9 ms·

It is a little hard for me to feel sympathetic with the need to conceal dishonesty on resumes. It depends what the "dishonesty" is. Claiming a skill you don't

It is a little hard for me to feel sympathetic with the need to conceal dishonesty on resumes. It depends what the "dishonesty" is. Claiming a skill you don't have is unethical. Bumping your college degree by 5 years in order to seem 5 years younger is, in my opinion, ethically OK. There's a difference between quackery (faking a skill you don't have, and potentially hurting people) and social status inflation. One is fraud; the other is just how people work. The problem is that, if you get caught in one of those minimal and ethically acceptable lies, or are just accidentally inconsistent, HR won't make the distinction because of the mythology that small discrepancies beget substantial whoppers. In my experience, this isn't true. Deeply unethical people are so experienced with lies that they almost never get caught in the small stuff. I don't need to lie because I'm a person of high enough social status that I don't see it useful to fake, and I'm comfortable having an online presence because I foresee that remaining true, but I have no dislike for high-caliber, low-status people who use a bit of creative revision to up their game, as long as they're not defrauding or hurting people.

tptacek 14y ago
I would never want to work with someone who felt like lying about the year they got their college degree was "ethical". In fact, I'd really rather not have to think too much about where the ethical line is on "lying" with anyone. Does that mean I never lie? Of course it doesn't. We've all done unethical things. Ethical people call those "mistakes" and don't paper over them.
- Apocryphon 14y ago
  I think the concern here is that people would edit the year they would graduate in order to escape being excluded because of ageism, a trend which Silicon Valley is notorious for.
  - m0nastic 14y ago
    It would seem like this doesn't actually buy you very much, because presumably the same places that would exclude your resume because of an ageist bias, would also pass on you after interviewing you (in which case lying about your graduation dates just causes you to have to sit through more interviews with places that won't hire you). I guess the assumption is that you might be able to "win them over" in person, assuming you get past the first interview screen? I do find myself having to try very hard to ignore my "experience bias" when hiring infosec folks. My first inclination after seeing a resume from someone with "25 years of information security experience" is to cringe (Oh good, this person has spent 20 years doing C&A's, which are fundamentally useless).
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      It would seem like this doesn't actually buy you very much, because presumably the same places that would exclude your resume because of an ageist bias, would also pass on you after interviewing you Disagree. If you transform your career story from VP-at-48 to VP-at-43, your social status changes and the interview is a completely different conversation. Lying about actual skill is unethical, but people who are able to improve their social status by exploiting human shallowness, in my opinion, deserve everything they can gain in doing so.
      - m0nastic 14y ago
        I guess I don't see how lying about this can inherently not also cause you to have to lie about other things. By which I mean, changing your resume from VP-at-48 to VP-at-43 either means that you're lying about how long you've been a VP (which is definitely now lying about experience/skill), or it means you're just moving all of your work experience up a sliding scale to appear younger; in which case you are now potentially lying about your work/experience/schooling as well, as tying that experience to a point in time is more than just human shallowness. For example, let's say I was a web developer in the mid-nineties, but I decide to change that on my resume to appear more recent (to make myself seem younger). I'd argue that being a web developer in the mid-nineties is pretty far removed from being a web developer currently (so at what point does it become disingenuous...is sliding things ahead a few years ok? more than 5?) This all seems too "The Secret of My Success" for my liking.
      - tptacek 14y ago
        Can you imagine how unbelievably stupid and venal and untrustworthy you look when it's discovered that you deliberately lied about the timeline of your career? It's batshit that anyone would even consider it.
        michaelochurch 14y ago
        I probably wouldn't consider it. When it comes to how people react to injustice, shallowness, stupidity (such as age discrimination) there are exploders and exploiters. Exploiters figure out how to use peoples' superficiality, stupidity, and moral deficiency to their benefit. Exploders get angry and try to rally the good to the cause-- they're the whistleblowers. I'm an exploder, not an exploiter. It's my nature. I'm way too honest and blunt to be an exploiter. (Fuck, here I am being honest about the fact that I don't think dishonestly is always bad and that for many minor forms of it, even though I could never pull them off myself, I'm ethically OK with it.) But ask your local Googler whether I'd recommend whistleblowing as a career move. In movies, people like exploders and whistleblowers, but in real life, people think of exploders as a pain in the ass (killing the messenger) while exploiters get ahead. I used to think that exploiters were all unethical, but I've come to realize that some people can be exploiters without being harmful or unethical.
