Ask HN: When did corporate America become so flaky? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: When did corporate America become so flaky?

#21

Post by mikewarot » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 6:42 PM UTC

I'd say it started with a Corporate Lawyer named Abraham Lincoln[1] and his defense of the Illinois Central Railroad.

  "What status did Abraham Lincoln believe corporations held? In one of Lincoln's railroad cases, a plaintiff's attorney attacked Lincoln for defending "great soulless corporations." Lincoln's response indicates that he viewed a corporation as a "legal person"."

[1] - https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/217044254.pdf

Re: Ask HN: When did corporate America become so flaky?

#22

Post by thenerdhead » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 6:48 PM UTC

Misaligned incentives.

If you align with the incentive, you'll be properly escorted through the red carpet like the rockstar programmer you are.

As soon as you don't align with it or fail to meet expectations, you'll be discarded like the rest.

We have surely lost our grace to make a little more money in the process. The generation that was raised with these normalcies are now the ones recruiting & hiring which make it the new normal.

I don't tolerate ghosting, especially when I make a final round. I follow-up until I hear an answer such as "we went with another candidate". If people waste my time, I will be asking for theirs. I just can't believe it has become just as normal at the end as it is the beginning. It has burnt many bridges of "I definitely don't want to work there in the future".

Re: Ask HN: When did corporate America become so flaky?

#23

Post by dieselgate » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

giantg2 wrote: post #9

afarrell wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> my personal theory is that people don’t care Apathy and exhaustion are extremely difficult to tell apart. It is also possible that many people, especially in the medical sector are burnt out.

I think apathy and physical exhaustion is fairly easy to tell apart. I do agree that burnout and apathy can be difficult to distinguish, mostly because they're the same just with different motives (apathy is generally voluntary but burnout is apathy that's involuntary because the person simply can't care anymore while staying sane). But it's definitely across industries and not just in healthcare.

I agree with both point you and Parent make (difficult/easy to tell apart). But seems to me in person vs remote communications are the crux of the distinction

Re: Ask HN: When did corporate America become so flaky?

#24

Post by ktrnka » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 6:51 PM UTC

I saw it decline over the last year at my employer. In 2021, the recruiting team and I were all on the same page about letting candidates know the decision within a day either way. In 2022 there was some desire to do that, but the recruiting team lost their most senior people and became very understaffed for a while, so it often took a while to get notice sent.

In 2021 my recruiting partners were cool with me moving candidates through stages, which triggered automated notification emails for the candidates. In 2022 I didn't have the permissions for that. Not sure how that all happened, but there was definitely a lack of an ATS admin of some sort.

Re: Ask HN: When did corporate America become so flaky?

#25

Post by dmitrygr » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 6:55 PM UTC

> I even recorded several of the interviews and shared them

Oof, watch out, in many states this would be quite illegal

Re: Ask HN: When did corporate America become so flaky?

#26

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 6:59 PM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: When did corporate America become so flaky?

#27

Post by rupi » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 7:03 PM UTC

slt2021 wrote: post #8

People dont have time to respond to each and every applicant, given that there are 100s of them for each job. And teams have multiple job opening. Also they have current job responsibilities/deliverables which are of higher priority. Basically you can only expect good communication if you are top tier candidate for a critical job function, and company really really needs you. If job is not business critical - it will…

This.

Also, I have friends in high level HR roles and HR functions have become smaller and smaller over time with a lot of offshoring and outsourcing. So a lot of 'nice to do' things that were traditionally done by HR simply aren't done anymore.

Re: Ask HN: When did corporate America become so flaky?

#28

Post by Unit520 » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 7:07 PM UTC

Some sort of systemic corruption in corporate culture must have emerged at least around the time when Personell was renamed to "Human Resources". I mean, think about it for a second, if you were to hire some people to help you with something, would you unironically call them "human resource"? Even if you might think about them in private as easily replaceable and therefore not of much value, would you go ahead and call them "human resource" to their face without feeling weird at all?

Something strange is going on here.

Re: Ask HN: When did corporate America become so flaky?

#29

Post by giantg2 » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 7:18 PM UTC

dieselgate wrote: post #23

giantg2 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think apathy and physical exhaustion is fairly easy to tell apart. I do agree that burnout and apathy can be difficult to distinguish, mostly because they're the same just with different motives (apathy is generally voluntary but burnout is apathy that's involuntary because the person simply can't care anymore while staying sane). But it's definitely across industries and not just in healthcare.

I agree with both point you and Parent make (difficult/easy to tell apart). But seems to me in person vs remote communications are the crux of the distinction

Oh, mine were all in-person examples. I feel that remote had a few issues prior to this, and that I have a similar number of issues currently.

Re: Ask HN: When did corporate America become so flaky?

#30

Post by rjbwork » Thu, Aug 11, 2022, 7:18 PM UTC

humanistbot wrote: post #20

> more often than not I would need to write follow-up emails after an email communication would go unresponded to for over a week I know this is a "kids these days" anecdote, but I'm seeing a big generational gap in this kind of activity. I was in a frustrating conversation with an undergrad intern who hadn't responded to an e-mail. I was trying to make it a learning experience: at least in this workplace, if I send…

I blame the email spam. It's made email nearly useless for me in my career except for when I worked at a global investment bank as an intern many years ago. I'm mid 30's principal and I basically ignore email. I check it once a week I'd say. The absolute bulk of communication in my career has been via hipchat/slack/teams, fogbugz/jira/azure devops/monday and our source control systems.