wouldn't the issue be that an interview center could take money to lie/etc? When I start a job I would have to go through I-9 verification - if that process is not good enough to weed out fakes, how would another verification work better?
- cyberax 1y ago
  > Wouldn't the issue be that an interview center could take money to lie/etc? When I start a job I would have to go through I-9 verification - if that process is not good enough to weed out fakes, how would another verification work better? You just need to have a US citizen's SSN and birthday to beat the I-9 verification. And "beat" is a strong word. I-9 is just a form that the employer asks the employees to submit, there's no requirement for the employer to do anything with it. So you can just say that your SSN is 555-55-5555 and your birthday is 01-01-2001 and you'll "pass" the verification. It'll be detected only when the employer submits the Form-944. There's E-Verify that requires a picture ID and more information, but it's not mandatory.
  - mosdl 1y ago
    I forgot e-verify is separate, seems like a better thing to mandate
smelendez 1y ago
Maybe. You’d lose out on people who don’t live near an interview center and potentially have legal issues if people had disabilities that impacted their ability to travel to an interview center but not their ability to do the job.
- Barbing 1y ago
  Maybe everyone who is enthusiastic about traveling to an interview center could do it, and the remainder can undergo heavy vetting? Perhaps a cost & safety optimized approach if tuned right.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

Not sure why that comment got downvoted. It doesn't seem to detract from the topic at hand. Not sure if it's feasible, but it's definitely something to consider.

lend000 1y ago

Interesting idea! This seems like a natural extension of the coworking space business concept.

giantg2 1y ago
Yeah, I was thinking of the Pearson testing centers because they're already prpctored to prevent cheating and setup for identity verification. But co-working spacings could certainly work too. That might be even more viable in Europe.

mjevans 1y ago

Another solution might be UNIONS that would have __membership verification__ including things like citizenship (which country(ies) are they a citizen of?), skills tests and training, etc. Just like competition requires 5+ similarly sized entities for a healthy marketplace of companies, my informal opinion is that unions probably similarly shouldn't have overwhelming market share. However my feeling on contracts between unions and corporations is that the contract should be negotiated between multiple companies and multiple unions to produce the most level playing field possible.

jacob_a_dev 1y ago
At least in the US, I like that software engineering doesnt require/encourage unions, contrary to other big industries. As unions mature they protect the employment of their members, not prospective members who are unemployed applying for jobs. One great thing about being a dev in the US, u dont need a degree, learn a lot, can apply and get a great job. Ive previpusly been in a union for a company and the experience did not encourage a competitive working environment. When layoffs came, Jr employees get sacked before more senior union members (not neccesarily the best technical staff just becuase they worked there long time). I have family/friends in unions (non software devs) that have had similar experiences to mine.
- Henchman21 1y ago
  You trot out all the familiar retorts. None of this is a reason to not organize to better represent the interests of labor.
  - appreciatorBus 1y ago
    A retort being familiar does not mean it isn't true or real. Millions upon millions of ppl at every income level have experienced working in and around unions and not all of them came away with a positive experience.
    - antonvs 1y ago
      You can say the same thing about democratic governments, or capitalism, etc. etc. By itself that's not a meaningful observation.
      - nothrabannosir 1y ago
        It didn’t come by itself, it came in the wake of a comment that outlined a process whereby unions have a negative effect on new applicants in the job market. The disagreement then was “I’ve heard that argument before.” - “ok that doesn’t make it wrong” <— that last sentence is what you’re replying to.

