Do You Know Who That Worker You Just Hired Really Is?
February 18, 2022 8:29 PM Subscribe
It was as if a “Seinfeld” plot met John le Carré. Kristin Zawatski, 44, who works in information technology, in a department of about 70 people, was helping to conduct a virtual job interview. She said she was impressed by the candidate’s sharp understanding of the technical skills required for the position. But about 15 minutes into the conversation, one of her colleagues muted the video call. “The person answering the questions isn’t the person on camera....."
Ms. Zawatski’s colleague had recognized the voice coming from the screen and realized it was an acquaintance who was answering the technical questions while the job candidate moved his lips onscreen — something the candidate’s friend had just confessed to over text message.
Non-paywall link
Ms. Zawatski’s colleague had recognized the voice coming from the screen and realized it was an acquaintance who was answering the technical questions while the job candidate moved his lips onscreen — something the candidate’s friend had just confessed to over text message.
Non-paywall link
There was recently a Ask a Manager post where the letter writer's husband had hired someone who wasn't the person they had interviewed.
The image of the dude who peaced out when called out is pretty funny
posted by vespertinism at 8:49 PM on February 18, 2022 [19 favorites]
The image of the dude who peaced out when called out is pretty funny
posted by vespertinism at 8:49 PM on February 18, 2022 [19 favorites]
There are far too many recruiters, hiring managers and HR people in the already-broken Western capitalist system these days. Complete collapse is near.
Our world will not end in fire, flood or disease, but by Human Resources.
posted by SoberHighland at 9:07 PM on February 18, 2022 [41 favorites]
Our world will not end in fire, flood or disease, but by Human Resources.
posted by SoberHighland at 9:07 PM on February 18, 2022 [41 favorites]
I ended an interview once when I realized that while I could catch up on some skills, I definitely did not have the specific skill the interviewer wanted, and which I hadn't realized would be a huge part of the job. They were a little irritated, but hopefully realized later that I had saved us both a lot of problems. It was embarrassing but necessary.
Now when I interview people, I do let them know what things they can learn on the job and what things I need them to have down already, and then do follow-up questions on those about dealing with x or y situation.
posted by emjaybee at 9:35 PM on February 18, 2022 [29 favorites]
Now when I interview people, I do let them know what things they can learn on the job and what things I need them to have down already, and then do follow-up questions on those about dealing with x or y situation.
posted by emjaybee at 9:35 PM on February 18, 2022 [29 favorites]
Still, the subtler stresses of the interview process remain: In a corporate culture where a popular term of art is transparency, how much of your true personality can you reveal before you’re hired? Should you be yourself if yourself might not get you the job?Reminds me of church. And of theories about how church acted as a training ground for roughly-hewn agricultural labourers to join the world of business.
“It is a fine line between being unprofessional, too casual, too familiar, and being your authentic self,” said Miranda Kalinowski, Meta’s global head of recruiting.
posted by clawsoon at 9:48 PM on February 18, 2022 [20 favorites]
I've been a remote interviewer where I'm like 95% positive the person is being coached by someone else if not downright being fed the answers. I've also had interviews where the person was looking up answers during the interview which was really frustrating because I tend to have an iterview style where if the candidate seems stuck or lost I ask questions so that if they understand the larger skill set answering should get them back on the right track. Asking a question, getting a long muted pause followed by a very dry answer and the no follow through is like insulting. Do they think an interview is just a quiz show?
posted by aspo at 9:49 PM on February 18, 2022 [21 favorites]
posted by aspo at 9:49 PM on February 18, 2022 [21 favorites]
FTFA: “What did he think was going to happen when he moved across the country and realized he couldn’t do the job?” Ms. Zawatski later wondered aloud.
I have been told to "fake it until you make it" so many times by such a broad swath of so-called professionals, supervisors, higher-ups, and administrators in my shitty career of unimpeachable integrity that I am more surprised by Ms. Zawatski's puzzlement than the chicanery of the applicant/ringer team.
posted by glonous keming at 9:51 PM on February 18, 2022 [71 favorites]
I have been told to "fake it until you make it" so many times by such a broad swath of so-called professionals, supervisors, higher-ups, and administrators in my shitty career of unimpeachable integrity that I am more surprised by Ms. Zawatski's puzzlement than the chicanery of the applicant/ringer team.
posted by glonous keming at 9:51 PM on February 18, 2022 [71 favorites]
Ha! This very thing happened to a colleague of mine in India during an interview over a video meeting.
