Isn't employment verification a standard part of background checks? Whenever I've gone through them, I've had to provide contact info to verify my employment at least 5 years back.
I Got Catfished by a Candidate
451–460 of 662 posts
Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate
#452You 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…
Next time someone says technical hiring is not hiring quite so many women or minorities because it's purely meritocratic, I'm going to point them at this post.
Yes, we know that happens.
However, to clarify, some of those were ppl he never met (but eventually did). Ultimately it's about trust. That is, can I trust this person can do the job __and__ work with the team.
People who are not will to "put themselves out there" are going to be at a disadvantage. Not all doors open easily. Too need to be knocked on again and again and again.
In a way, some of the examples actually provide hope.
Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate
#453Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Some amount of dishonesty is required if you want to avoid being an awkward social pariah." Actually that's not true. It is possible to be completely sincere, yet tactful. And you can do it in a way that doesn't come off as self-righteous. I will grant you that it is definitely more rare than it should be, but that doesn't make the opposite a requirement.
>Actually that's not true. It is possible to be completely sincere, yet tactful I completely and utterly disagree with this. There are too many social interactions centered around a shared expectation of dishonesty. If your partner's grandmother asks you how the food was, if you answer with anything less than "great", regardless of how tactfully you do so, there will be negative social consequences. Even in the rare…
>Actually that's not true. It is possible to be completely sincere, yet tactful
Concur. I was asked for a reference on a graduating anesthesiology resident who was terrible in terms of his attitude, yet competent enough to practice safely; my reference letter, in its entirety:
"He worked here."
Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate
#454Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 ent…
"as soon as I could". That's not "as soon as I knew". My point is that lieing isn't a binary option. If people told literally no lies our society would fall apart. White lies are social lubricant to get through the day. This matters in the discussion because employers have made their job positings be full of lies 99% of time. When everyone can expect that a random interaction is going to be mostly lieing then it's mo…
>If people told literally no lies our society would fall apart.
Concur. Imagine if we could all read each other's minds: things would go downhill in a New York zeptosecond.
Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate
#455Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
Some people seem to think that people will lie about small things, but not big things. I kind of think that if you are willing to compromise your integrity for something small, you are definitely going to lie on the big things when the stakes are higher.
[citation needed]
Usually that's not the case.
Plenty of people lie, often unnecessarily, about tiny things like making excuses for being late but would not lie to cover up anything that has serious ethical implications.
Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate
#456You 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…
Next time someone says technical hiring is not hiring quite so many women or minorities because it's purely meritocratic, I'm going to point them at this post.
Giving enough of a shit to hang out on IRC is a merit. Most of the rest are anecdotes about having a long career. The only sketchy bit is the Mason thing.
Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate
#457Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cia would not welcome you.
You’re ignoring that fact that honesty is expected in some contexts and not in others. In business it’s not dishonest to withhold information from you’re competitors, or to even make a bluff in front of them. In the CIA it’s not dishonest to withhold information from your adversaries, or even manipulate them to your advantage depending on the context. Although I’m sure many CIA employees practice moral relativism to…
No those are completely dishonest, especially when it becomes active bluffing/manipulation. It's nit less dishonest when a lie is useful to you. You might maybe morally justify it, but it's deliberately saying things that conflict with the facts, and that is the very definition of lying.
The general issue of this thread, which you lot have forgotten completely as you went nitpicking what is dishonesty and what is hiding sone facts etc, is that, the whole concept of "references" is a fucked up way to cover incompetence and discrimination at hiring, and forces people to spend time in jobs they would rather not in order to build resumes, and tollerate assholes in order to avoid bias when hirers are scuba-diving into your personal history. That seems to me to be a huge breach of privacy too.
Furthermore, those few of you who can have pleasant jobs seem to just plain ignore the fact that most businesses lie to their employees constantly. My only IT job for example, which I started out as a Python backend developer, but then was forced to, before I wrote five-six lines of python, to work on frontend instead, using JS and jQuery, both of which I did not really know? That was sth. I could have avoided if the employer did not fool me into thinking that I would do Django stuff instead. And, I havent done a survey, but generally the amount of stories employers fucking up employees far outweigh the case vice versa. The morale being, most people have shitty jobs, and you lot are being hypocritical judging them while you dont have to endure such things. Lucky for you, but have some empathy.
As for the initial point of this thread, well, while the Catfish is guilty of lying and better avoided, the circumstances that pushed him to do so are just as equally if not more messy. And also, consciously or subconsciously, we seem to condemn lies and manipulative behavoiur when we are on the benefitting side.
Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate
#458Earlier quoted context omitted.
(1) Networking and building a reputation for yourself will always have value. (2) Most of the things that he's listed are merits. Being involved in his community, having a strong verifiable previous job history with good references, etc. (3) Having a good job history, making friends, and being involved in online and offline communities are not things limited to white males.
Speaking about meritocracy. 1.) We laughed, shook hands and they headhunted me away The headhunt started on very little information - basically on how he laugh and shakes of hand. Had likely proved himself later, but it was all was on instant first impression - where biases matter most. 2.) Freemason How is that related to merit in tech? Yes, similar "we have thing in common" bias happen everywhere (and may advantage…
>The headhunt started on very little information -
At least read the comment before trying to troll. They headhunted him because he had already worked for them. It's hard to get more information than that.
Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate
#459Catfishing can be the only way to get a job. The article author clearly reinforces this by explicitly stating that he was attracted to this candidate on the basis of their pedigree.
Here is a person that would've otherwise been fine but their only qualification missing was something outside of their control -- repeat, someone that would've otherwise been a qualified candidate. Is the tech industry driven by merit or is it driven by nepotism? You decide.
Re: I Got Catfished by a Candidate
#460Earlier quoted context omitted.
Next time someone says technical hiring is not hiring quite so many women or minorities because it's purely meritocratic, I'm going to point them at this post.
Giving enough of a shit to hang out on IRC is a merit. Most of the rest are anecdotes about having a long career. The only sketchy bit is the Mason thing.
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