Everyone's getting ghosted, the new normal in tech recruiting

This logic doesn't really scan for me. If you care about optimizing your time enough to not respond to the deluge of unqualified candidates you receive, then you might benefit from an ATS, which will make it trivial to send a polite rejection to multiple candidates with a single click, whilst also enabling you to progress others more efficiently.

You don't have to use Lever (just noped out of using them at our company bc they don't put any pricing data on their website + refused to answer simple questions over email, insisting on a "sales call", which is an even clearer indicator of a company which doesn't value my time than one which does not reply to an application altogether) – there are plugins like Streak which can make this effortless.

If you are experiencing an influx of unqualified candidates, you might also consider making your requirements much more explicit, although you'll still get people trying their luck.

I think the last paragraph is blunted in companies where teams recruit/interview for their own team (as opposed to recruiting/interviewing for the company in general).

In the former, if I do a good job, at least I get better colleagues on my team, making my daily life better and giving my team more chance to be seen as successful.

I had my first interview for a faculty job in 2001. I sent a couple of emails to find out where they are in the hiring process. Still waiting for a response.

Both of the following can be true at the same time:

  1. I personally owe a response to anyone who reaches out to me, in a timely manner, even if that answer is no, because to intentionally ignore a request is unethical.
  2. I will strive to have built up many and different areas in my life, such that my sense of confidence is not impacted by the actions or inactions of people who are, in essence, strangers.

If you want to inure yourself to people ghosting you, spend some time in a sales gig doing cold calls. The vast majority of people will not respond to you and that is not only OK, that is a good thing. You want to be with people who give you a positive return on your energy, not people who sink your energy.

Move on.

Maybe everyone engaged in this perverse machine is to blame? I mean not the individuals. We all have to eat. But the category as a whole.

Maybe if we would just avoid this SV hellish circle and find places or modes of work that are in direct opposition to that, we can at least reclaim our sanity back.

I assume people accept these shitty conditions because this is where the money is at? So maybe we won't get rich avoiding these working environments, but live comfortable enough? We might even have enough energy and time to devote to side projects, our community and such.

Maybe the obscenely fat paycheck isn't the only way to go.