It became obvious in the course of the interview that the person on screen (who was also presumably in India) was just moving their lips while a person off-screen was providing the answers.
At first my colleague thought that the video and audio just weren't in-sync, but no.
It was incredibly gutsy, stupid and hilarious.
The candidate did not get the job.
posted by DrumsIntheDeep at 10:07 PM on February 18, 2022 [20 favorites]
It became obvious in the course of the interview that the person on screen (who was also presumably in India) was just moving their lips while a person off-screen was providing the answers.
At first my colleague thought that the video and audio just weren't in-sync, but no.
It was incredibly gutsy, stupid and hilarious.
The candidate did not get the job.
posted by DrumsIntheDeep at 10:07 PM on February 18, 2022 [20 favorites]
So the dishonesty is all on the interviewer's side, while zero attention is paid to the employers' dishonesty? No mention of the bait-and-switch salary games, the multiple (and long) interviews, the outrageous qualification demands for even entry level jobs? If this article's author wants my sympathy for employers, she's got an uphill battle.
posted by zardoz at 10:08 PM on February 18, 2022 [101 favorites]
posted by zardoz at 10:08 PM on February 18, 2022 [101 favorites]
I think that would be a different article, and possibly not found in the NYT.
posted by inexorably_forward at 10:18 PM on February 18, 2022 [41 favorites]
posted by inexorably_forward at 10:18 PM on February 18, 2022 [41 favorites]
If this article's author wants my sympathy for employers, she's got an uphill battle.
Is sympathy for this person’s prospective coworkers also too far a reach?
posted by third word on a random page at 11:07 PM on February 18, 2022 [51 favorites]
Is sympathy for this person’s prospective coworkers also too far a reach?
posted by third word on a random page at 11:07 PM on February 18, 2022 [51 favorites]
If this article's author wants my sympathy for employers, she's got an uphill battle.
Is sympathy for this person’s prospective coworkers also too far a reach?
or the recipients of incompetent or unqualified people manufacturing a product or supplying a service, that, you know, might be actually important?
posted by lalochezia at 11:11 PM on February 18, 2022 [46 favorites]
I find it odd that the article conflates "pretending to be friendly and enthusiastic" with "lying about your skill set."
Pretending to be enthusiastic is a genuinely useful skill to have in a workplace. If you can't fake enthusiasim during an interview, how are you going to fake it when the work gets rough?
(I also agree with Zardoz's point: do employers reveal every sexual harrassment lawsuit they've had during interviews? Do they tell you your new boss is a control freak who equates management with shouting at people?)
posted by davidwitteveen at 11:20 PM on February 18, 2022 [38 favorites]
Pretending to be enthusiastic is a genuinely useful skill to have in a workplace. If you can't fake enthusiasim during an interview, how are you going to fake it when the work gets rough?
(I also agree with Zardoz's point: do employers reveal every sexual harrassment lawsuit they've had during interviews? Do they tell you your new boss is a control freak who equates management with shouting at people?)
posted by davidwitteveen at 11:20 PM on February 18, 2022 [38 favorites]
But organizational psychologists observe that interviewers tend to reward honesty. They recognize when people speak genuinely to the aspects of a company that resonate with their interests, Dr. Bourdage said.
Yeah, sounds like a load of utter bullshit to me. I'm with Zardoz.
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 11:30 PM on February 18, 2022 [13 favorites]
Yeah, sounds like a load of utter bullshit to me. I'm with Zardoz.
posted by pH Indicating Socks at 11:30 PM on February 18, 2022 [13 favorites]
Given mefi's particular demographics it wouldn't take that many of us to collectively possess enough domain knowledge, market conditions, and insight into manager-brain to ace practically any entry to mid-level job interview. Deepfake technology has come far enough that, with sufficiently poor lighting and tight bandwidth limitations, we could overlay a candidate's lip movements in realtime with enough accuracy that no-one is the wiser.
