Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers • Hacker News Board

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#151

Post by neonrider » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 9:31 PM UTC

thegrim33 wrote: post #82

Well I opened the article, near the beginning I saw the text: "81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that were fake or already filled." Instantly that felt completely insane to me, my bullshit detector went off the chart, so since they provided a source, I followed up on the source to see the evidence for myself. What do you know, the source is from a "my perfect resume" website that apparently cond…

Just to note. 80% of recruiters doesn't mean 80% of ads. A recruiter that has posted thousands of legitimate ads in their career, technically only needs to have posted 1 fake one to be eligible for inclusion in the 80%.

Although I understand, and to some extent share, your skepticism regarding the "study", I have no problem conceiving that a trend might currently be setting around the practice of posting fake ads, for whatever reason. It doesn't require much. In an unregulated playing field, simple peer pressure and survival is all you need to drive everyone to shady practices.

So, the study might be moot, but the number isn't so surprising.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#152

Post by mistrial9 » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 9:31 PM UTC

zero-sharp wrote: post #142

joe_the_user wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done tech interviewing for years. Job listing that are to various degree fake are quite common. Of course, fakeness comes in many flavor, from listings posted just to "see if there's anyone out there" (I had a boss who did this regularly) to jobs a supervisor really does want to fill but which they know they won't because the bureaucracy has forced impossible requirements on them. An example: "Junior programmer,…

This is another personal anecdote, but I had an interview earlier this year for a database related role. The job ad had a huge salary range and the interview had nothing to do with the role. I wasn't asked any behavioral or technical questions. The two people on the call just wanted to get to know me. We probably spent several minutes talking about sports. A few days later I got rejected. What the hell?

the interviewers are being paid to do interviews

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#153

Post by 1659447091 » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 9:34 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #85

airstrike wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's going to be hard to enforce that, unless you go through ycombinator.com/jobs But I agree that's fair to expect from companies. Yes, they have potentially hundreds of applicants, but writing "We're sorry to inform that you have not been selected to interview" probably takes less than a minute, so spending less than an hour rejecting every applicant seems in line with the time I'd expect each candidate to…

There's little enforcement happening in those threads anyway—they're too free-form, and manual intervention is too expensive. But adding a rule should hopefully still make a difference.

Maybe add the flag|vouch to the comments for those threads? Not entirely sure how it works (or if its possible), but it seems to work pretty well. I am guessing there is a filter for bad actors, even if not, the few that would be affected would maybe end up with positive comments from long aged accounts.

Thats a lot of maybes, but my impression of the flag|vouch feature is as a first step community moderation and guessing it works well? The job thread being jobs targeting the community, I would think it would as well, or at a minimum help.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#154

Post by ghaff » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 9:36 PM UTC

VyseofArcadia wrote: post #49

SoftTalker wrote: post #26

Just my own experience but I have never gotten a job with a cold application on a job board. Always been via a recruiter or even better an inside contact.

In contrast, I have only once in my career gotten a job via an inside contact. Of the four jobs I've had since school, three of them were with a cold application. I think my secret is working in a specific niche, but I could be wrong.

Your mileage may vary of course. The jobs I’ve had since an on-campus interview in grad school were all people I had worked with in some capacity. Basically never sent a resume except pro-forma.

I became curious long after the fact if a job description for my last job that was written for me was ever posted.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#155

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 9:44 PM UTC

thegrim33 wrote: post #82

Well I opened the article, near the beginning I saw the text: "81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that were fake or already filled." Instantly that felt completely insane to me, my bullshit detector went off the chart, so since they provided a source, I followed up on the source to see the evidence for myself. What do you know, the source is from a "my perfect resume" website that apparently cond…

This isn't new. Forbes also interviewed someone who made such a study.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karadennison/2023/11/27/how-gho...

You probably need to pay to see their surveys, but even if you don't trust that: the bureau of labor has had to make huge adjustments all this year and last year. This isn't just some bad optics.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#156

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 9:47 PM UTC

drawnwren wrote: post #129

gaws wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the end of the day, Sam the VP is just going to slot his buddy into the job but now you made a whole bunch of people apply for a job that was never available to them. Nowadays, in tech, it's all about who you know rather than what you know.

This is all a function of interviews sucking right? Leet code is essentially completely independent from dev skill. Projects take too much commitment and time from the team and devs. So, what option do teams have? Just hire the people that your good devs say are good is honestly the most effective practice that I've seen.

Honestly, even referrals are sucking for me in 2023/4. Referral would almost always mean I at least talk to someone on the hiring team . Now it's been maybe a 40% chance I even get a recruiter call?

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#157

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 9:49 PM UTC

UncleOxidant wrote: post #69

KerrAvon wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H1B has evolved into a bizarre collaborative scam between the government and tech corporations; there is, in fact, a US citizen who can fill any software engineering role a US company has.

> there is, in fact, a US citizen who can fill any software engineering role a US company has. Right now I suspect you're probably right. But 2 or 3 years ago? If you're right then why would companies want to go through all of the extra paperwork and hoops to hire an H1B right now? Maybe the answer is "they can pay less"? But I'm not sure if it's actually all that much less than they could pay someone who's been look…

Control. Like always. An H1B can't just job hop to the next company without more hoops and strings attached.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#158

Post by whiplash451 » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 9:49 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #124

thegrim33 wrote: post #82

Well I opened the article, near the beginning I saw the text: "81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that were fake or already filled." Instantly that felt completely insane to me, my bullshit detector went off the chart, so since they provided a source, I followed up on the source to see the evidence for myself. What do you know, the source is from a "my perfect resume" website that apparently cond…

I've done tech interviewing for years. Job listing that are to various degree fake are quite common. Of course, fakeness comes in many flavor, from listings posted just to "see if there's anyone out there" (I had a boss who did this regularly) to jobs a supervisor really does want to fill but which they know they won't because the bureaucracy has forced impossible requirements on them. An example: "Junior programmer,…

Was your boss aware of the toll it takes to interview (well) on his own teams?

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#159

Post by johnnyanmac » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 9:51 PM UTC

astrange wrote: post #61

lurking15 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an outrage once you work at these companies and behold the sheer dysfunction and they're all getting paid wages native American citizens would take.

The model that Americans would take any job if the wages were high enough is simple but obviously false. For manual labor there's no amount of money you could pay Americans to be farmworkers. For desk jobs there's no amount that'll overcome Americans' cultural belief that you can't do math unless you were born as a special sort of person who is "good at math".

>For manual labor there's no amount of money you could pay Americans to be farmworkers.

In this market? Throw me a hoe tell me where to dig. I just need to pay rent.

Re: Ghost jobs are wreaking havoc on tech workers

#160

Post by emmanueloga_ » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 9:51 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #88

ToucanLoucan wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's against the rules to call out hiring companies in the thread, primarily because we don't want off-topic arguments All due respect: if an employer posts here offering for people to apply, that the employer in question is bad in some way, I don't see why that's considered "off topic." If a company sucks, we owe it to our fellow engineers to get the word out until they improve. A perfect example being the sorts t…

It's because of the reasons I already mentioned, which are considerable.

> we don't want off-topic arguments and because it would be too easy to exploit it for shenanigans.

Are there any other reasons you mentioned? I only found this one.

Thinking about it, people replying to the post stake their reputation too in whatever they post. If we see a throwaway or newish account causing shenanigans, people interested in the job post can form their own opinion of the nature of the comment? (isn't that what downvoting is for too?).

Since threads have this nice toggle feature you can always click [-] to ignore whatever people is saying about a job posting.