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I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

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Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#141

Post by n4r9 »

sneak wrote: post #104
ianai wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, HR does and laughs at the thought. But we live in a political system where corporations have seemingly unalienable rights above their workers. “Want to afford things? Then succumb to the dictates of corporate America or else.” All the while, these same corporations benefit from unprecedented federal deficit spending at the cost of the individual citizens.

As long as there are other places to work, we can and should avail ourselves of them.

It's fine and dandy for people in tech but if you're a single parent with a narrow set of skills who's struggling and been applying for jobs for over a month then you're going to take the offer. And then you're not going to have much time to continue job searching.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#142

Post by allovernow »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #96
allovernow wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're definitely using some form of sentiment analysis, but IMO these are exactly the kind of results you'd get after setting a programmer, with little to no actual data science background, loose to train his nets on data with a limited or absent intuitive understanding of bias from training data. And what's worse is that in their business false flags probably aren't even considered. It's an extra wide supercharged…

The problem here is rather likely to be to not have someone with human science background... but then that person would likely just tell them their whole premise is flawed?

I don't think so. There are valid use cases for sentiment analysis, but you need to understand the limitations of your training data and probably still want humans to QC at least some representative proportion of flagged posts, if you're going to do this legitimately. Of course a company like this just wants to sell any garbage they can dig up.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#143

Post by aeyes »

djhworld wrote: post #137

Does this include retweets? I'm mostly a passive twitter user who mostly likes/retweets tweets that pique my interest. I wonder if these companies evaluate what sort of things you are liking/endorsing and associating that with your character...

This has all tweets the person has liked that their algorithm flags as bad. Not just their own tweets.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#144

Post by coldtea »

blahbhthrow3748 wrote: post #56
coldtea wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's OK if it happens to "bad" people. People who have bad opinions should not of course have jobs. They should die on the streets, as untouchables... Of course this holds as long as "the good side" has the power to make companies fire people for their tweets. If and when conservatives get this power (like e.g. they did in the Hoover or McCarthy era), this practice would be wrong again, and it should all be about…

Right, there's no objective morality, any action anyone takes is their right because freedom. It's equally bad when anyone says anything bad because... reasons.

>Right, there's no objective morality

No, there's not. The universe doesn't care about morals. Societies build their morality. It changes in time and place. If you lived in 1840s South you'd statistically be a racist. If you lived in a tribe you'd have their morality.

>any action anyone takes is their right because freedom

If there's no morality, then any action anyone takes is neither right, nor wrong.

But for a given morality (e.g. 2020 US morality) an action can be right or wrong, or something in between (as morality is complicated, not black and white -- e.g. a murder of someone to steal them, or a murder of a someone who tried to rape you is not equally bad, even though it's equally murder).

>It's equally bad when anyone says anything bad because... reasons.

That doesn't parse.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#145

Post by t0astbread »

Waterluvian wrote: post #69

That's wild. I got my first ever background check to volunteer at a high school. The report was three checkboxes indicating "we found nothing wrong"

A background check before volunteering? Isn't that extremely counterproductive for getting applications?

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#146

Post by astura »

ardy42 wrote: post #10
quotemstr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anyone works somewhere that uses this tool, or anything similar to it, you should run far, far away from that company. You might not even know --- and it could extend beyond hiring. Didn't get promoted? Maybe it's because someond keyword matched you for "toxic". The only real way to safeguard yourself is to keep your identity as small and bland as possible, and that's no way to live.

IIRC, aren't employers required to provide some notice of background checks, especially in the case where they're used to justify adverse actions?

Yes.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#147

Post by adrianmonk »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_in,_garbage_out

I remember back in the 1980s when large numbers of regular folks were trying to come to grips with the question, "What the hell actually is a computer, anyway?". This phrase (GIGO) had to be repeated constantly. People had all these wild ideas that computers were just magic and could turn nothing into something. And that whatever information came out of a computer, it can't be wrong, because computers don't make mistakes.

After a while, it seemed to catch on and penetrate into the collective consciousness. People would even repeat "Garbage In, Garbage Out!" or "GIGO!" with delight, proud that they'd learned something about computers.

Anyway (finally) my point: it seems like we've regressed. GIGO wasn't common sense, and then it was, and now... it's not again? It feels like computer literacy is moving backward a bit.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#148

Post by unlinked_dll »

coldtea wrote: post #110
komali2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Bad opinions" is a pretty remarkable simplification of the concept of someone that doesn't think you're fully human based on the color of your skin or your sexuality. Would you want to work with someone that didn't think you should be allowed to exist?

> "Bad opinions" is a pretty remarkable simplification of the concept of someone that doesn't think you're fully human based on the color of your skin or your sexuality. And "someone that doesn't think you're fully human based on the color of your skin or your sexuality" is a pretty remarkable simplification of the concept that someone might have religious, moral, philosophical, practical, political, or other conside…

Most bigots don't realize they're bigots. But ostracizing them from professional society exasperates the victim complex inherent to bigotry.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#149

Post by Jupe »

lonelappde wrote: post #130
Jupe wrote: post #111

Get used to it... this is the world we (the tech community) helped, even pushed, to create. I ask myself, would a FAANG company hire someone who doesn't actively tweet? Somehow, I doubt it. It is increasingly impossible to live in the modern world without using the internet. Try buying something these days; many of the brick-and-mortar stores are disappearing. Try getting a job without using online services. Try buyi…

FAANG is full of people who don't actively tweet. G+ was famous for Google execs not using it.

Ok, fair enough, but try and extend the pattern. What if the technical candidates don't have a Facebook account, a twitter account, a github account, or any other active online presence? Do you think such resume's will jump to the top of the decision pile? I highly doubt it.

Re: I had to get a background check for my job; the report is a 300 page pdf

#150

Post by syshum »

appleiigs wrote: post #46
brenden2 wrote: post #4

Here's the company doing this: https://fama.io/ The idea that you can assess someone's workplace performance based on automated screening of their tweets is utterly absurd. If anyone works somewhere that uses this tool, or anything similar to it, you should run far, far away from that company. This is a terrible precedent, and much too much Orwellian for my taste. EDIT: somewhat related, but a while back I made a Twi…

On a related note, I declined a job interview when a company wanted to do the interview process via HireVue. Has the Orwellian telescreen feel. The process includes candidate recording interview responses and uploading them for AI to evaluate. HR must not realize that as part of the interview, candidates are also evaluating whether the company is a good place to work at.

I have met more than a few HR and Exec;s with the attitude of "they should be lucky they even have a job"
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