We could offer this as a paid service with discounts for the overly-anxious-but-otherwise-qualified and gouging the unqualified aiming for ethically-suspect fields (want to design clusterbombs or develop on the blockchain? Pay up). Can't be any more morally dubious than writing sociology essays for the failchildren of the rich and famous.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 11:38 PM on February 18, 2022 [34 favorites]
We could offer this as a paid service with discounts for the overly-anxious-but-otherwise-qualified and gouging the unqualified aiming for ethically-suspect fields (want to design clusterbombs or develop on the blockchain? Pay up). Can't be any more morally dubious than writing sociology essays for the failchildren of the rich and famous.
posted by Freelance Demiurge at 11:38 PM on February 18, 2022 [34 favorites]
or the recipients of incompetent or unqualified people manufacturing a product or supplying a service, that, you know, might be actually important?
Thank you.
It would be nice if MF could not embrace whataboutism.
posted by 2N2222 at 12:11 AM on February 19, 2022 [29 favorites]
Thank you.
It would be nice if MF could not embrace whataboutism.
posted by 2N2222 at 12:11 AM on February 19, 2022 [29 favorites]
I personally know someone who has done this. They did not understand why I was horrified; they thought they were being clever and were actually proud of themselves for beating the system by thinking outside the box.
I've also worked alongside someone whom I strongly suspect faked their credentials. It, uh, did not end well.
posted by basalganglia at 1:11 AM on February 19, 2022 [15 favorites]
I've also worked alongside someone whom I strongly suspect faked their credentials. It, uh, did not end well.
posted by basalganglia at 1:11 AM on February 19, 2022 [15 favorites]
I mean, in response to this I keep thinking that George W Bush, Yale cheerleader and grad, ran an entire nation into the ground with a global war on terror-- all while we had needed someone to act on climate change in stead.
this article has to be focused on the wrong things and ignore a hell of a lot of context to make its points about
a mysterious collective worker angst.
posted by eustatic at 1:30 AM on February 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
this article has to be focused on the wrong things and ignore a hell of a lot of context to make its points about
a mysterious collective worker angst.
posted by eustatic at 1:30 AM on February 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
I've also worked alongside someone whom I strongly suspect faked their credentials. It, uh, did not end well.
Same. Back then I was an independent IT contractor, the other person was supplied by one of the bigger body shops, so whatever credentials they actually had weren't known to me, just that they had managed to get a job there and hired out to the company I was working at.
And, well, them using my brain to do their thinking would be OK when there's the occasional hairy problem to be solved, but not when it's about mundane IT stuff, day in day out.
posted by Stoneshop at 2:31 AM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
Same. Back then I was an independent IT contractor, the other person was supplied by one of the bigger body shops, so whatever credentials they actually had weren't known to me, just that they had managed to get a job there and hired out to the company I was working at.
And, well, them using my brain to do their thinking would be OK when there's the occasional hairy problem to be solved, but not when it's about mundane IT stuff, day in day out.
posted by Stoneshop at 2:31 AM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
Good. It’s a seller’s market and therefore it should be hard for HR departments to find “qualified” candidates for job openings. Lord knows, when the next recession hits, these same people won’t be losing any sleep about making prospective job applicants sweat like pigs and dance like monkeys to earn their precious shot at that highly coveted second interview.
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:31 AM on February 19, 2022 [31 favorites]
posted by Atom Eyes at 2:31 AM on February 19, 2022 [31 favorites]
I feel about this the way I feel about Anna Delvey (who I hadn't thought about for a while but whose netflix doc is now up) yeah it's bad to lie and scam but on the other hand I'm not going to react to someone who scammed the world's worst people with anything other than a chuckle and a wish that she got away with it.
Whatever, it's the US so firing people for non-performance is totally trivial (and even in places with strong labour laws there are often probationary periods).
posted by atrazine at 2:47 AM on February 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
Whatever, it's the US so firing people for non-performance is totally trivial (and even in places with strong labour laws there are often probationary periods).
posted by atrazine at 2:47 AM on February 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
I think there is a hard, hard adjustment happening for companies that expected too much of the job market, and have to adjust what they actually need and what they were doing just to try and thin the field a bit. My company is taking the bold step of actually training people, rather than assuming that developers are going to roll out fully formed and ready to start work in a gnarly codebase with lots of tech debt.
posted by Merus at 3:08 AM on February 19, 2022 [36 favorites]
posted by Merus at 3:08 AM on February 19, 2022 [36 favorites]
I don’t recognize the name Kristin Zawatski but the exact scenario of a candidate trying to fake their way through a video interview happened at a company I used to work for about 5 years ago, right down to one of the other people in the room recognizing the voice. I wasn’t involved in that interview but at the time we were interviewing a huge number of low quality candidates so I thought that this one deserved extra points for ingenuity.