  - tptacek 14y ago
    So it's better to be a liar? No it isn't.
- Bud 14y ago
  Ethical people call those "mistakes" and don't paper over them. Well, sort of. They call them "mistakes" after they get caught, or, rarer, after they have admitted what they did. Before such time, however, said ethical people don't call their unethical foibles anything, because they aren't talking about them. I have to agree with the GP's specific point, here. It is a bit sad that the ability to bump your age a bit and perhaps dodge age discrimination has probably now been permanently lost. I find it hard to summon very much outrage about someone trying to dodge age discrimination, which is itself unethical and unfair.
  - aswanson 14y ago
    Right. So sick of the ethical high-horse most employers/corporations seem to be on re: honesty, etc. when they show no such respect towards employees. They have no problem smiling in your face and calling you family, knowing that they'll downsize/ax your ass in a millisecond, should the numbers dictate. Classic socio/psychopathic Jedi mind tricks...
    - tptacek 14y ago
      It is a little freaky that you think honesty is a "high horse".
      - aswanson 14y ago
        No one tells the truth in any and all circumstances. To assume as much is...dishonest. EDIT: I define a high horse as a position taken that is false that I, as an employee, am expected to reciprocate. If I am a resource (expendable), then act and state as much. Don't verbally act as though I am more than that to extract loyalty and dedication. That's lower than dishonesty, IMO.
      - michaelochurch 14y ago
        The issue is that people get fired and sometimes even humiliated over minor deceptions (like "playing" with dates) while companies routinely protect managers who do much worse things that actually hurt people-- things like promising good reviews and writing bad ones, abusing process for retaliatory or deceptive purposes, and hiring multiple people for the same leadership role at the same time. "Rules are for the proles" is what seems to be the corporate attitude in at least 75% of companies. It's a power relationship. They can lie and get away with it because they have the gold (cf. "golden rule" as "those with the gold make the rules") but you are screwed if you get caught in even a small one. It's important to know how the game works and what risks you're taking, and my strategy is not to lie. But I don't believe that people who pursue other strategies and cheat harmlessly at an unfair game are awful or unethical people.
- genwin 14y ago
  > We've all done unethical things. Ethical people call those "mistakes" and don't paper over them. Not many ethical folk out there. States with sales taxes report that the vast majority of their citizens don't pay use taxes as required by law.
- hackinthebochs 14y ago
  So you're also against all the little "hacks" that startups are encouraged to do to gain traction? For example making a hundred fake accounts and creating fake "activity", or a one-person startup trying to make themselves seem more established than they are through various tricks? These are all variations on the same theme.
mikeash 14y ago
Deeply unethical people may have enough experience to get away with stuff, but there's a huge spectrum between "deeply unethical" and "entirely ethical", which includes many people I would not want to work with or hire. Anybody who deliberately lies about the year they graduated will immediately become highly suspect in that regard, even if they're probably generally an OK guy. So maybe they're not going to be defrauding people or whatever, but what other small, "harmless" lies will they think they can get away with?
DanBC 14y ago
> Bumping your college degree by 5 years in order to seem 5 years younger is, in my opinion, ethically OK No. Not only is it lying, which is obviously not acceptable, but it is pandering to discriminatory attitudes. It is not legal to discriminate based on age when employing people in the UK, and thus it should be pointless to lie about age.
- vacri 14y ago
  How do you prove that the HR person thought you shouldn't get a return call because you were a little too old?
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Individually, you can't. That's why collectively resisting the temptation to play to discriminatory tactics is so important. But, if you're researching, it's trivial. You send out a bunch of CVs / resumés that are identical apart from age. You then compare the return rates.
    - scarmig 14y ago
      Out of curiousity, have people done this study about tech workplaces, particularly in the Bay Area? If it's incredibly trivial to prove, I'd be surprised if it hadn't. (I'd be equally surprised if it had been attempted and shown no age discrimination--it'd push against my priors, but I'd try to keep an open mind.) In reality, I suspect it's much harder than you suggest to prove, and even harder to litigate on.
      - michaelochurch 14y ago
        The biggest problem with age discrimination is that it's subtle-- not overt. It exists in the form of harsh age-grading for accomplishments, because the delta between the average and the maximum possible at a given age grows, so the average person's deficit compared to where they "should be" becomes more of an issue. No one would pass on a 55-year-old CS luminary who's still writing papers, but 40-year-olds with the careers expected of 35-year-olds are screwed. After a certain age, being merely above average isn't acceptable anymore. Most companies would rather bet on a young 6 than an old 8, because they overestimate their ability to mold the 6 into a 9 (which is actually very hard to do). That's why establishing age discrimination is impossible. You'd have to generate identically indicative/"qualified" resumes at very different ages, which is probably impossible to do.
