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I Got Catfished by a Candidate

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Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#191

Post by lovich »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #172
ironjunkie wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone is lying at work to some degree. That's what office politics is all about, even though it is not straight lying. How many times did my managers not "lie" to me by telling me that it is impossible for the company to give a raise or anything as a policy right now, while my colleague gets one one week later (sharing salary information is beautiful!)

This is really a reductio ad absurdum. But if you think your boss is dishonest with you, then go find a new boss. Dishonesty instantly destroys trust, and unless it’s about something entirely trivial, it’s almost impossible to restore it. A trustless workplace cannot be functional. You can point to examples of workplaces that are dysfunctional if you like, but it’s something I refuse to contribute to, or even tolerat…

Have you ever been part of lay offs on the employer side? Any single company whose done that action has lied as they led their employees to believe that they would be working on some project for a while, while simultaneously planning to let them go. That's just a single example of a common lie in companies, and there are more like "we follow best practices", until those practices start costing money.

Every single company that more than 2 people is full of constant lies, it's just that most of them are below our collective threshold of being an egregious lie.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#192

Post by AmericanChopper »

ironjunkie wrote: post #179
AmericanChopper wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really a reductio ad absurdum. But if you think your boss is dishonest with you, then go find a new boss. Dishonesty instantly destroys trust, and unless it’s about something entirely trivial, it’s almost impossible to restore it. A trustless workplace cannot be functional. You can point to examples of workplaces that are dysfunctional if you like, but it’s something I refuse to contribute to, or even tolerat…

I think what you are really saying is that you will fire people for lies bigger than a specific "threshold", which I understand and agree with. What I'm saying is that in the social work environment everyone lies to some level and it is actually widely accepted so. I googled exactly for 5 seconds and found this article to give you a couple examples: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/11652018/10-que...

That’s not really what I’m saying at all. Every lie you tell jeopardises the trust you have amongst others. You might not get caught, and if you do, you may not damage the trust irreparably depending on the magnitude of the lie.

I’m also saying that a workplace cannot be functional without trust, and that a workplace that tolerates dishonesty will invariably erode it. So unless you want to exist in such a workplace, you should not tolerate dishonesty either.

Finally I’m saying that dishonesty is not a prerequisite for success, and that you can be successful with integrity and honesty, and that people value those traits.

I’m not saying there’s some magical threshold, which below, lies become justified. Dishonesty is not a justifiable personality trait, and trying to defend it demonstrates a lack of integrity.

You’re also confusing dishonesty with a lack of 100% openness. If somebody asks your for personal information, or information they’re not entitled to, there is no moral requirement to disclose it to them. This is the reductio ad absurdum I was talking about.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#193

Post by abiox »

freeone3000 wrote: post #151
maxxxxx wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just experienced this with a contractor. I have never seen him do anything himself. I strongly suspect he is sending his work somewhere else.

He's a contractor . That's the difference between him and an employee: He chooses the time, place, and manner of his work, including subcontracting it. If he's not allowed to do this, chances are you have an employee.

> He chooses the time, place, and manner of his work, including subcontracting it.

all of this is entirely within the scope of the contract.

"subcontracting" is unlikely to be permissible in a variety of scenarios, especially if the material being worked on is even vaguely sensitive.

when it does happen, it's typically in a larger organizational context and then there will usually be some vetting or approval process.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#194

Post by lovich »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #163
justherefortart wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you've never lied at work?

No, I haven’t. Is dishonesty something you’d like to defend?

You've walked into work and told your boss that he was a fucking moron when you saw something that angered you immediately? Lieing about feelings is a basic human skill. If you never lied you would be a constant stream of unsociable behaviour that would get you shunned

Minor lies are such a part of human society that it's a sign of some disorder if a child is actually incapable of lieing

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#195

Post by AmericanChopper »

lovich wrote: post #191
AmericanChopper wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is really a reductio ad absurdum. But if you think your boss is dishonest with you, then go find a new boss. Dishonesty instantly destroys trust, and unless it’s about something entirely trivial, it’s almost impossible to restore it. A trustless workplace cannot be functional. You can point to examples of workplaces that are dysfunctional if you like, but it’s something I refuse to contribute to, or even tolerat…

Have you ever been part of lay offs on the employer side? Any single company whose done that action has lied as they led their employees to believe that they would be working on some project for a while, while simultaneously planning to let them go. That's just a single example of a common lie in companies, and there are more like "we follow best practices", until those practices start costing money. Every single com…

I actually have been. I informed people as soon as I could, and sent them home immediately without telling a single lie. To some extent this comment also tries to paint withholding information that people aren’t entitled to as lying. Which are absolutely not the same thing.