I suggested that the practice be called Mr Ed’ing but everyone else I worked with was too young to get the joke.
posted by AndrewStephens at 4:55 AM on February 19, 2022 [39 favorites]
I suggested that the practice be called Mr Ed’ing but everyone else I worked with was too young to get the joke.
posted by AndrewStephens at 4:55 AM on February 19, 2022 [39 favorites]
(I also agree with Zardoz's point: do employers reveal every sexual harrassment lawsuit they've had during interviews? Do they tell you your new boss is a control freak who equates management with shouting at people?)
Would be nice, kind of like how landlords in some jurisdictions are required to reveal a property's history of bed bugs to prospective tenants.
posted by clawsoon at 5:03 AM on February 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
Would be nice, kind of like how landlords in some jurisdictions are required to reveal a property's history of bed bugs to prospective tenants.
posted by clawsoon at 5:03 AM on February 19, 2022 [11 favorites]
I've read a lot of potted biography copy about people who began a successful career with faking it, particularly in the entertainment industry, which is built on bullshit to begin with. One of Jim Henson's right-hand men -- I forget which, but he's still a big name -- lied about having puppet experience to start with, and apparently the keyboardist in Radiohead learned to play keyboards after they hired him. The other day, there was even a Buzzfeed article about actors who lied about their abilities to get parts, riding horses and so forth, most of which didn't make any ultimate difference besides some funny stories. Moreover, "fake it till you make it" is good advice in a psychological context, where acting as if you are confident can actually bring about confidence.
All this contributes to an old American idea, as old as Horatio Alger* if not older, that enough pluck, gumption, and shoe leather can overcome any systemic inequality. Maybe this was true once for some people, but it isn't now, and you can see the stories here of people fucking up and hitting the wall of the quantitative.
-----
* For anyone who doesn't recognize him, he was a 19th-century pastor who wrote lots of famous books about brave poor orphan boys pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. He had a particular interest in boys, which was covered up at the time when he agreed to leave a parish, but that's another story.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:54 AM on February 19, 2022 [15 favorites]
All this contributes to an old American idea, as old as Horatio Alger* if not older, that enough pluck, gumption, and shoe leather can overcome any systemic inequality. Maybe this was true once for some people, but it isn't now, and you can see the stories here of people fucking up and hitting the wall of the quantitative.
-----
* For anyone who doesn't recognize him, he was a 19th-century pastor who wrote lots of famous books about brave poor orphan boys pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. He had a particular interest in boys, which was covered up at the time when he agreed to leave a parish, but that's another story.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:54 AM on February 19, 2022 [15 favorites]
or the recipients of incompetent or unqualified people manufacturing a product or supplying a service, that, you know, might be actually important?
QA will catch that. I mean, they have a robust QA department that other departments are responsive to, right? The dipshits in charge didn't decide that QA was too expensive to bother with and just send everything out? And weren't rewarded with bonuses for that dumb decision by other management dipshits who also can't see farther than a week ahead?
Is sympathy for this person’s prospective coworkers also too far a reach?
They all told the unvarnished truth? "The person who would be your manager is terrible in the following ways but they're the CEO's nephew so we can't fire them..." I mean, I don't tell candidates "Our higher admin long ago abandoned all the core missions of the university and [president] is a fucking idiot who would push his own children through a woodchipper if he thought the AAU would reward it with a higher ranking." I just focus on how, right now, they've realized that adding more political scientists net raises money.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:00 AM on February 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
QA will catch that. I mean, they have a robust QA department that other departments are responsive to, right? The dipshits in charge didn't decide that QA was too expensive to bother with and just send everything out? And weren't rewarded with bonuses for that dumb decision by other management dipshits who also can't see farther than a week ahead?
Is sympathy for this person’s prospective coworkers also too far a reach?
They all told the unvarnished truth? "The person who would be your manager is terrible in the following ways but they're the CEO's nephew so we can't fire them..." I mean, I don't tell candidates "Our higher admin long ago abandoned all the core missions of the university and [president] is a fucking idiot who would push his own children through a woodchipper if he thought the AAU would reward it with a higher ranking." I just focus on how, right now, they've realized that adding more political scientists net raises money.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 6:00 AM on February 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
This type of thing has happened to me. (Rather than lip syncing, the tactic at the time, pre-pandemic, was shadows or otherwise bad video so you couldn't see the person clearly.)
