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The return of never-ending job interviews: 'It can go beyond the pale'

bbc.com

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Re: The return of never-ending job interviews: 'It can go beyond the pale'

#31

Post by wrs »

selwoot wrote: post #27
TRDRVR wrote: post #20

Just a periodic reminder that 'Beyond the Pale' is a pro-colonialist phrase that many believe was was part of Britain's Centuries-long campaign to eliminate Irish culture. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/12/beyond-the-pale.h...

That's the exact opposite of what the link you included says. From https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/12/beyond-the-pale.h... As for the relationship between the two expressions, the OED has this to say: “The theory that the origin of the phrase [‘beyond the pale’] relates to any of several specific regions, such as the area of Ireland formerly called the Pale … or the Pale of Settlement in Russia … is not suppo…

Also from the article: a “pale” is a fence. “Beyond the pale” used to require a suffix (e.g., “beyond the pale of reason”) but eventually by itself started to be short for “beyond the pale of acceptable behavior”.

Re: The return of never-ending job interviews: 'It can go beyond the pale'

#32

Post by paxys »

dep_b wrote: post #15

It's kind of fascinating to see companies I've interviewed at, where I did well enough in my honest opinion to get something of an offer in yesterday's market where they didn't even went for a better candidate but simply reposted the job the same week. What is the idea? They just have it up to find that one 0.1% developer that happens to walk through the door? I can't imagine companies simply want to wait to roll out…

Every new feature is built by one developer doing 90% of the work and a dozen others doing the last 10%. As long as the company has the 90% developer on the project, it really doesn't matter whether the new hire happens today or 6 months from now. The feature is going to remain on track.

Re: The return of never-ending job interviews: 'It can go beyond the pale'

#33

Post by mortenjorck »

mooreds wrote: post #9
jakupovic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly sure if you're being sarcastic or not. But I am for the wining and dining part, accompanied by a good interview it can be fun. The other 12 parts can be skipped.

That's what I thought too--is the poster being sarcastic?

Perhaps we should be worried that such a clear (to me, at least) use of hyperbole can nonetheless be seen as potentially serious in this job market.

Re: The return of never-ending job interviews: 'It can go beyond the pale'

#34

Post by cjf101 »

mattgreenrocks wrote: post #13

It's pretty annoying how the article is quite both-sides-ism about the whole thing. Four months to receive an offer? Come on. You get the vast majority of the signal for a candidate in the interview process itself. All of the backoffice deliberations don't require months of meetings. It's just more okay that it gets dragged out because the market is lousy. Call it what it is: indecision and inefficiency.

Four months for an offer sounds a lot more like a terrible salary negotiation tactic. The longer a candidate will wait for an offer, the less money they might be willing to accept.

It's definitely not going to get you the best candidate, but it might get you the cheapest one.

Re: The return of never-ending job interviews: 'It can go beyond the pale'

#35

Post by arduanika »

TRDRVR wrote: post #20

Just a periodic reminder that 'Beyond the Pale' is a pro-colonialist phrase that many believe was was part of Britain's Centuries-long campaign to eliminate Irish culture. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/12/beyond-the-pale.h...

That claim is not supported in the source you linked. In fact, it's directly contradicted several times. For example, toward the end, it quotes the OED:

"The theory that the origin of the phrase [‘beyond the pale’] relates to any of several specific regions, such as the area of Ireland formerly called the Pale … or the Pale of Settlement in Russia … is not supported by the early historical evidence and is likely to be a later rationalization.”

Throughout, your source draws a distinction between the histories of the separate phrases "beyond the pale" and "pale of settlement".

So I guess your statement might be true in the narrow sense that "many believe" the false etymology, just as you can find many who believe that the earth is flat. But that's not a good reason to go around chiding people for using a common expression.