Also, do you know what happens to companies that have mass layoffs cloaked in dishonesty? They destroy their own reputations. An outcome that entirely proves my point.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#196

Post by BadThink6655321 »

whatshisface wrote: post #158
BadThink6655321 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in my experience. But doing an on-site interview in India is the exception, not the rule. (Note: I’ve done both). And when an “on-site” interview is done, make sure you’re the one who is on-site, and not an Indian agent. Their caste system makes it hard for “others” to be people, and we all know what happens when you dehumanize others.

> Their caste system makes it hard for “others” to be people, and we all know what happens when you dehumanize others. Since I have little experience with outsourcing to India, the implication here is mysterious to me. What are you getting at?

Let me relate a true story, and then discuss some implications. After dinner one night, many years ago, an Indian co-worker and I started discussing politics. The Indian wanted to know why we didn’t nuke Pakistan in our hunt for bin Laden. I said that the fallout would kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of his countrymen. His response? “They’re excess people.”

If you don’t care about others, then you will use the “other” for your benefit - not mutual benefit. You will be used, you will be lied to, and the political maneuvering will be slanted against you.

Note that this isn’t limited to Indians. It’s, unfortunately, becoming more prevelant in American society, too. In a shrinking world, tribalism (aka identity politics) will be an increasing problem. But Indians have been practicing it for 6K years, so they’re especially good at it.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#197

Post by JohnCrane »

mrbill wrote: post #87

You just never know who might turn up from your past... 1999: I was a sysadmin at an ISP in Austin. One day we had a tour come through, people looking to see if they wanted to colo in our datacenter. In walks in the former CEO and most of the technical staff from the Oklahoma City-based ISP I'd started my career at and left in '96. We laughed, shook hands.. and they headhunted me away a couple months later with a 200…

you're old as fuck bruh

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#198

Post by jmvoodoo »

mrbill wrote: post #87

You just never know who might turn up from your past... 1999: I was a sysadmin at an ISP in Austin. One day we had a tour come through, people looking to see if they wanted to colo in our datacenter. In walks in the former CEO and most of the technical staff from the Oklahoma City-based ISP I'd started my career at and left in '96. We laughed, shook hands.. and they headhunted me away a couple months later with a 200…

Hey mr_bill. Long time no talk.

-indy :)

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#199

Post by eigenvector »

deviationblue wrote: post #174
navs wrote: post #86

sigh > Rule #2: Take a long hard look at a candidate’s social profiles. Is not having a LinkedIn account going to come back to bite me, even when applying for dev roles? I've had even senior devs at popular local dev shops say LinkedIn is a "necessary evil" because it: 1. is easy to grep 2. you can find whether a candidate has similar connections to you 3. recommendations I get New Zealand is small and the social gra…

Similarly, rule #4: Google candidate. What happens if candidate doesn't have Google presence? Or if there are other people with the same name as the candidate who have weird websites or videos posted somewhere. Give me a break, let's not get paranoid about hiring. You can always let someone go.

There's a guy with my name, roughly the same age as me, from the same hometown who's a recently paroled pedophile. All the top results when you search my name are about him.

So yeah, I'm not enthusiastic about Googling every candidate.

Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate

#200

Post by lovich »

ironjunkie wrote: post #143
ryandrake wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wholeheartedly agree. The behavior itself should NOT be condoned but it is arguably understandable. Given the increasing pickiness of employers, candidate screening based on keyword and credential filtering, focus on who you know over what you know, and opaque/arbitrary hiring processes, I’m surprised we don’t see more of this. It’s no longer enough to be a good candidate. One needs to check every checkbox, AND be…

In any other profession I would agree with the complete nonsense going on with hiring, but at least in IT (and at least in the bay area), there is such a demand for engineers that I don't see this going on too much except at some of the big shops (Google, Facebook etc) which are frontended with incompetent recruiters that only look at keywords.

Outside of Silicon Valley, there are many ridiculous hiring practices. On the east coast I have applied to multiple companies where I knew enough of the employees to get dinner with the team after. When we talked about hiring policies and practices all but one of those dinners ended up with a fight between the coworkers that fell into two teams of whether they should fail candidates over not wearing a suit because it showed they weren't professional or whether they should fail a candidate for wearing a suit because they valued looks over ability.

Hell every single job I've worked at had multiple people whose requirements to hire someone were so difficult that they, themselves wouldn't have been hired

A lot of the software worlds application process out of a few tech hubs is just shotgunning applications so that you get your resume in front of enough hiring managers who are having a good day that you get an interview.

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