KeliNorth 14y ago
Even if it was ethically okay, it's more likely to get you rejected for the job than hired, regardless of the lie. Why? HR isn't doing the checking. I did background checks for years at a major company. Our clients were both big and miniscule - you'd be surprised at how many very small business would be able to afford a reasonably priced non-subscription background screening service. If the degree was off by some years, the client wouldn't hire the person because they lied on their resume. It doesn't matter what the lie is, just that they lied, end of story. Don't lie on resumes. It's not HR that'll be catching them. It'll be a company that's been instructed to just report back to the client with whether things were true or not. And we caught a lot of both innocent mistakes (off by 1 year or so), as well as outright fabrications. There's no trying to explain that stuff to HR when you're simply sent a rejection letter by a third-party. Also, some of our clients were required by the government to account for where they've been for the past 5 or 10 years, and requiring paperwork proving where they were (even if unemployed) for any gaps in those employment. People were embarrassed to admit when they were unemployed and so left it unexplained... again costing them a job. Yes the paperwork explained to them beforehand they had to explain it. And yes, we'd catch the "small stuff" - calling up a training school to verify someone had gone, and then double-checking government databases to verify the school itself was legitimate, running names and credit checks... and telling people "we don't want to hear your explanation for why your resume is inconsistent. Send us paperwork proving it, and then we'll find out on our own if that paperwork is valid" is all a liar would hear. I do have to admit catching people in innocent mistakes was heartbreaking, and I'm glad I got out before they started offering the social network checking services. But to say someone's so experienced with lying they think they won't get caught... just means they haven't applied with a company that has a good service provider in the background.
Steuard 14y ago
It's a lie. It's a deliberate, baldfaced lie. I don't want "you" working for me. Who knows what other lies you think are okay because they're "just how people work"? You compare this lie on your resume to being "accidentally inconsistent". Tell me: if HR asked you about the discrepancy (maybe the company requires a background check?), would you admit to your deliberate deception, or would you lie again and say, "Oops, must've typed that wrong"? (And then you wonder why HR mistrusts people who make accidental mistakes.) Maybe you're right and this is a social status thing, but man. It hadn't struck me that the ability to live with a shred of integrity was that much a matter of privilege.
- michaelochurch 14y ago
  I don't think you've read the rest of my posts. I have far too much of an online presence to ever get away with lying about my age (I'm 29) or anything like that, so you don't have to worry about me. I've also had enough experience to know what the real crimes are and what the worst players actually look like. I've been screwed over by people who are actually deeply unethical (like a member of a prominent family who robbed me and threatened to bribe judges if I sought legal action) so if someone benefits by fiddling with dates and making a better story, I don't really give a shit. If you care about these things, then go and do something about the real crimes, which are usually perpetrated by powerful people who never get caught and involve far worse deceptions than a few dates on a CV. Also, the pile-on that happens to people who get caught in these minor lies isn't a reaction to a lack of integrity; it's indignation at the thought of a low-status individual getting "above his station" (the horror!) I'm lucky enough to be one of those high-status people with a good career and pedigree, but I'm not foolish enough to believe that it comes from innate superiority rather than mostly luck.
  - Steuard 14y ago
    I've read your other posts, and they don't sway me. (And I put my initial "you" in quotes because you'd clearly separated yourself from this particular form of dishonesty.) As for your "real crimes" argument, BS. You absolutely do not get to excuse one person's unethical behavior just because someone else, somewhere, did something worse. In my day-to-day life, I have practically no ability to bring your prominent robber to justice, nor price-fixing Wall Street CEOs, nor that Kony guy. But that doesn't disqualify me from insisting that my employees or co-workers behave with integrity themselves. Finally, I don't think I've said anything here to merit what looks like a suggestion that my motivation is "status protection" rather than "integrity" as I said it was. I'm a professional scientist and a professor, so integrity and academic honesty are quite central to my working life. I'm sure there are people out there who do "pile on" only when it's chance to crush some uppity peon, but that's far from the only reason. (And hey, what's with your final aside about the origins of social status? It's largely true, of course, but what's it doing in this comment?)
deleted 14y ago
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tptacek 14y ago

