Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

#251

Post by teh_klev » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #98

sdoering wrote: post #49

> [...] the job opening didn't say remote, the agreement they signed didn't say remote. I don't understand. Do people sign a contract that states something differently than they were being told verbally before? Imho what isn't in writing doesn't exist. Especially when it comes to "promises" from potential employers. For example I would not trust a promised raise in 12 months when nothing was done in writing. Even wit…

That's a pretty hard standard to hold. I've never had a company promise a particular desk to me in writing, but I trust that if they show me their nice office space and verbally tell me that's where I'll be sitting they won't put me on a folding table in the broom closet.

I think you've crossed over into the unnecessarily absurd.

When I got my offer and contract to sign which stated remote work I made damn sure it was in the contract along with compensation, holidays, sick leave etc. If any of these differed from the job advert, interview discussions etc then I'd be bouncing it back to the employer to correct.

These are not "pretty hard standard[s] to hold" a potential employer to.

Re: Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

#252

Post by tdfx » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

breakfastduck wrote: post #181

calvinmorrison wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my last role, I got all the way to the "signing your hiring paperwork" to find out that vaccines were mandatory for all new hires. Seeing as that's 30% of the workforce or so who isn't, and this being a senior level position, and a year more after they were first available (meaning, anyone who wanted to get a vaccine - probably would have already)... you'd think they'd bring that up day one. I about flipped shit o…

People just assume anyone with a reasonable amount of common sense would be fine with it I imagine.

There's millions of people that have already been infected with COVID and receive no calculable benefit from taking a vaccine. While the vaccine has been proven to be safe and effective, there are rare side effects that some people might not want to expose themselves to for no reason. Springing that blanket requirement on people at the end of the hiring process is a shitty move.

Re: Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

#253

Post by y-c-o-m-b » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

picardo wrote: post #214

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #162

Amazon is doing this. I went through the process and the recruiter tried to manipulate me into "assigning a local office" otherwise it has to go through "an approval process". I told him put it through the approval then or I walk. He also tried car-salesman tactics of trying to get me to accept a lower total comp package. I stood firmly at the top of my range and after days of trying to convince me otherwise, they fi…

Being assigned an office doesn't mean that it's not remote. It entirely depends on the team. I worked for a team that wanted me in office for three days a week last year. My current team is entirely remote, but I'm still assigned to an office that I can go to anytime I want, which is totally optional.

No, but here's the catch that I learned about: if you're assigned to an office, they can make you go into that office at the same frequency as in-office workers. You'd basically have nothing in writing that states you're a remote employee (I specifically asked the recruiter about this, and he confirmed). Otherwise why would being fully remote need "special approval"? That doesn't make any sense.

Re: Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

#254

Post by jrochkind1 » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #207

iooi wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every background check that companies put you through include any history of litigation against employers, no need for recruiters to talk to each other.

I can understand at least the reasoning behind checking criminal history of potential hirings (even though as an European, I disagree with the concept on a fundamental level and it's illegal in Germany to demand a criminal record check outside of very specific industries). But how on earth do civil lawsuit records in the US end up anywhere where the background-checking industry can get their grubby paws on them?!

The simple answer to "how do civil lawsuit records end up where they can get their hands on them" is that civil lawsuit records are of course public, and available to anyone who wants them. Although I haven't specifically heard of this one before.

Are civil suit records not public not in Germany?

But hearing that a criminal history check is illegal in Germany outside of specific industries continues to reinforce my belief that everything just works right in Germany.

How do I get residency?

Re: Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

#255

Post by cvhashim » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

underhill wrote: post #91

Same thing happened with me @ Apple last year. Went through 4 or so interviews with the expectation that it was a remote role. Then the day before the big remote "onsite" I was told they actually wanted someone in-person. So I removed myself from the process. I'll chalk it up to 2021 being a confusing time for everyone - but I felt pretty burned by it.

It was well known across the industry Apple required most people back in the offices.

Re: Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

#256

Post by no-s » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

uuyi wrote: post #95

> I'm not sure what the compensation model for recruiters is, but it seems to encourage bringing in as many candidates as possible over treating them with honesty and respect. From experience dealing with recruiters for the last 25 years they universally lie to both sides to pocket the commission at all costs. I drove 400 miles once to do an interview for a solution architect position. Got there and the company were…

I drove to LA once to do an interview the next day after confirming with the in-house recruiter. When I got there they told me they didn’t think I was actually coming because they had already hired someone. Also they didn’t want to pay expenses despite offering to do so in their letter to me.

