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The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

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Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#151

Here's a funny one: I worked at a financial company as a web developer. A co-developer sat at the desk opposite, with the wall behind him. He would sit there playing games on his phone all day. ALL DAY. Yet, his work got done, but it was the barest minimum and really poor code. So, one day I say "Tomas, I never see you write any code. Yet, your work is always done." "Oh!", he says with a grin, "I've outsourced my ent…

>I worked at a financial company as a web developer. [...] "Oh!", he says with a grin, "I've outsourced my entire job to my friend back in the Czech Republic.

That sounds like a huge breach of the NDA or employment contract. Pretty sure you're not allowed to expose internal company code or requirements to third party outsiders without approval in any sane company with half decent lawyers who can draft an employment contract, let alone a financial company.

Here in EU they do background checks for devs working in most financial companies.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#152
post #140

My first job out of college was at a J2ME mobile startup (circa ~2005). Startup was the baby of a rich Arab, and I was the first actual technical hire in the team (the prototype was outsourced). I hired 3 engineers within the first month. A couple weeks into the project, I realised that one of the juniors was a bozo at programming and I had made a severe hiring mistake. The guy spent time re-writing Java classes as o…

So you made a bad hire, what does this have to do with a bait and switch?

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#153
Had similar experience in 2017. We interviewed many candidates (10+) for the position, narrowed down to about 5 in the second round and decided to hire one. All over the phone. Took maybe 2 months. So when the guy shows up in the office my manager was like "Who are you? I never spoke with you.". We made some noise with HR and later Legal and he left right away, and the consulting company we went through had some conversations with the executives. From that point on we set some rules: require candidates to provide video feed, take screenshots, ideally record at least part of the interview, document every single question. Funny thing, had a very promising candidate for another position short time later but she kept refusing to turn on the camera, it was either broken, or connection was slow, or something else... So we rejected her because of that.

I believe there are some unofficial services that provide well spoken/knowledgeable professionals that will help you get hired, it's either directly through headhunting company or they might suggest (wink-wink) one for you.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#154

I’ve always wondered how companies that do mass interviewing like Google and Facebook determine if the person who interviews is the same person who shows up to work? I imagine especially with completely remote work, if you delay joining by a few months, who is going to remember what you look like? I’m sure this happens and I’ve seen people trying to hilariously cheat on virtual interviews but the fact that people are…

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Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#156
I worked at the company where as a first filter we had a remote coding task (roughly 2- hours of implementing some simple data structure plus unit tests). A candidate sent us a prefect solution indicating very good knowledge of Java, testing framework, clear thinking, good problem solving etc. When the candidate came for the live interview she was absolutely shocked that we asked her coding questions again. "But I have already did the coding task!". It was very clear that she didn't know how to write a line of code if her life depended on it. I wonder what was her plan if she got hired by mistake.

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#157

Practices like this are hilariously common in the industry. Right out of college I accepted a job offer at a small consulting company on the east coast. They promised they would give me free housing at their luxury apartment for the first few months and give me all the training I need to excel in areas of my interest. I flew across the country and found out the whole thing is not as advertised. Their luxury apartment…

An offer like that would seem incredibly suspicious to me. You want to pay all of this money to train me right out of school? Why not just hire someone with the right experience? Maybe it's my imposter syndrome speaking but it all feels off. I'm passively looking for new jobs but I always keep my eye out for things that sound too good to be true. If I'm not paying for training or education, then someone else is footi…

I would find it suspicious as well, but consider this: People who are great at their job are hard to find and expensive. People who will eventually be great at their job are a lot, lot cheaper, though still hard to find. If you can hire someone before they realize how good they will be, you can save a lot of money and fill a position immediately.

I haven't actually figured out how to find those people, though I have hired at least 2 of them... And hired a few others that looked like they might be, but weren't. (A third coder comes to mind that ended up not working out, but I think we made mistakes and they got in their own head. I think they would have been great otherwise, hence 'at least 2'.)

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#158
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a whole community about this called Overemployed [0]. Their reddit posts are quite entertaining, like this guy who works 5 jobs and is making 1.2 million a year [1]. [0] https://overemployed.com/ [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/overemployed/comments/s12c8l/i_star...

I'll caution people to take this (and the rest of Reddit) with a huge grain of salt. Subreddits like this one are almost always just creative writing.

> I'll caution people to take this (and the rest of Reddit) with a huge grain of salt. Subreddits like this one are almost always just creative writing.

Time to get creative with our time and careers, as long as the skill is transferable, and health is manageable. That said, 5 jobs sound too much, but who knows...

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#159

I've been a hiring manager for remote positions for a long time. If your recruiting channels are good, most of your candidates are going to be honest and good intentioned. But interview enough people, and you'll start encountering people trying to abuse remote work. They're not interested in contributing to your company. They're only interested in collecting paychecks while they do as little work as possible for as l…

There is no company out there that stays in business long paying their employees the full amount of the value they would generate if they were really working full+ time, so why should those employees do that unless they happen to enjoy it or it advances their own goals? That's just whipping yourself so massa doesn't have to

Re: The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "My wife wrote all of those." There was a place that hired a consultant for a project a friend worked on, and she was... I don't think she could write code at all. Like, had trouble manually inserting fragments into an XML file despite fragments with the same structure already being in the file. Her productivity skyrocketed at night however, and she generally had working code in the morning, which lead to rumors th…

>She wore a hijab and the company had just hired its first “diversity officer” so maybe that’s why At what point does forced diversity hiring become a perverse incentive, with regards to needing to run a company with qualified individuals regardless of affiliation? (This may be a cynical question, but I'm not trolling. I'm aware that there are tangible benefits to more diversity. What I'm wondering if there's some ca…

I don't know, but it must be horrible not knowing whether you got the job on your own merit, or if you were just hired to tick a box, if a company has some cynical hiring policy.
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