I would never want to work with someone who felt like lying about the year they got their college degree was "ethical". In fact, I'd really rather not have to think too much about where the ethical line is on "lying" with anyone. Does that mean I never lie? Of course it doesn't. We've all done unethical things. Ethical people call those "mistakes" and don't paper over them.

Apocryphon 14y ago
I think the concern here is that people would edit the year they would graduate in order to escape being excluded because of ageism, a trend which Silicon Valley is notorious for.
- m0nastic 14y ago
  It would seem like this doesn't actually buy you very much, because presumably the same places that would exclude your resume because of an ageist bias, would also pass on you after interviewing you (in which case lying about your graduation dates just causes you to have to sit through more interviews with places that won't hire you). I guess the assumption is that you might be able to "win them over" in person, assuming you get past the first interview screen? I do find myself having to try very hard to ignore my "experience bias" when hiring infosec folks. My first inclination after seeing a resume from someone with "25 years of information security experience" is to cringe (Oh good, this person has spent 20 years doing C&A's, which are fundamentally useless).
  - michaelochurch 14y ago
    It would seem like this doesn't actually buy you very much, because presumably the same places that would exclude your resume because of an ageist bias, would also pass on you after interviewing you Disagree. If you transform your career story from VP-at-48 to VP-at-43, your social status changes and the interview is a completely different conversation. Lying about actual skill is unethical, but people who are able to improve their social status by exploiting human shallowness, in my opinion, deserve everything they can gain in doing so.
    - m0nastic 14y ago
      I guess I don't see how lying about this can inherently not also cause you to have to lie about other things. By which I mean, changing your resume from VP-at-48 to VP-at-43 either means that you're lying about how long you've been a VP (which is definitely now lying about experience/skill), or it means you're just moving all of your work experience up a sliding scale to appear younger; in which case you are now potentially lying about your work/experience/schooling as well, as tying that experience to a point in time is more than just human shallowness. For example, let's say I was a web developer in the mid-nineties, but I decide to change that on my resume to appear more recent (to make myself seem younger). I'd argue that being a web developer in the mid-nineties is pretty far removed from being a web developer currently (so at what point does it become disingenuous...is sliding things ahead a few years ok? more than 5?) This all seems too "The Secret of My Success" for my liking.
    - tptacek 14y ago
      Can you imagine how unbelievably stupid and venal and untrustworthy you look when it's discovered that you deliberately lied about the timeline of your career? It's batshit that anyone would even consider it.
      - michaelochurch 14y ago
        I probably wouldn't consider it. When it comes to how people react to injustice, shallowness, stupidity (such as age discrimination) there are exploders and exploiters. Exploiters figure out how to use peoples' superficiality, stupidity, and moral deficiency to their benefit. Exploders get angry and try to rally the good to the cause-- they're the whistleblowers. I'm an exploder, not an exploiter. It's my nature. I'm way too honest and blunt to be an exploiter. (Fuck, here I am being honest about the fact that I don't think dishonestly is always bad and that for many minor forms of it, even though I could never pull them off myself, I'm ethically OK with it.) But ask your local Googler whether I'd recommend whistleblowing as a career move. In movies, people like exploders and whistleblowers, but in real life, people think of exploders as a pain in the ass (killing the messenger) while exploiters get ahead. I used to think that exploiters were all unethical, but I've come to realize that some people can be exploiters without being harmful or unethical.
- tptacek 14y ago
  So it's better to be a liar? No it isn't.
Bud 14y ago
Ethical people call those "mistakes" and don't paper over them. Well, sort of. They call them "mistakes" after they get caught, or, rarer, after they have admitted what they did. Before such time, however, said ethical people don't call their unethical foibles anything, because they aren't talking about them. I have to agree with the GP's specific point, here. It is a bit sad that the ability to bump your age a bit and perhaps dodge age discrimination has probably now been permanently lost. I find it hard to summon very much outrage about someone trying to dodge age discrimination, which is itself unethical and unfair.
- aswanson 14y ago
  Right. So sick of the ethical high-horse most employers/corporations seem to be on re: honesty, etc. when they show no such respect towards employees. They have no problem smiling in your face and calling you family, knowing that they'll downsize/ax your ass in a millisecond, should the numbers dictate. Classic socio/psychopathic Jedi mind tricks...
  - tptacek 14y ago
    It is a little freaky that you think honesty is a "high horse".
    - aswanson 14y ago
      No one tells the truth in any and all circumstances. To assume as much is...dishonest. EDIT: I define a high horse as a position taken that is false that I, as an employee, am expected to reciprocate. If I am a resource (expendable), then act and state as much. Don't verbally act as though I am more than that to extract loyalty and dedication. That's lower than dishonesty, IMO.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      The issue is that people get fired and sometimes even humiliated over minor deceptions (like "playing" with dates) while companies routinely protect managers who do much worse things that actually hurt people-- things like promising good reviews and writing bad ones, abusing process for retaliatory or deceptive purposes, and hiring multiple people for the same leadership role at the same time. "Rules are for the proles" is what seems to be the corporate attitude in at least 75% of companies. It's a power relationship. They can lie and get away with it because they have the gold (cf. "golden rule" as "those with the gold make the rules") but you are screwed if you get caught in even a small one. It's important to know how the game works and what risks you're taking, and my strategy is not to lie. But I don't believe that people who pursue other strategies and cheat harmlessly at an unfair game are awful or unethical people.
genwin 14y ago
> We've all done unethical things. Ethical people call those "mistakes" and don't paper over them. Not many ethical folk out there. States with sales taxes report that the vast majority of their citizens don't pay use taxes as required by law.
hackinthebochs 14y ago
So you're also against all the little "hacks" that startups are encouraged to do to gain traction? For example making a hundred fake accounts and creating fake "activity", or a one-person startup trying to make themselves seem more established than they are through various tricks? These are all variations on the same theme.

