Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

Leaving aside the efficiencies of commingling inventory, even the simple filter option to only show sold and shipped by Amazon.com search results was deemed not to be a customer need. In fact, it was removed. Quite a puzzling “culture” of solving customer’s needs.

Recruiter here. You nailed it!

Recruiters are influencers: nothing more, nothing less. I'm writing a video essay to help me grieve the human-centric inane events you are describing that I lived daily for years.

Compensation model differs but if people are interested I can let you know.

Sometimes it’s the recruiter that originates the lie, sometimes it’s the company/process that dictates the lie. Regardless, your interview process is a datapoint that I have collected to influence hiring managers to allow more remote roles if they really liked you. Sometimes that data has been used to boot other agencies from working for them so I can have more control and make myself and my team look better. Who tf knows really? There is but only asymmetric information in this deal.

It's disingenuous from the start sometimes. I've hired loads of devs that weren't looking for a job (passive candidates) even pre 2020. A lot of those wanted remote or even partial WFH and I still got them to commute from West Seattle to Redmond. Sometimes it works out where the recruiter can establish rapport with a candidate enough to coax them into a hybrid situation (i've done it dozens of times) for $5-15k more a year (puke emojis). For me, that eventually turns into self loathing, disdain.

How do you make it to hiring committee, when you wanted remote as that was established from the start (on your side)? The recruiter (mistake by moving too fast, lies, who tf knows why) may or may not have known you wanted remote and at the worst expected you to be a fence sitter and pushed you through as 'it all comes out in the wash' (on their side). Maybe they take candidates through the process to stack rank them and see who they can make exceptions for and yeet the rest. Who knows: everyone is different as much as the company they are interviewing for.

Like, I have read the posts about tech hiring being broken, and let me tell you what. It's more than just a mental athletic gauntlet of tree traversal and finding big O. Together - candidates and recruiters alike - we are helplessly nibbling at yet just a mouthful of the present soul crushing sausage-like shitberg.

So... Where's the "Report counterfeit" button again?

Oh yeah. That's right. There isn't one. Intentionally.

Google used to hire A+ players -- the cream of the cream of the crop. The workforce at early Google was spectacular. Everyone wanted to work there -- tenured faculty were leaving their jobs.

Right now, Google hires good people, but the very best people I know all work elsewhere (and many are former Googlers).

Nonsense like this won't discourage B or C players, who fight tooth-and-nail to get there, but it does discourage the people were Google is fighting for individuals with other employers.

I haven't heard any elite university faculty leave for Google in close to a decade, for example. It used to be common. Google would poach from Stanford and MIT.

I've seen companies go this way, and this kind of slide only tends to accelerate. Folks like Sebastian Thrun bring in the cream of Stanford, and the cream of Stanford brings in everyone else. Once you lose those top two tiers....