For a time, my company had to take screenshots of people to ensure that who showed up was the person we saw on the phone. Forget faking it, you would just get one person for the interview and a different person for the job.
posted by Sand at 6:02 AM on February 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
For a time, my company had to take screenshots of people to ensure that who showed up was the person we saw on the phone. Forget faking it, you would just get one person for the interview and a different person for the job.
posted by Sand at 6:02 AM on February 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
(Incidentally, in practicing law I have come across practitioners that were so terrible that I suspected that someone else took their bar exam for them. Since at least the 2000s, there have been safeguards in place to make sure that this does not happen, because it was a problem, but the people I thought this about were from before that time.)
posted by Countess Elena at 6:06 AM on February 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by Countess Elena at 6:06 AM on February 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
the multiple (and long) interviews
Not to mention the take-home assignments that seem to have become standard in too many industries, which candidates put hours (sometimes days) of unpaid work into, and which can also easily reflect not just the candidate's skills but the skills of the candidate's friends or of the people they were able to pay to work on it.
posted by trig at 6:25 AM on February 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
Not to mention the take-home assignments that seem to have become standard in too many industries, which candidates put hours (sometimes days) of unpaid work into, and which can also easily reflect not just the candidate's skills but the skills of the candidate's friends or of the people they were able to pay to work on it.
posted by trig at 6:25 AM on February 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
To all the liars and the fakers out there hustling, i salute you. I lied like crazy to get the job that eventually got me this job. I'd never worked with the tech they used or at a similar scale but i said everything they wanted to hear and then taught myself as much as i could in the 3 weeks before my start date. 7 years later i never looked back and I'm an expert in the field with a scroll of war stories. If I'd been honest I'd be working the cashier at whole foods, the only other place that gave me an interview back then.
Anything you can do to separate a paycheck from the bosses hands is the only skill you need, and nobody should feel any shame about lying to get there, they don't hesitate to lie to you in every meeting right up until your laptop is remotely disabled and you learn about the layoffs from a prerecorded YouTube video
posted by dis_integration at 6:53 AM on February 19, 2022 [78 favorites]
Anything you can do to separate a paycheck from the bosses hands is the only skill you need, and nobody should feel any shame about lying to get there, they don't hesitate to lie to you in every meeting right up until your laptop is remotely disabled and you learn about the layoffs from a prerecorded YouTube video
posted by dis_integration at 6:53 AM on February 19, 2022 [78 favorites]
To me, the astounding thing about all this filtering of job applicants is that, as someone who hired (and fired) many employees, there seemed to be no correlation between someone's actual qualifications and their ability to do the job. It was like throwing a dice, every time.
posted by jabah at 6:55 AM on February 19, 2022 [18 favorites]
posted by jabah at 6:55 AM on February 19, 2022 [18 favorites]
I’ve seen a lot of posts lately like this on Twitter and LinkedIn and it makes it clear that Human Resources and middle management are terrified.
I get it.
You want to reclaim some control and power and show how useful you are.The sociopaths at the top don’t need you and they never did and the people at the bottom hate you because you’re boot-licking traitors. It must suck to be in the middle of an org tree during what feels like a big paradigm shift. You’re the group with the most to lose. For what it’s worth, I empathize.
posted by Vociva at 7:06 AM on February 19, 2022 [20 favorites]
I get it.
You want to reclaim some control and power and show how useful you are.The sociopaths at the top don’t need you and they never did and the people at the bottom hate you because you’re boot-licking traitors. It must suck to be in the middle of an org tree during what feels like a big paradigm shift. You’re the group with the most to lose. For what it’s worth, I empathize.
posted by Vociva at 7:06 AM on February 19, 2022 [20 favorites]
Treat your workers like you owe them nothing, not even respect or honesty, and you've just set the ground rules for acceptable professional behavior. If employers want it to stop, they've got to lead by example. Getting your rich buddies from college to write fake outrage stories in the NYT about the audacity of poor people who observe and then act exactly like rich people because they too want to be rich ain't the solution.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 7:17 AM on February 19, 2022 [57 favorites]
posted by lefty lucky cat at 7:17 AM on February 19, 2022 [57 favorites]
People are having a much more negative and stronger response to this article than I expected. I tend to be a fan of scamsters and tricksters, and found these antics very amusing and clever. But all points taken on the more negative reflections on why this even occurs.
posted by Toddles at 7:53 AM on February 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by Toddles at 7:53 AM on February 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Deepfake technology has come far enough that, with sufficiently poor lighting and tight bandwidth limitations, we could overlay a candidate's lip movements in realtime with enough accuracy that no-one is the wiser.