mikeash 14y ago

Deeply unethical people may have enough experience to get away with stuff, but there's a huge spectrum between "deeply unethical" and "entirely ethical", which includes many people I would not want to work with or hire. Anybody who deliberately lies about the year they graduated will immediately become highly suspect in that regard, even if they're probably generally an OK guy. So maybe they're not going to be defrauding people or whatever, but what other small, "harmless" lies will they think they can get away with?

DanBC 14y ago

> Bumping your college degree by 5 years in order to seem 5 years younger is, in my opinion, ethically OK No. Not only is it lying, which is obviously not acceptable, but it is pandering to discriminatory attitudes. It is not legal to discriminate based on age when employing people in the UK, and thus it should be pointless to lie about age.

vacri 14y ago
How do you prove that the HR person thought you shouldn't get a return call because you were a little too old?
- DanBC 14y ago
  Individually, you can't. That's why collectively resisting the temptation to play to discriminatory tactics is so important. But, if you're researching, it's trivial. You send out a bunch of CVs / resumés that are identical apart from age. You then compare the return rates.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    Out of curiousity, have people done this study about tech workplaces, particularly in the Bay Area? If it's incredibly trivial to prove, I'd be surprised if it hadn't. (I'd be equally surprised if it had been attempted and shown no age discrimination--it'd push against my priors, but I'd try to keep an open mind.) In reality, I suspect it's much harder than you suggest to prove, and even harder to litigate on.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      The biggest problem with age discrimination is that it's subtle-- not overt. It exists in the form of harsh age-grading for accomplishments, because the delta between the average and the maximum possible at a given age grows, so the average person's deficit compared to where they "should be" becomes more of an issue. No one would pass on a 55-year-old CS luminary who's still writing papers, but 40-year-olds with the careers expected of 35-year-olds are screwed. After a certain age, being merely above average isn't acceptable anymore. Most companies would rather bet on a young 6 than an old 8, because they overestimate their ability to mold the 6 into a 9 (which is actually very hard to do). That's why establishing age discrimination is impossible. You'd have to generate identically indicative/"qualified" resumes at very different ages, which is probably impossible to do.

