The new hire who showed up is not the same person we interviewed • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by chasd00 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:03 PM UTC

clueless123 wrote: post #33

In my experience, At large companies that hire a lot of contractors, it is not that hard to pull this off. I've seen where the contractors A team do all the interviewing, then you get a C or C- team assigned to work in your project. By the time you "give them a chance", complain up the management chain, go sideways to HR and actually change the team, the contracting firm already got 6 months worth of salary from the…

i've seen this first hand dealign with a team from Mexico. By the time we fired them it had been 6 months of paid invoices.

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

#312

Post by DoreenMichele » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:04 PM UTC

djhn wrote: post #308

DoreenMichele wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the other example that came to mind is a criminal one so I opted to skip it. One of the most successful criminal organizations was willing to work with everyone instead of sticking to the historical "The Irish criminals stick together and don't work with anyone else, the Jewish criminals stick together and don't work with anyone else, the Italian criminals stick together...etc" If you optimize for hiring the bes…

Which one was that?

IIRC: Al Capone.

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

#313

Post by jll29 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:05 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #124

wildzzz wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>You want to pay all of this money to train me right out of school? Almost certainly less common today. But extended training for new hires did (and I assume in some places) does happen. I think IBM used to do it for sales and once upon a time I interviewed with an oilfield services firm that started out with some fairly lengthy training on their specialized equipment.

SAP has (or at least had, back in '98) a policy where the first 3 months after being hired, you'd be entering a full-time training program: during this time, you would get your full salary paid and receive a free set of training courses 9-5; people usually just checked emails before and after, so this wasn't really on top of another job. The process got you certified in SAP basis, ABAP, effective teamwork and other modules.

After that training, we would maintain monthly lunches with our training group and exchange anecdotes about our respective departments. The company benefitted enormously in the sense that employees that started at the same time, but would work for different departments, already got a wide network across different functions and departments from the beginning, something that normally takes decades to build, and employees already had valuable contacts and information that they could task about with their co-workers in their own departments.

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

#314

Post by gzer0 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #194

intpx wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently went through a round of interviews for a job where strong communication skills are vital. One interview was just me responding to simulated emails in a shared google doc so the interviewer could see me work through the responses. In addition to witnessing my real time edits, I guess they also had the benefit of a higher level of confidence that the product was my actual work effort.

Dear lord, that sounds horrible. I understand the reasoning, but corresponding with people — especially in formal settings — makes me anxious, and I end up composing and re-composing (and sometimes re-re-composing) a lot of my messages. The end result isn't bad, but if I were being watched and graded in real time I'm pretty sure I'd fail.

This is commonly referred to as Yerkes-Dodson Law [1]. This is typically where one's performance, whilst performing a task and being watched while doing said task, will result in decreased output compared to if the individual was not being watched at all.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yerkes%E2%80%93Dodson_law

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

#315

Post by bityard » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:07 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #141

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #40

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 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...

Man, I am kinda shocked not so much that this is a thing but seems to be a bona fide _movement_.

It's highly interesting but my one job keeps me more than busy enough, thankyouverymuch.

Edit: A few other thoughts I had since hitting submit:

1. It feels to me like the most challenging part of living a double working life is making sure your mandatory meetings at each job don't conflict. I wonder how people get around that?

2. Many (most?) employers already have a "no moonlighting" clause, I wonder how long before there will there be explicit legal language stating you cannot have this full time job plus another full time job?

3. I believe there are a few places in the tax code where there is a difference between having a full-time job and a part-time job, are there any areas where you would have to lie to the govt when you have multiple full-time jobs?

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

#316

Post by chasd00 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:08 PM UTC

pojzon wrote: post #279

not1ofU wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is GOLD!! Edit: I am laughing my balls off at this "I offered him a gummy bear. He politely declined."

Its funny because thats how many devs here get promotion :^] Quit -> apply to the same company for higher grade job and often way better pay. Why companies dont value their current employees is beyond me.

this is a known short cut in consulting. Quit at your current firm, goto a competitor then come back 2 years later at a level up. Had you stayed at your current firm it may be 3-5 years to level up.

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

#317

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

kingcharles wrote: post #174

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 c…

This was the UK. No background checks, though it wouldn't have turned up anything. There was no NDA that I remember, and honestly, I don't think the execs would have given a fuck even if they had known, as long as the work got done. I never ratted him out as our manager was fine with his work, and we didn't have a huge overlap of code that we were working on.

Wow, can anyone just do what they want in the UK finance/sw scene? This wouldn't have flied in Germany/Austria. You have to sign extensive NDA's before they let you anywhere near their code/IP.

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

#318

Post by BeFlatXIII » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:10 PM UTC

smadge wrote: post #85

throwawayboise wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they terminate for fraud, they might be asked to prove it in some kind of wrongful termination claim, or risk being charged with libel or slander. Though the possibility might be remote, and the employer likely would prevail, the legal team and HR will not want to take any chance of having to spend time on that. They will want to take the lowest risk approach.

It’s true, but if the incentive for the employer is just to terminate, and there is no other consequence, then there is no dis-incentive for the fraudulent employee to keep trying until they find someplace their deception is unnoticed.

If you give your incompetent and fraudulent former employees soft landings, it means that your company can saddle its competitors with deadweight.

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

#319

Post by imoverclocked » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

This article (and all of the anecdotes surrounding it) has opened my eyes quite a bit. However, it actually reads to me more like a “How to get better at this kind of thing” than a cautionary tale. There are even comments acting as such here.

Fraud hurts us all. Even (especially?) the people who think they are benefitting from it.

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

#320

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 10:13 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #310

knodi123 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mindy Kaling (Kelly Kapoor from The Office) is a famous diversity hire. It's not a theory; their show used a diversity hiring program through NBC, where if you hire a white person, it comes out of your show's budget; but if you hire a minority member, then NBC pays for their salary. So The Office had her on the writing staff basically for free. The catch was the program only paid for one year, so she knew from the fi…

It's interesting because she's asian and yet was was considered "diverse". There has been this trend of diversity reporting to list Whites and Asians together in stats. Google has been notorious for this [0] and others are following the trend when it seems convenient [1]. [0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/ex-recruiter-accu... [1] https://nextshark.com/students-of-color-washington-asians-wi...

> It's interesting because she's asian and yet was was considered "diverse".

Asians are current and historic targets of discrimination. This sometimes gets masked in outcome stats because lots of Asians in the US are themselves or first generation descendants of immigrants through programs which filter for the top end of the socioeconomic, and more particularly recently technical skills, spectrum.