We created a fake language to root out resume liars

Post by arethuza » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 10:07 AM UTC

that_guy_iain wrote: post #118

austincheney wrote: post #107

Why even bother with a fake language when so often the industry has devolved into some sick level of honest negligence? For example: rarely do candidates need to know JavaScript anymore or even some unnecessary framework. Now people trade in experience of some tool that says nothing of anything: React Flux Capacitor (or some other bullshit like they want to go back in time to make lots of money without any real skill…

Honestly, the thing I hate the most about IT is how bad it is while no one admits to it. These are problems I've encountered at several companies: * No budget for tooling. Be that software outside the ide or be it for hardware. * Cargo cult is so much bigger than anyone will ever admit. * The lack of caring about other departments. We're a team and we need to work as a team so the company can make money to pay our sa…

Post by prepend » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 10:10 AM UTC

wahern wrote: post #69

harel wrote: post #59

The actual story became irrelevant when I saw it's a ColdFusion developers group. I used to work on that platform in the 90s. That was the Django/Rails/Next/etc. of the day. It even packaged in some ExtJS components at some point (another java script relic). I'm surprised it's still a thing.

> I'm surprised it's still a thing. Because it was a good idea? The whole industry came full circle. Here's some ColdFusion that people now call "Mustache JS": {{Subject}} {{#names}} {{name}} {{/names}} The problem with ColdFusion was that it went in the wrong direction. It tried to copy the trends of the industry by inventing and emphasizing CFScript when it should have doubled-down on the templating strategies and…

Post by noxvilleza » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 10:10 AM UTC

dmje wrote: post #82

Somewhat orthogonal but reminds me of the old map makers who used to insert made up islands / villages on their maps in order to prevent plagiarism. More here: [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry ]

Post by indy » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 10:12 AM UTC

isolli wrote: post #124

ALittleLight wrote: post #10

This reminds me of an anecdote I read once, maybe in Liars Poker, about how lots of people applying to this hedge fund put "Chess" on their resume somewhere thinking it made them seem like a deep or strategic thinker. As it happened, at this hedge fund there worked a former Soviet master or grandmaster ranked player. And so, whenever interviewing any candidate who claimed great proficiency with chess on their resume,…

This anecdote was recounted by Nassim Taleb in one of his books, either Fooled by Randomness (which I recommend) or The Black Swan (which I don't). According to him, it was MBA courses that recommended adding chess to the CV, as it showed strategic thinking and would never be verified.

Post by zo1 » Wed, Mar 10, 2021, 10:13 AM UTC

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #128

brigandish wrote: post #77

> That way, when candidates were pitched to us with "X years of MOVA experience", we knew that somebody was full of it. I'd put my money on the recruiter. I once had an excruciatingly awkward interview at a company on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhereland with no train station nearby that took me bloody ages to get to… which was actually going well until they asked me about my long experience with Exchang…

In the spirit of Hacker News I'd like to respond to this decidedly human problem with a technical question: which file format did you use for your CV? Was it an easily-edited .docx file, or a PDF? The PDF format is somewhat awkward to edit. I've never put much stock in the idea that this is one of its virtues, but for this specific kind of manipulation I can see it might be effective.