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Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

cnbc.com

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Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#131

Post by bill_joy_fanboy »

xp84 wrote: post #122
bill_joy_fanboy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all want to be, though. All business want to be big-time like Amazon, but not all of them are so lucky. I don't understand the making of excuses for small businesses as though they are somehow morally better than large businesses. Every business owner, regardless of the size of the business, wants free labor.

No they don't. This kind of mustachio-twirling caricature isn't a helpful mental model of how business works. Businesses are just large bunches of people, each trying to maximize various metrics given the incentives they interact with. None of those people, including the owner, is automatically pro-slavery, which is the other word for "wants free labor." Everybody wants to maximize their money received and minimize t…

You're arguing with me, but this statement...

> Everybody wants to maximize their money received and minimize their money and work expended to whatever degree possible.

...is exactly in agreement with what I said above.

The ideal business is one where you take in money and have no expenditures. E.g., If you're a landlord, you want super high rent and no expenditures on maintenance or improvements.

I would also accept the other direction. That is, a tenant wants use of a property for no rent, ideally.

My point was that small businesses aren't noble somehow. They want money for free just like everybody else.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#132

Post by tptacek »

xp84 wrote: post #122
bill_joy_fanboy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They all want to be, though. All business want to be big-time like Amazon, but not all of them are so lucky. I don't understand the making of excuses for small businesses as though they are somehow morally better than large businesses. Every business owner, regardless of the size of the business, wants free labor.

No they don't. This kind of mustachio-twirling caricature isn't a helpful mental model of how business works. Businesses are just large bunches of people, each trying to maximize various metrics given the incentives they interact with. None of those people, including the owner, is automatically pro-slavery, which is the other word for "wants free labor." Everybody wants to maximize their money received and minimize t…

I find generally the most helpful thing you can factor in when trying to work out how a business is thinking is "what set of things would make my viable business predictable". If there's a factor HN threads tend to miss in these discussions, it's determinism.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#133

Post by IshKebab »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #108
IshKebab wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think realistically the only way you could enforce this is to legally required registration of job adverts with the government (you register the advert, you receive an ID; anyone advertising jobs without a valid ID is heavily fined), and then also require companies to register the outcome of the advert (internal hire, external hire, withdrawn, etc.). Then it would be possible to actually identify suspicious behavio…

They wouldn't have to register it with the government, just track it internally in the chance that they get challenged on it so they have receipts. 1) Person believes company is posting fake job listings and notes a few as evidence. 2) Person submits this to some government form similar to an FCC complaint form. 3) Government contacts the company to investigate or whatever.

They would have to register them otherwise they could very easily fake the data afterwards, and you wouldn't be able to fine people advertising jobs without IDs. Nobody would have a record of all the jobs a company had advertised.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#134

Post by tptacek »

xp84 wrote: post #130
smt88 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should never tax things you want people to do, like posting legitimate job openings

> posting legitimate job openings You want to incentivize them FILLING job openings. Nobody cares how many jobs are posted. And posting 100 openings and filling 50 is the stated problem trying to be solved here. The rebating idea resolves this quite neatly though. Make posting a job opening that eventually gets filled free after rebate[1], and posting a "dangling" job opening that never fills incurs tax. Now, I can t…

Nothing like this is ever going to happen. It would be incredibly expensive (on both the employer and the government side) to administer, and it would be portrayed as a tax on hiring, because that's exactly what it would be.

Rules about what a job posting can and cannot say can definitely happen, and have happened (see: salary ranges, because of Colorado's requirements). That's what CNBC depicts this proposal as comprising. Unfortunately, under the hood, it's closer to what you're talking about.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#136

Post by IshKebab »

befictious wrote: post #86
IshKebab wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think realistically the only way you could enforce this is to legally required registration of job adverts with the government (you register the advert, you receive an ID; anyone advertising jobs without a valid ID is heavily fined), and then also require companies to register the outcome of the advert (internal hire, external hire, withdrawn, etc.). Then it would be possible to actually identify suspicious behavio…

then it would just be like real estate with off market listings where companies have a black market hiring pool and then just do the legal loophole steps of registering before "officially" posting and immediately hiring their desired candidate... which would probably have the shady side effect of making the policy "look efficient" without actually solving the job search problem.

I'm unfamiliar with off market real estate listings (not a thing in the UK). Can you describe what you mean more?

The point is if a company fills 80% of its job postings with internal hires then that's highly suss and can be investigated. I don't delaying advertising would change that?

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#138

Post by avbanks »

LargeWu wrote: post #101
hyperpape wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80% of what? There are 85,000 H1B visas per year, and vastly more job postings (and hirings of citizens) each year.

85,000 new H1B's. But there are multiples of that already in the US who already hold visas. So, the actual number is in the hundreds of thousands, enough to make a serious impact on supply of labor in the tech sector.

That makes a massive difference, if true.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#139

Post by xp84 »

tptacek wrote: post #129
catigula wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's unreasonable or onerous to shift the burden of hiring onto companies well-suited and minimally impacted by this process compared to individuals. The fines should definitely be proportional though, with larger companies facing very severe infractions.

There are rules like this in other countries around the world, and the impact is that it's much harder to change full-time jobs, because companies work around them by replacing full-time roles with contract positions, something that's much harder to regulate. But the big thing here is: obviously there's a cheering section for any rules that make things harder for hiring managers, because most people here are on the o…

I completely agree that there isn't any legislation that will "fix this problem" (other than perhaps abolition of H1B).

If it helps soothe the feelings of those who think hiring managers are demon spawn out to get them, I can add, as one of those who spent a whole season this year doing basically nothing but conducting first-round interviews all day, to hire four open SWE seats, it's misery out here for us, too.

It was a mix of laughably unqualified people; people in India lying and pretending to be in the US ("Which neighborhood in NY do you live in?" - "I live by the Statue of Liberty"); people sending ringers to do their coding exercises for them including different ringers or two ringers at once (oops); and entirely made-up resumes (we have your resume from an application 3 years ago but your entire life history has changed since).

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#140

Post by snapetom »

behnamoh wrote: post #35

unfortunately this happens in academia too. last year was brutal for most PhDs in business schools because the number of positions dropped significantly compared to the year before, and the ones that were "on the market" weren't all legit. there were several top tier schools that did the first-round interviews or even flyout seminars only to test the waters, with no intention of hiring. the fact that universities and…

The disconnect between academia and private is real and often bizarre.

I have a good friend that's a recruiter for a top 20 flagship research university in the US. Her line is always, "We're education. We don't do things like ghost jobs and ghostings." She'll then often tell stories where she and her colleagues do the exact same thing you hear in the private sector.

Recently she asked me if I thought it was ok to go ahead and fly a candidate out for an interview knowing the funding had just been cut. Her boss (in recruiting) wanted to anyway in case the funding was restored. Luckily the hiring managers refused to go ahead.

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