So I called up a consultant firm I knew in LA and sez, “hey I’m in town interviewing at X for Y, but I don’t like them and I wonder if you got any Y jobs" and they got me a (consultant) job as the technical lead for the job the X company had placed the other DBA at.

Later I had my attorney send a letter with my documentation to X company and settled up for time, expenses, and atty fees.

Re: Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

#257

Post by bialpio » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #230

bialpio wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small note: there are people who cannot change work in IT because it would affect their visa or immigration status.

H1-B transfer is possible if your potential new employer will perform the transfer with USCIS. (Edit: typo corrected, thanks kaapipo)

IIRC the transfer can affect the green card process depending on the stage you are at. IANAL, check with your immigration attorney.

Re: Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

#258

Post by jppope » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

Just going to help everyone out here that got a RTO notice: https://remoteok.com/

Re: Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

#259

Post by qbasic_forever » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

hammock wrote: post #165

qbasic_forever wrote: post #81

> I'm not sure what the compensation model for recruiters is, but it seems to encourage bringing in as many candidates as possible over treating them with honesty and respect. This is exactly how it works, recruiters don't get paid unless they get a candidate hired. Despite all the words they write and say to you, they only care about getting you and the hiring manager to say yes and _everything_ else doesn't matter…

OP experience makes me think some kind of added process like Letter of Agreement or Letter of Intent from the initial outreach that says “assuming you pass all the rounds, we will hire you to a remote position at a salary to be determined but between the range of x-y, etc.” could be helpful. It’s not a contract but a precursor and some lighter level of commitment. Common in enterprise sales scenarios but not in mid l…

That might work for much more senior or established roles where the hiring pool is small and candidates few. But for your bog standard engineer roles it's not worth the company time and hassle to fuss with negotiations before interviews even start. The unfortunate reality is they'll just pass over anyone demanding such things and grab any of the other resumes on the stack.

Re: Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

#260

Post by AtlasBarfed » Thu, Apr 07, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

jrd259 wrote: post #174

jhatemyjob wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon trains its employees to be back stabbers. I'm at the point where if I see a long stint Amazon on your resume, I count that as a point against you, because if we work together, you're probably gonna try to give me the runaround and/or fuck me over.

I doubt anything I say could convince you otherwise, but I've had no experience at all in 8 years at being "stabbed" in the back. Nor have I any way to prove I am not an evil one. Amazon is large, you may be judging on a small sample size.

By definition, your experience is a small sample size.

I won't say my sample size (about 5 people who worked there and 10 people that have interviewed) is massive either, but mine is 100% negative. Yes, all IT people, so I'm not even dealing with the poor line workers.

Their turnover numbers IMO validate the negative views of Amazon. The ass-covering and lying during their downtimes over holiday also show a degrading culture.

Their UIs also show a poorly managed IT staff. I can understand warts, but why not gradual improvement? The biggest sign was their awful redesign of the console, which was demonstrably worse and has not improved.

"You're not supposed to use the UI in AWS"

Well OK, their APIs are not well documented. When you have a command with literally 100 options, you need a LOT of examples. The documentation of their error codes is basically "stackoverflow", and change over releases with no warning. And this is for their most used services, who knows what the various other crap is like. And they only show examples of invocations, they almost never show the OUTPUT format.

This is something that should be actively improved for the leading cloud provided that will probably hit 100 billion in revenue in 2022. You can't invest .0001% of your revenue to better documentation and tooling? Like that HASN'T cost you 1000x that in services and revenue already with people unable to get their prototypes off the ground or fix problems to scale more quickly?

They show management, they show low worker motivation, their marketing and press is so bad that Walmart seems like a good corporate citizen in comparison.

All of their policies can be glossed over with growth.

Unfortunately, AWS isn't a startup company anymore, it is a utility, an important core component in the foundation of the internet. Their culture and hiring and communication show that their growth HR policies are going to backfire in the coming decades as all their systems are likely on the their third or fourth "generation" of people being responsible for it.

Consider getting a software job at Amazon: likely you're getting shunted onto some "legacy" (you know, written 4 years ago, 2 employee generations ago) and are expected to know a big complicated messy codebase with no docummentation and no organizational memory, and then you get saddled with ridiculous expectations.

You either get to greenfield redevelop it (if you have a nice manager) which is risky, or you are utterly fucked from an advancement perspective and you are just meat to chew.