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How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

charity.wtf

61–70 of 167 posts

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#61

If you get any sniff of non-meritocracy - run!

Meritocracy is a lie, a device to help rationalize the advancement of in-groups over other less privileged groups. An analogy: as a parent you should probably not reward purely on naked results; you should stimulate and reward effort instead. The first option just reinforces existing traits; the second empowers actual self-improvement. Not saying this is always easy or clear-cut. I understand the wish for getting rew…

Yep - luck matters way more than effort. Effort is the catalyst, luck gets you there.

Which gets to an interesting point: If an organization values the effort you put into failure, it's a company you very much want to work for!

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decent and self-aware work team is one who treats each other as equals and respect and keeps their political beliefs outside the work environment. An iterviewee who brings race into the discussion clearly doesn't understand work/personal boundries and is going to be a liability.

That makes sense to me. Discussing non work related politics with coworkers seems like a bad idea. No idea why that was downvoted. I had a weird interview last year. After about 30 minutes talk, the guy started shifting to politics and expressing his ideas about Europe, the UK, refugees, etc. I didn't want the job anyway so I told him that I don't agree with his (barely contained) right wing opinions. He immediately…

Diversity in the workplace is a work issue.

If that’s political, well, work _is_ political too (and even work organization becomes quickly political).

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#63
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decent and self-aware work team is one who treats each other as equals and respect and keeps their political beliefs outside the work environment. An iterviewee who brings race into the discussion clearly doesn't understand work/personal boundries and is going to be a liability.

Sorry, the work environment is inherently political these days. I'll "keep my political beliefs outside the work environment" when it's no longer political to say that - Women, queer people, and minorities should be hired, treated, and paid the same as straight cis white men - Abusive and exploitative treatment of workers is unacceptable - Every human being deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, regardless…

> - Women, queer people, and minorities should be hired, treated, and paid the same as straight cis white men

No they should not. They should be paid similar to someone with similar work experience, skills, potential and likability. It has nothing to do with someone's skin color or sexual orientation.

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#64
post #3

> This is a GREAT one: “As a white man, I’d ask what they’ve done to find qualified women and minorities for the role I’m interviewing for.” I can't help but feel that asking questions during an interview that encourage the interviewer to hire someone who is not you, is a bad strategy for actually getting the job.

[deleted]

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#65
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another way to tell that someone is rotten on the inside is the use of the 'goatfucker' slur to refer to zoo-sexual people.

How does a a zoo-sexual find a hum-sexual goat? Is this a concern of a zoo-sexual? I hope your comment was a joke.

I wouldn't know, but I can speculate that it surely should be a concern -- goats are strong, one wouldn't want to get kicked, rammed or bitten by a goat, especially with one's pants down.

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#66
post #63
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, the work environment is inherently political these days. I'll "keep my political beliefs outside the work environment" when it's no longer political to say that - Women, queer people, and minorities should be hired, treated, and paid the same as straight cis white men - Abusive and exploitative treatment of workers is unacceptable - Every human being deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, regardless…

> - Women, queer people, and minorities should be hired, treated, and paid the same as straight cis white men No they should not. They should be paid similar to someone with similar work experience, skills, potential and likability. It has nothing to do with someone's skin color or sexual orientation.

Your statement does not contradict parent.

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#67
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decent and self-aware work team is one who treats each other as equals and respect and keeps their political beliefs outside the work environment. An iterviewee who brings race into the discussion clearly doesn't understand work/personal boundries and is going to be a liability.

Sorry, the work environment is inherently political these days. I'll "keep my political beliefs outside the work environment" when it's no longer political to say that - Women, queer people, and minorities should be hired, treated, and paid the same as straight cis white men - Abusive and exploitative treatment of workers is unacceptable - Every human being deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, regardless…

[deleted]

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#68
post #58
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meritocracy is an ideal that is almost by definition unachievable. Like freedom, equality, etc. It’s a very worthy ideal.

Meritocracy means those who have lucky breaks early in life (schooling, opportunities, etc) earn compound interest on those choices. If you could give everyone a "merit metric", and you had two options, one scoring 45 and one scoring 50, you'd chose the one scoring 50, without realising the the adversity the one scoring 45 has endured to get that far means they'll be operating at 55 or 60 in a year with the right env…

Sounds almost like you’re saying that it’s more meritocratic to hire for potential rather than actual/current skill.

As I said, meritocracy is an ideal to strive towards.

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#69
post #25

"You want to work at a company on a strong growth trajectory for lots of reasons, but a big one is your own growth potential. You will learn the most the fastest at places that are growing fast, and have way more openings for promotions and leadership roles than a slower-growing company." While I think this is a reasonable opinion, it's been my experience that companies who tout 'strong growth' are a cluster fuck. Co…

I've had the exact same experience. These sorts of environments seem to unintentionally reward assholes and bullies because they're the ones with the immediate means to get what they need in order to move their agenda forward. Chaotic environments are a breeding ground for strongmen.

Re: How can you tell if the company youre interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is the classic thinking about these things. But working in a company where they keep bringing in new employees that are rude (the "strong woman" template), it has given me something to think about. It's just not a given that reducing out-groups makes a company culture better. It can make it worse to include those groups sometimes. It's just hard to know before. But it's morally right to not exclude people…

> keep bringing in new employees that are rude (the "strong woman" template), I've been working professionally for decades and I don't think I've seen this 'template' at all. And to be honest I'm wondering if this is a case of the 'same behavior is perceived as ruder in women than in men' effect.

I had the misfortune of interacting with what OP is calling "strong woman template" and they were as pleasant as any men with "tough guy" attitude. Rude, obnoxious, entitled, unkind, and always on edge. At least these are the common attributes I found common in people I thought of when seeing "strong woman template"
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