Re: The return of never-ending job interviews: 'It can go beyond the pale'

#36

Post by GartzenDeHaes »

paxys wrote: post #32
dep_b wrote: post #15

It's kind of fascinating to see companies I've interviewed at, where I did well enough in my honest opinion to get something of an offer in yesterday's market where they didn't even went for a better candidate but simply reposted the job the same week. What is the idea? They just have it up to find that one 0.1% developer that happens to walk through the door? I can't imagine companies simply want to wait to roll out…

Every new feature is built by one developer doing 90% of the work and a dozen others doing the last 10%. As long as the company has the 90% developer on the project, it really doesn't matter whether the new hire happens today or 6 months from now. The feature is going to remain on track.

I don't know, on a lot of projects the last 10% seems to take 90% of the time.

Re: The return of never-ending job interviews: 'It can go beyond the pale'

#37

Post by TRDRVR »

arduanika wrote: post #35
TRDRVR wrote: post #20

Just a periodic reminder that 'Beyond the Pale' is a pro-colonialist phrase that many believe was was part of Britain's Centuries-long campaign to eliminate Irish culture. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/12/beyond-the-pale.h...

That claim is not supported in the source you linked. In fact, it's directly contradicted several times. For example, toward the end, it quotes the OED: "The theory that the origin of the phrase [‘beyond the pale’] relates to any of several specific regions, such as the area of Ireland formerly called the Pale … or the Pale of Settlement in Russia … is not supported by the early historical evidence and is likely to b…

What about the link contradicts the point that it's pro-colonialist?

The etymology is in doubt for any particular area, not the concept of what a pale was and how it was used to colonize.

That is the point of "many believe."

Also keep in mind that the major doubter is the Oxford English Dictionary...

Re: The return of never-ending job interviews: 'It can go beyond the pale'

#38

Post by imiric »

dep_b wrote: post #15

It's kind of fascinating to see companies I've interviewed at, where I did well enough in my honest opinion to get something of an offer in yesterday's market where they didn't even went for a better candidate but simply reposted the job the same week. What is the idea? They just have it up to find that one 0.1% developer that happens to walk through the door? I can't imagine companies simply want to wait to roll out…

Not every company is urgently looking to fill a role. It might be more acceptable for them to wait for a candidate who is a better fit, than to hire someone they're not thrilled about, and increase the costly risk of it not working out.

Re: The return of never-ending job interviews: 'It can go beyond the pale'

#39

Post by coldpie »

dep_b wrote: post #15

It's kind of fascinating to see companies I've interviewed at, where I did well enough in my honest opinion to get something of an offer in yesterday's market where they didn't even went for a better candidate but simply reposted the job the same week. What is the idea? They just have it up to find that one 0.1% developer that happens to walk through the door? I can't imagine companies simply want to wait to roll out…

Having been on the other side, hiring is really hard, and it's usually worse to have a bad developer in place than it is to have no developer. So the smart thing to do in most situations is err on the side of not hiring in marginal cases.

> I did well enough in my honest opinion

At a previous employer, I helped design the developer hiring process. The first step in the process was to ask candidates to pass a "do you even know C?" test. Simple stuff like writing a little string handling program from scratch and identifying coding errors in an existing file. It wasn't a lot of candidates, but a significant minority would actually argue with us when they failed these super basic tests, even after we pointed out their errors. I'm definitely not saying you are doing this, but it was not at all uncommon to have applicants that way overestimated their own skill.

Hiring is just hard, from both sides. There's a lot on the line for all involved, and a wrong decision, in either direction, is costly for everyone.

Re: The return of never-ending job interviews: 'It can go beyond the pale'

#40

Post by justin_oaks »

TRDRVR wrote: post #20

Just a periodic reminder that 'Beyond the Pale' is a pro-colonialist phrase that many believe was was part of Britain's Centuries-long campaign to eliminate Irish culture. https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2012/12/beyond-the-pale.h...

Just a periodic reminder that the origin or words or phrases doesn't have bearing on their meaning today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymological_fallacy

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