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago

The interview process in US is already insanely ridiculous, but this would only add an additional level of crazy to it. Honestly, licensing would be less bad by comparison.

ahepp 1y ago
Can you describe what you see as the insanely ridiculous interview process? Most of the interviews I have initiated are something like: - 30 minute recruiter call - 30-60 minute manager call - 2x 60 minute leetcode easy/medium - 1x 60 minute STAR behavioral - 1x 60 minute systems design or maybe doubling up on a previous category So for a total investment of what, 6 hours, I can go from a cold call to an offer of something like 150k-300k/y? And I'm not even playing in the FAANG ecosystem. I'm not sure if we are experiencing different processes, or we have different opinions about what kind of time / reward tradeoff is reasonable.
- snackbroken 1y ago
  Everything except the 30-60 minute manager call is a waste of time and money for everyone involved. You just need to ask a couple of open-ended questions about the candidate's preferred programming language and/or some technical details of a past project they've worked on to get an idea of whether they are reasonably competent or not. It shouldn't take more than 10-15 minutes to go through. The majority of rest of the meeting can consist of the candidate asking you questions and/or chit-chatting to make sure the vibes aren't off. What you are trying to judge is whether or not they can do the job, which you can really only tell once they are actually doing the job anyways. So you pay extra attention to what they do for the first couple of days/weeks after you've hired them and if it's obvious things are not going to work out you let them go. Most places have laws that are amenable to hiring someone on an initial trial period before stronger employee protections kick in. In general, most of the pathologies of the hiring process can be solved by treating it as a satisfier problem instead of an optimizer problem.
  - ahepp 1y ago
    There's a wide spectrum between "extremely efficient" and "insanely ridiculous". To keep it short, I think the incentives are pretty well aligned here. There's not much of an incentive for either party to waste our collective time. I would be interested to explore a "quick hire, quick fire" philosophy, but I'm not sure it would lead to overall greater satisfaction. Employers don't like to fire people and employees don't like to be fired.

MangoToupe 1y ago

I don't really see north korean workers as any less deserving of work

acdha 1y ago
That’s not the question: it’s about trust and honesty. The problem with North Korean workers is that they are a huge security risk because they aren’t working as free people but as agents of their government. That might not be a guaranteed disaster if they’re just generating cash revenue but it’s a huge security risk if the North Korean government has any reason to subvert your company or customers.
mcv 1y ago
Maybe first give them freedom. As long as their CVs are fake, their faces and experience are fake, and they're spying for their government, nobody should be hiring them.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  Eh we're all victims of where we were born. I'm not about to hold someone's state against them. Unless i suppose it's a certain state that didn't exist 100 years ago and had to forcibly move people to make room.
  - confidantlake 1y ago
    Why make the exception for that state? None of the people applying for jobs were involved or even alive when it happened.
    - MangoToupe 1y ago
      Just like I don't blame people for hating me because I'm a symbol of ongoing colonization, I expect people to be ok if I blame them for ongoing atrocities carried out in their name in public with no shame or believable justification. If North Korea is just as bad, at least they're smart enough to not let me see evidence that invades my dreams.

mosdl 1y ago

Wouldn't the issue be that an interview center could take money to lie/etc? When I start a job I would have to go through I-9 verification - if that process is not good enough to weed out fakes, how would another verification work better?

cyberax 1y ago
> Wouldn't the issue be that an interview center could take money to lie/etc? When I start a job I would have to go through I-9 verification - if that process is not good enough to weed out fakes, how would another verification work better? You just need to have a US citizen's SSN and birthday to beat the I-9 verification. And "beat" is a strong word. I-9 is just a form that the employer asks the employees to submit, there's no requirement for the employer to do anything with it. So you can just say that your SSN is 555-55-5555 and your birthday is 01-01-2001 and you'll "pass" the verification. It'll be detected only when the employer submits the Form-944. There's E-Verify that requires a picture ID and more information, but it's not mandatory.
- mosdl 1y ago
  I forgot e-verify is separate, seems like a better thing to mandate

smelendez 1y ago

Maybe. You’d lose out on people who don’t live near an interview center and potentially have legal issues if people had disabilities that impacted their ability to travel to an interview center but not their ability to do the job.

Barbing 1y ago
Maybe everyone who is enthusiastic about traveling to an interview center could do it, and the remainder can undergo heavy vetting? Perhaps a cost & safety optimized approach if tuned right.