Actually, this is a brilliant idea, but the interviewing company should offer it. It would present every candidate as a generic figure (i.e., probably white male) but for the purpose of eliminating race and gender bias in the hiring process.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:53 AM on February 19, 2022 [27 favorites]
Actually, this is a brilliant idea, but the interviewing company should offer it. It would present every candidate as a generic figure (i.e., probably white male) but for the purpose of eliminating race and gender bias in the hiring process.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 7:53 AM on February 19, 2022 [27 favorites]
QA will catch that.And what if you're hiring for the QA department?
posted by Hatashran at 7:54 AM on February 19, 2022 [18 favorites]
Adding to the list of recent interviewers who found out the other person impersonated a someone else. In my case, this person competently answered all of the technical questions but when asked about any recent projects or not-so-easily-Googleable questions, he was stumped. After the first interview, we guessed the candidate was about forty and an a recent immigrant.
On the second interview with the video turned on, the candidate was barely twenty and obviously a native-born recent college graduate.
My coworker and I both wrote down: this is not the same person.
We've since adjusted our requirements and expectations so candidates can be open about what they don't know as long as they show some level basic knowledge.
posted by cowlick at 7:58 AM on February 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
On the second interview with the video turned on, the candidate was barely twenty and obviously a native-born recent college graduate.
My coworker and I both wrote down: this is not the same person.
We've since adjusted our requirements and expectations so candidates can be open about what they don't know as long as they show some level basic knowledge.
posted by cowlick at 7:58 AM on February 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
Just curious what industries you all are hiring for? I'm endlessly amused by this trend but I hope none of it rebounds to airline mechanics or nuclear reactor safety inspectors.
posted by Playdoughnails at 8:16 AM on February 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by Playdoughnails at 8:16 AM on February 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
Playdoughnails, I'm hiring for IT at a not-for-profit. I agree with you as I went to undergrad for engineering and one of the constant reminders from my instructors is to take everything seriously since any oversights will likely result in people getting hurt.
However at my current position? I'm not so sure.
posted by cowlick at 8:25 AM on February 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
However at my current position? I'm not so sure.
posted by cowlick at 8:25 AM on February 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
And what if you're hiring for the QA department?
"Very clever," the old woman replied, "but it's QA departments all the way down."
posted by cortex at 8:41 AM on February 19, 2022 [31 favorites]
"Very clever," the old woman replied, "but it's QA departments all the way down."
posted by cortex at 8:41 AM on February 19, 2022 [31 favorites]
Just curious what industries you all are hiring for? I'm endlessly amused by this trend but I hope none of it rebounds to airline mechanics or nuclear reactor safety inspectors.
I mean, in my case, when I said "it did not end well," that's a euphemism for "a person died."
posted by basalganglia at 8:43 AM on February 19, 2022 [41 favorites]
I mean, in my case, when I said "it did not end well," that's a euphemism for "a person died."
posted by basalganglia at 8:43 AM on February 19, 2022 [41 favorites]
How about doctors? This happened to me for a medical residency position. Luckily one of the other recruiters realized what was going on. In that case we strongly suspect that the issue was that the actual candidate did not have solid English language skills.
posted by Missense Mutation at 8:47 AM on February 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
posted by Missense Mutation at 8:47 AM on February 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
I’ve seen a lot of posts lately like this on Twitter and LinkedIn and it makes it clear that Human Resources and middle management are terrified.
