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

#381

Post by ethbr0 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 11:29 PM UTC

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…

> They might already have a full-time job or other remote jobs

Bingo. That was my first thought in this. Especially given how quickly they gave the job up.

They paid someone to interview for them, collected wages for the period they were employed, and then went on to the next opportunity.

Sadly, there is nothing in the story to discourage the person from doing it again. And at most companies, there would be enough egg on HR's face for letting this happen that I'd imagine everyone would quietly sweep it under the rug.

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

#382

Post by db65edfc7996 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 11:32 PM UTC

bityard wrote: post #315

cercatrova wrote: post #141

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...

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…

>I wonder how people get around that?

Gotta take the kid/spouse/mom to school/work/doctor? Schedule these essential appointments to best overlap with the other company's favorite meeting slot.

Additionally, I attend a number of meetings where I do not need to give any input. For many of those, who would know if I was simultaneously attending a similar meeting on a different laptop? You could even get fancy and have a pre-recorded version of yourself to play if you knew that you had to engage with company A but merely attend company B's meeting.

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

#383

Post by alvah » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 11:34 PM UTC

bityard wrote: post #326

kelnos wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that the conflicting meetings bit could be tricky, but I don't think he has a moral obligation to inform either company of what's going on, assuming one company's work doesn't interfere with the assigned work from the other. Also I would hope that the two companies he ends up working at aren't even remotely in competition with each other, because that would be unethical. If both companies are happy with the g…

> but I don't think he has a moral obligation to inform either company of what's going on, assuming one company's work doesn't interfere with the assigned work from the other. I strongly disagree. When you are hired as a full-time employee, the expectation is that you are giving your full 8 hours work day (or whatever) to the company in exchange for a paycheck. Otherwise, you are extracting full value from the compan…

When an HR manager boasts to you about how they used a downturn to screw your colleagues' hourly rate down by 10% without reducing their charge-out rate, your ethical stance re: dealing with your employer may change...

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

#384

Post by db65edfc7996 » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 11:35 PM UTC

spaetzleesser wrote: post #122

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…

“Always makes me wonder how many dysfunctional companies are out there letting deadbeat remote employees collect paychecks and do as little work as possible because nobody cares enough to press the issue.” It’s not only remote people. I have seen multiple people at my company who are basically incompetent or lazy and produce nothing of value or even negative output. Some of them get let go after years and some of the…

My coworkers and I have a term for those that are providing no value, but seemingly impossible to remove. The "barnacles" are ever present and likely making more money than you. Such is life.

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

#385

Post by maccard » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 11:36 PM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #183

linsomniac wrote: post #46

I once hired a guy who had no experience, but seemed like a good culture fit for our company and seemed very interested in learning. We interviewed him and made e-mail communication a large part of the interview, because it is a critical part of our business. And his communication was great! After hiring, a recurring problem we had was his e-mail to us and to customers were terrible. Bad grammar, bad spelling, uncorr…

If it's an important email, my wife will review and fix it before I send it. If you need good writing skill, you should definitively hire my wife!

If it's external & important, I get a proof reader.

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

#386

Post by brimble » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 11:36 PM UTC

linsomniac wrote: post #46

I once hired a guy who had no experience, but seemed like a good culture fit for our company and seemed very interested in learning. We interviewed him and made e-mail communication a large part of the interview, because it is a critical part of our business. And his communication was great! After hiring, a recurring problem we had was his e-mail to us and to customers were terrible. Bad grammar, bad spelling, uncorr…

I guess this is like when companies try to use correctness and formatting of a resume for proof of attention to detail or communication skills or something like that—but people just pay for professional proofreading and formatting instead.

(it's proof for a certain kind of social and professional awareness, rather, I'd say, which is true for quite a few hiring norms, really, but doesn't mean you can expect a new hire to compose really good documents on the job...)

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

#387

Post by aasasd » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 11:38 PM UTC

What I'm seeing in the article: the legal dept forbid HR from saying “you aren't the guy that we interviewed”, but meanwhile permitted the security dept to put a ‘trace’—presumably spyware—on the guy's machine.

HUH?

Apparently this is the state of corporate attitude toward employees now.

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

#388

Post by PragmaticPulp » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 11:41 PM UTC

bityard wrote: post #315

cercatrova wrote: post #141

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...

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…

The only way I've seen this done in the real world requires the person to pick one primary job that always takes priority. The other job (or jobs) are targeted at companies that go out of their way to be super "nice" such that they won't question someone being constantly unavailable.

Without giving too many specifics away, the one case I discovered was with a person who claimed to be dealing with some personal/health related issues that required us to be flexible with their schedule. If I'm being honest, it worked on us for a while because we're sympathetic, but eventually the underperformance crosses the line into something that requires medical leave / short-term disability, at which point they gave up.

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

#389

Post by linsomniac » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 11:41 PM UTC

ibi5 wrote: post #365

gus_massa wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's an important email, my wife will review and fix it before I send it. If you need good writing skill, you should definitively hire my wife!

I do the same for my husband for tricky communications/yearly reviews/etc. He's perfectly capable of communicating acceptably, but it takes him half an hour to draft something that takes me under 5 minutes and he dreads it so much he'll procrastinate until it HAS to be done. I'm in the process of studying to transition from engineering into infosec because I have had so much insight into the job by way of helping my…

Sounds like the real value play for your employers is to keep you in the communications side and add a zero to your paycheck.

(Someone who has jumped on airplanes to both keep and lose clients)

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

#390

Post by asdff » Mon, Jan 31, 2022, 11:41 PM UTC

I can't imagine this isn't common in all facets of life. I always thought this would have been so easy for college exams to hire a ringer to take it for you, or submit assignments. Usually for the big lecture hall classes everyone would sit down, then just pass their student IDs to the end of the row, then a TA would walk up and down the aisles and collect them and take them back to sign in. It would have been so easy to just have someone else pass up your ID. Plus these would be critical classes, like your big core classes sophomore year where you want to have good grades for summer internships or maybe med school. When I took my GRE they also asked for ID at the testing center but just looked at it, they didn't scan it and verify it was legit. I could have just as easily been a ringer handing them a fakeid, something very easy to get at a college campus. I wonder how many people have done stuff like this and have gone on to reap the benefits.