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Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

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Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#211

Post by WalterBright »

WalterBright wrote: post #210
novok wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The topic set is very different and the conditions are very artificial. There are many engineers who are amazing, but are absolute shit about writing code, under pressure, while someone is looking over their shoulder, to a leetcode medium that they haven't practiced for. Their brains go blank. Like seriously, go to leetcode, pick a random medium+ problem and solve it within 15-30m without bugs under pressure, on code…

Anybody going for a leetcode interview without doing prep work first is not a good candidate to start with. I coached a newly minted PhD engineer into spending 3 weeks studying leetcode prep materials before the interview, telling him that per-hour it would be the best investment of his career. Shockingly, he listened, studied for 3 weeks, and absolutely nailed it. And landed the big bucks job, too. > Their brains go…

Just for fun, I found among my dad's papers the written tests he had to pass before he could even sit in the cockpit of an F-86 Sabrejet. They were quite comprehensive and full of minutia. For damn sure the AF wasn't going to let anyone fly one of those monsters without proving they could study and learn everything about them by heart. No excuses about brain freeze is going to fly (pun intended).

One day, he was flying along in his F-86 over the Arizona desert when the engine conked out. He radioed the situation to the tower, who advised him to bail out. But he knew how to figure out hour far he could fly given his speed, altitude, weight of the fuel, wind speed, etc. and calculated that he could make the strip. And he did, with a few feet to spare.

There's no way I would even dare fly one without mastering all that stuff, either.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#212

Post by high_priest »

In Poland, no company hires through the employment office. Why?

Because when hiring through employment office, you actually have to commit to the process and hire someone and do it with respectable sallary.

With thousands of candidates for one position, it is much easier to skip the governmental supervision and have the opportunity to manipulate the candidates.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#213

Post by rlpb »

MichaelRo wrote: post #201
neonrider wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with the process of passing a law. Is it one of those situations where the ask is open to negotiation? Like, if I want to be given a finger I first need to ask for the whole arm kinda deal? If it's the case, then as you said, perhaps the real ask is what's in the summary.

The devil is in the details. There is one interview process that is bulletproof but it's NEVER going to be adopted in mass by private companies: university / police academy admission exams. Basically you have a set number of places, say 50 jobs and accept candidacies up to a certain date, when ALL candidates (say 1000 candidates) take the SAME exam, under the SAME conditions. They all get marked from 0 to 100% and to…

This process only works when you're hiring for an entry-level role and also don't care about differentiating for anything that isn't on your exam.

I don't think it's possible to create such an exam for senior or leadership roles, where a candidate's (professional) background is the key differentiator. Say you have two candidates for a C-suite role. One was formerly with company X and demonstrates A, B and C attributes. The other was formerly with company Y and demonstrates D, E and F attributes. How would you have created an exam that differentiated between the two, without the benefit of hindsight?

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#214

Post by philipallstar »

TrousersHoisted wrote: post #147
philipallstar wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reducing regulations around H1B requirements (and fixing that by just reducing H1Bs) and internal hiring would be the way to solve it.

H1Bs aren't the only problem, though.

They're enough, and they cause many other problems. If we limit ghost jobs to salary benchmarking then that's a massive reduction.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#215

Post by wqaatwt »

WalterBright wrote: post #187
sokoloff wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tax things we want people to do all the time . We want people to buy things, yet we have sales taxes. We want people to work productive jobs and earn money, yet we have income taxes.

> We tax things we want people to do all the time. True. But why not think about ditching those taxes, and replace them with taxing things we don't want people to do? There's a double benefit - tax revenue is raised, and people do less of those things undesirable to society. For example, "sin" taxes. For other examples, taxing pollution. Taxing the conversion of forest land to a parking lot. And so on.

> replace them with taxing things we don't want people to do

Because your tax revenue will collapse if people actually stop doing those things?

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#216

Post by hyperpape »

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.

In this case, the relevant comparison is 85,000 net new H1B visas to the total of job postings, since the parent post seemed to be saying 80% of job postings are ghost postings from companies seeking H1B visas.

Needless to say, that doesn't make any sense.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#217

Post by WalterBright »

wqaatwt wrote: post #215
WalterBright wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We tax things we want people to do all the time. True. But why not think about ditching those taxes, and replace them with taxing things we don't want people to do? There's a double benefit - tax revenue is raised, and people do less of those things undesirable to society. For example, "sin" taxes. For other examples, taxing pollution. Taxing the conversion of forest land to a parking lot. And so on.

> replace them with taxing things we don't want people to do Because your tax revenue will collapse if people actually stop doing those things?

It's not possible for people to not pollute, for example.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#218

Post by em-bee »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #202
em-bee wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as a freelance software developer working from home my expenses are practically zero.

Then you're not doing your tax returns properly. You can claim depreciation on all your hardware (including your desk and chair). You should be claiming some of your rent/mortgage as office expenses. And, obviously, your broadband cost, your electricity bill, your heating bill (if different), etc. You can claim all the coffees you buy potential clients. Having zero expenses is absolutely not what you want to efficien…

depends on the country. the value of doing all that work is simply not worth the money i would get back. so why bother?

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#219

Post by farceSpherule »

farceSpherule wrote: post #68

Good luck getting anywhere with this... Companies will lobby hard to squash it. Ghost jobs help companies do one important thing: hire the person they already selected and want in the position but have to go through the "interview" process to make things look "transparent." They post the job, "interview" some folks, included their preferred candidate, then miraculously "select" their preferred candidate over everyone…

Downvoted for being honest? Interesting. I have been a hiring manager at companies who engage in this behavior.

Re: Proposal to Ban Ghost Jobs

#220

Post by MichaelRo »

rlpb wrote: post #213
MichaelRo wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The devil is in the details. There is one interview process that is bulletproof but it's NEVER going to be adopted in mass by private companies: university / police academy admission exams. Basically you have a set number of places, say 50 jobs and accept candidacies up to a certain date, when ALL candidates (say 1000 candidates) take the SAME exam, under the SAME conditions. They all get marked from 0 to 100% and to…

This process only works when you're hiring for an entry-level role and also don't care about differentiating for anything that isn't on your exam. I don't think it's possible to create such an exam for senior or leadership roles, where a candidate's (professional) background is the key differentiator. Say you have two candidates for a C-suite role. One was formerly with company X and demonstrates A, B and C attribute…

I would say, when you have 2, 3, 10 candidates, you don't need an exam. Problem is when you need to be machine gunning waves of assault soldiers. An exam seems better than the usual and increasingly sick alternatives: have people waste their time talking to AI, when it's obvious all that time goes down the drain.
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