I remember - not sure if I read it here, or not - someone likening the mismatch between capital and labor now as akin to deskilling, that is, what used to be a very skilled and precise occupation becomes less so over the years from automation or simplification of process, to the point that, when required to perform at the previous level of skill and precision, the worker generally cannot match it again, without effort. The implication was that, since the late-70's, Lee Iacoca-style, 'SuperReagan' turn towards capital, the middle layer of management has become completely deskilled - they don't know how to negotiate, they don't know how to value soft skills, and from the prevalence of #metoo, they don't even know how to behave in a position of authority any more. It's as if the skills of good management were replaced by one cudgel: 'Do it, or you're fired.' Now that they're the ones coming hat-in-hand, they don't understand why people just aren't happy with more money. It sounds like something I'd hear on MeFi, but for the life of me I can't find it in my favorites.
posted by eclectist at 8:56 AM on February 19, 2022 [19 favorites]
I remember - not sure if I read it here, or not - someone likening the mismatch between capital and labor now as akin to deskilling, that is, what used to be a very skilled and precise occupation becomes less so over the years from automation or simplification of process, to the point that, when required to perform at the previous level of skill and precision, the worker generally cannot match it again, without effort. The implication was that, since the late-70's, Lee Iacoca-style, 'SuperReagan' turn towards capital, the middle layer of management has become completely deskilled - they don't know how to negotiate, they don't know how to value soft skills, and from the prevalence of #metoo, they don't even know how to behave in a position of authority any more. It's as if the skills of good management were replaced by one cudgel: 'Do it, or you're fired.' Now that they're the ones coming hat-in-hand, they don't understand why people just aren't happy with more money. It sounds like something I'd hear on MeFi, but for the life of me I can't find it in my favorites.
posted by eclectist at 8:56 AM on February 19, 2022 [19 favorites]
Well the number of people here on Team Lying is certainly eye-opening.
posted by biogeo at 9:10 AM on February 19, 2022 [31 favorites]
posted by biogeo at 9:10 AM on February 19, 2022 [31 favorites]
Well the number of people here on Team Lying is certainly eye-opening.
Really? I’m surprised at the number of the people on Team Nightmare System That Makes Life Hell.
posted by Vociva at 9:14 AM on February 19, 2022 [29 favorites]
Really? I’m surprised at the number of the people on Team Nightmare System That Makes Life Hell.
posted by Vociva at 9:14 AM on February 19, 2022 [29 favorites]
and from the prevalence of #metoo, they don't even know how to behave in a position of authority any more.
I assure you, things were not better in the past.
I cannot assure you this strongly enough.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:45 AM on February 19, 2022 [21 favorites]
I assure you, things were not better in the past.
I cannot assure you this strongly enough.
posted by AlSweigart at 9:45 AM on February 19, 2022 [21 favorites]
> I ended an interview once when I realized that while I could catch up on some skills, I definitely did not have the specific skill the interviewer wanted
Good for you. Last year I was a few questions into an interview when I realized that I definitely did not have the skills the employer wanted but I kept going, answering their questions honestly. It was an extremely painful 10 minutes for all of us, I think.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:49 AM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
Good for you. Last year I was a few questions into an interview when I realized that I definitely did not have the skills the employer wanted but I kept going, answering their questions honestly. It was an extremely painful 10 minutes for all of us, I think.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:49 AM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
Really not shooting for The Enlightened Middle Ground here but - I've sure as hell been mad about shitty company practices, sociopathic CEOs and bullshit interviews (how many smarties can fit in a mini! Literally asked!), but you bet your life I've also been fucking furious at bullshitters who've lied their way on to teams I've worked on and then had to be carried, usually while earning more than most of those carrying them. I can't bring myself to think of these people as righteous actors in a broken system, even given the system is unarguably broken.
posted by ominous_paws at 9:49 AM on February 19, 2022 [48 favorites]
posted by ominous_paws at 9:49 AM on February 19, 2022 [48 favorites]
Don't hate the player, hate the game?
posted by flamk at 9:52 AM on February 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by flamk at 9:52 AM on February 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
The positive response to the behavior in the article is boggling. Salary transparency should be the law, minimum benefits and a living wage should be the law, strict oversight to combat abuse and nepotism should be the law, but that doesn't mean it's cool to encourage people to subject coworkers and subordinates to incompetence (they are people too who are trying to get by in the system!) or, like, the patients under the liar's care, the person using the medical device the liar is machining, the city depending on the energy grid the liar is helping to maintain, the passengers in the plane the liar is running through pre-flight checks, the people who would've benefited from some scientific discovery if the person reviewing the experiment understood the output of the test they were running. "Somebody else will find the problem" seems to be the attitude here--the whole point of multiple systems of review is not to just depend on one person to be perfect and everybody else to be fuckups, it exists as an acknowledgement that no one person can be perfect all the time so you lean on each other to catch one another's mistakes. Believe it or not, not every job is marketing or sales or analyzing client data or developing software apps where "fake it til you make it" and finding answers on StackOverflow "only" hurts the people you're working with (and like I said--they are people too so it sucks to throw them under the bus).