KeliNorth 14y ago

Even if it was ethically okay, it's more likely to get you rejected for the job than hired, regardless of the lie. Why? HR isn't doing the checking. I did background checks for years at a major company. Our clients were both big and miniscule - you'd be surprised at how many very small business would be able to afford a reasonably priced non-subscription background screening service. If the degree was off by some years, the client wouldn't hire the person because they lied on their resume. It doesn't matter what the lie is, just that they lied, end of story. Don't lie on resumes. It's not HR that'll be catching them. It'll be a company that's been instructed to just report back to the client with whether things were true or not. And we caught a lot of both innocent mistakes (off by 1 year or so), as well as outright fabrications. There's no trying to explain that stuff to HR when you're simply sent a rejection letter by a third-party. Also, some of our clients were required by the government to account for where they've been for the past 5 or 10 years, and requiring paperwork proving where they were (even if unemployed) for any gaps in those employment. People were embarrassed to admit when they were unemployed and so left it unexplained... again costing them a job. Yes the paperwork explained to them beforehand they had to explain it. And yes, we'd catch the "small stuff" - calling up a training school to verify someone had gone, and then double-checking government databases to verify the school itself was legitimate, running names and credit checks... and telling people "we don't want to hear your explanation for why your resume is inconsistent. Send us paperwork proving it, and then we'll find out on our own if that paperwork is valid" is all a liar would hear. I do have to admit catching people in innocent mistakes was heartbreaking, and I'm glad I got out before they started offering the social network checking services. But to say someone's so experienced with lying they think they won't get caught... just means they haven't applied with a company that has a good service provider in the background.

Steuard 14y ago

It's a lie. It's a deliberate, baldfaced lie. I don't want "you" working for me. Who knows what other lies you think are okay because they're "just how people work"? You compare this lie on your resume to being "accidentally inconsistent". Tell me: if HR asked you about the discrepancy (maybe the company requires a background check?), would you admit to your deliberate deception, or would you lie again and say, "Oops, must've typed that wrong"? (And then you wonder why HR mistrusts people who make accidental mistakes.) Maybe you're right and this is a social status thing, but man. It hadn't struck me that the ability to live with a shred of integrity was that much a matter of privilege.

michaelochurch 14y ago
I don't think you've read the rest of my posts. I have far too much of an online presence to ever get away with lying about my age (I'm 29) or anything like that, so you don't have to worry about me. I've also had enough experience to know what the real crimes are and what the worst players actually look like. I've been screwed over by people who are actually deeply unethical (like a member of a prominent family who robbed me and threatened to bribe judges if I sought legal action) so if someone benefits by fiddling with dates and making a better story, I don't really give a shit. If you care about these things, then go and do something about the real crimes, which are usually perpetrated by powerful people who never get caught and involve far worse deceptions than a few dates on a CV. Also, the pile-on that happens to people who get caught in these minor lies isn't a reaction to a lack of integrity; it's indignation at the thought of a low-status individual getting "above his station" (the horror!) I'm lucky enough to be one of those high-status people with a good career and pedigree, but I'm not foolish enough to believe that it comes from innate superiority rather than mostly luck.
- Steuard 14y ago
  I've read your other posts, and they don't sway me. (And I put my initial "you" in quotes because you'd clearly separated yourself from this particular form of dishonesty.) As for your "real crimes" argument, BS. You absolutely do not get to excuse one person's unethical behavior just because someone else, somewhere, did something worse. In my day-to-day life, I have practically no ability to bring your prominent robber to justice, nor price-fixing Wall Street CEOs, nor that Kony guy. But that doesn't disqualify me from insisting that my employees or co-workers behave with integrity themselves. Finally, I don't think I've said anything here to merit what looks like a suggestion that my motivation is "status protection" rather than "integrity" as I said it was. I'm a professional scientist and a professor, so integrity and academic honesty are quite central to my working life. I'm sure there are people out there who do "pile on" only when it's chance to crush some uppity peon, but that's far from the only reason. (And hey, what's with your final aside about the origins of social status? It's largely true, of course, but what's it doing in this comment?)

deleted 14y ago

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