Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

arxiv.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

481–490 of 598 posts

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#481

Post by newaccount74 »

gruez wrote: post #421
newaccount74 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a myth. How is it hard to fire someone? I live in Austria and you can fire people for pretty much any reason. You have to give them 6 weeks notice, and there are some extra protections for people who are old or who have disabilities and who have been working for your company for a long time, but even then you can fire them. You can even fire people for getting sick a lot. And that's assuming you directly hire…

>That's a myth. How is it hard to fire someone? Maybe the statement isn't true for EU as a whole, but some member countries have far higher bar than what you describe. For instance in Spain the company must provide justification to the government before firing someone. https://www.rippling.com/blog/termination-in-spain

I don't know about the situation in Spain, but what a lot of people in Austria mix up is that there are different types of terminating contracts.

In Austria, the employer can terminate a contract immediately if the employee behaves in a manner that would harm the employer.

If the employee does nothing wrong, the contract can still be terminated, but you have to give notice 6 weeks ahead (or longer if the employee has worked at your company for a long time).

People get these things confused and think employees generally can't be fired without a reason, but that's not true. They just can't be fired on the spot without a reason.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#482

Post by hn_version_0023 »

esafak wrote: post #466
hn_version_0023 wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowing someone inside an organization is corruption ? I don’t buy it; please explain how having human connections is corrupt.

Because he did not get the job for what he knows, but who. Another candidate of equal knowledge, without the privilege of his connections, would not have succeeded.

I’m sorry I do not buy this as a form of “corruption”. Employers aren’t obligated to create perfectly leveled fields for candidates to apply on, especially when candidates are using AI to gin up fake resumes. Perhaps in some fields this is a legal obligation, but I don’t think that is what we’re discussing.

If the world were both good and just then perhaps I could hop on board. But it most certainly isn’t. Frankly, saying so sounds like sour grapes.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#483

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

smnrchrds wrote: post #360
Seattle3503 wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a globally remote company. Most of the European devs worked for a one man consulting company, that my employer then "contracted" out to. I'm not sure if that nullifies all the protections, but I'm sure it did a lot.

Wealthier European countries seem to be moving towards clamping down on this kind of consulting. See IR35 in the UK as an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IR35 This is still possible in many European countries, especially less wealthy ones.

I mean, IR35 happened because you could avoid a lot of tax as a contractor. In Ireland however, being a contractor is fine, but you end up basically paying the same tax as an employed person, so the tax authorities don't mind.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#484

Post by theideaofcoffee »

dentemple wrote: post #283
diego_moita wrote: post #232

This is the reason I no longer bother with HN's "Who's Hiring" posts. They're all Ghost Jobs and we can't even complain there about it.

I'd be curious to see if _anyone_ has actually been hired through HN Who's Hiring over the past two years here. I can only offer anecdotal experience, but... Despite 1) being a US-based dev, 2) Applying only to US-based jobs, 3) With 10+ years work experience, and 4) Having skills in commonly asked for technologies such as JS, React, and Python... I've only gotten to the interview stage with an HN Who's Hiring listin…

I am also US based applying to exclusively US-based jobs. I've had the most success with Who's Hiring over all of the other ways (cold applications, network referrals, headhunters and whatnot), success rate being way higher than the others: for just a handful of positions I've been interested in I've had three offers, two for FTEs and another for a contract. My skills and background have been pretty well-matched to postings, almost exactly what they were looking for, but extremely deep in specific (increasingly hard to hire-for) areas.

I'll admit I've been super lucky here. It's almost like a cheat code because you're almost always connected with the person(s) actually doing the hiring and with the power to make the decision so things move fast.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#485

Post by ghaff »

consteval wrote: post #476
freeone3000 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I value a good manager, a fun team, an actual PTO policy I can use, and cool projects to work with at about $40,000 a year. Salary is valuable but it is not the only valuable thing.

Salary is the most valuable thing, however. Because I would happily take a salary of 1 billion dollars with an awful manager and a no-fun team. And, conversely, I would never take a job with the best people on planet earth for a salary of one dollar.

Well, of course, you can make up hypotheticals. I used to say that you couldn't pay me enough to work in NYC. But of course I didn't literally mean that I wouldn't take FU money for a couple years to work there (not doing anything criminal etc.). But that wasn't going to realistically happen.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#486

Post by kappi »

bluGill wrote: post #169
ndiddy wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad our government has introduced the H1B program to help out employers like you who are dealing with a shortage of tech workers (who will work for 2/3 market and will do anything you say because if they get fired they'll be deported).

H1b should be a bid salery to play not first to apply. That is we will allow x of them, when you sponser someone you commit to paying them some salary for the full term - no layoffs (you get fire for cause but that is a legal thing they can take you to court for , and the courts can force you to give back pay if it wasn't a good cause) , you should know your budget can afford them. , someone who really is the best ,…

one possible option to prevent ghost job posting for visa is to force employers to share the hiring month, salary, qualification and annonymized resume of the H1B/GC employer with all those they interviewed or applied. This will give closure to those applicants that didn't get the job.

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#487

Post by jfengel »

consteval wrote: post #476
freeone3000 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I value a good manager, a fun team, an actual PTO policy I can use, and cool projects to work with at about $40,000 a year. Salary is valuable but it is not the only valuable thing.

Salary is the most valuable thing, however. Because I would happily take a salary of 1 billion dollars with an awful manager and a no-fun team. And, conversely, I would never take a job with the best people on planet earth for a salary of one dollar.

If you were offered a job with an awful manager and a no-fun team for $250,000, and a job with the best people on the planet for $249,999, which one would you choose?

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#488

Post by robocat »

htrp wrote: post #206
bradley13 wrote: post #59

I once applied for a job that precisely matched my qualifications. It was crazy - the job description could have been written by someone looking at my CV. I didn't even get an interview. Likely no one did. It wasn't a ghost job, though. It was a position created for a someone they wanted to hire. Being a public institution, they were required to advertise positions. That didn't mean that they actually wanted any of t…

I once applied for my own job req (a JD I wrote for a role on my own team), and the HR system automatically kicked my resume out for being unqualified.

Were you actually under-qualified? The stereotype is that many people are not qualified for the jobs they are doing... ;-P

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#489

Post by happiness_idx »

ndiddy wrote: post #36
shmatt wrote: post #14

I have to put out a ghost job req and interview every person applying within reason for every green card a direct report is applying for. I have to show there are or aren’t any residents or citizens that can fill the job The main problem is: even if the interviewee knocks it out of the park, is an amazing engineer, I still am not interested in firing my OPT/h1b team member who can still legally work for 2-3 years. So…

I'm glad our government has introduced the H1B program to help out employers like you who are dealing with a shortage of tech workers (who will work for 2/3 market and will do anything you say because if they get fired they'll be deported).

How do we have ghost jobs and simultanously not have enough tech workers that we need to import them?

I am seeing lots of qualified commentors (according to them) say they won't even get a call back...

Re: Why is it so hard to find a job now? Enter Ghost Jobs

#490

Post by ryandrake »

nerdponx wrote: post #371
lumost wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really isn't a "good" recruiter from a candidate perspective. Their incentives are to support the firms they recruit for, and screen candidates. They do not work for your benefit. My experience early in my career was that I needed to work with many of these recruiters until I found a gig. My experience at the time was weak, and my resume reflected that. I had to take the gigs which had lower competition e.g. sy…

Sort of. 3rd-party recruiters get paid on commission: they make money when their candidate gets hired in favor of the other recruiters' candidates. In that sense, the incentives are actually aligned in your favor when you're applying for a job that you really want: the recruiter is motivated to work to get you hired, and is only constrained by the need to not annoy the hiring manager. The incentives turn against you…

The recruiter is still not really working for you, and the incentives are not aligned enough in your favor.

What we need is more of an "agent" like actors have: Maybe I don't have a full picture of what a Hollywood agent does, but I imagine they're constantly working in the background, looking for gigs for their busy actor, doing all the toil and paperwork and research on their behalf. Their end product is: "Studio X wants you to work on film A this year, and then Studio Y wants you to work on film B next year."

I could see a software engineer agent who gets paid by the engineer to do all of the application-filling-out, all the LinkedIn clicking, all of the company research, all of the pavement-pounding networking and paperwork toil, and all the interviewing, and then out comes: "Companies X, Y, and Z have these offers for you, which one do you want?" I'd probably pay a fortune, or maybe even a percentage of my comp, for a service like that.

Post reply on HN