For a site that is about worker solidarity the people commenting here are showing a marked lack of concern for other workers. I have a friend with a boss who clearly faked his technical background and you know what? Now he's a shitty boss! How is that cool for my friend? He got one over on capitalism though--that's what's important, amirite? Oh, but he's a boss, so he's different--I'm sorry, do you exist in some magical world where a someone who feels justified lying at the entry level stops as they move up because Reasons?
Just because the system is shitty it does not justify you being shitty to other people. How the fuck are you going to form a functioning union or labor movement when you encourage people to act like crabs in a bucket?
posted by Anonymous at 10:01 AM on February 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
For a site that is about worker solidarity the people commenting here are showing a marked lack of concern for other workers. I have a friend with a boss who clearly faked his technical background and you know what? Now he's a shitty boss! How is that cool for my friend? He got one over on capitalism though--that's what's important, amirite? Oh, but he's a boss, so he's different--I'm sorry, do you exist in some magical world where a someone who feels justified lying at the entry level stops as they move up because Reasons?
Just because the system is shitty it does not justify you being shitty to other people. How the fuck are you going to form a functioning union or labor movement when you encourage people to act like crabs in a bucket?
posted by Anonymous at 10:01 AM on February 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Solution: offer the job to zoom Cyrano.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:16 AM on February 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:16 AM on February 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
Zoom Cyrano already has a job: being Zoom Cyrano.
I wonder how he got started in that profession...
posted by AlSweigart at 10:28 AM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
I wonder how he got started in that profession...
posted by AlSweigart at 10:28 AM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
the outrageous qualification demands for even entry level jobs?
I just last night applied to a vacancy in my own department, one level above mine. Not my boss's job, but a same-department division head. I'd be a coworker of my boss instead of subordinate. And we do enough cross-functional stuff around here where not only COULD I do my boss's job, I HAVE, piecemeal all the individual parts and also standing in for vacations and stuff. And the same for the open position's predecessor. I got a list of the major job responsibilities FROM the predecessor and I have done every one of them. The job announcement listed a number of things the candidate needs experience in, and I can overkill every single one of those with a one-page resume. I know all the people and will ace an interview, technical, behavioral, culture, or otherwise. To top it all off, the automated application process asks like two dozen "how would you rate your own skills in..." questions taken from the position description and I was able to answer either "I do that daily" or "I'm the recognized expert everyone else comes to" in every single question. Truthfully, no deception.
Here's a thing I know, though. The hiring manager will never see my resume or ever know I applied, because HR will throw it in the trash at the first step. No college degree.
posted by ctmf at 10:29 AM on February 19, 2022 [40 favorites]
I just last night applied to a vacancy in my own department, one level above mine. Not my boss's job, but a same-department division head. I'd be a coworker of my boss instead of subordinate. And we do enough cross-functional stuff around here where not only COULD I do my boss's job, I HAVE, piecemeal all the individual parts and also standing in for vacations and stuff. And the same for the open position's predecessor. I got a list of the major job responsibilities FROM the predecessor and I have done every one of them. The job announcement listed a number of things the candidate needs experience in, and I can overkill every single one of those with a one-page resume. I know all the people and will ace an interview, technical, behavioral, culture, or otherwise. To top it all off, the automated application process asks like two dozen "how would you rate your own skills in..." questions taken from the position description and I was able to answer either "I do that daily" or "I'm the recognized expert everyone else comes to" in every single question. Truthfully, no deception.
Here's a thing I know, though. The hiring manager will never see my resume or ever know I applied, because HR will throw it in the trash at the first step. No college degree.
posted by ctmf at 10:29 AM on February 19, 2022 [40 favorites]
I'm going to print my application and hand it to the hiring manager, so they DO know. That won't help though, HR will insist and HR will win. I'm only doing it so when the director does his "why can't we get good candidates" thing, well I can make him regret saying that around me, at least.
posted by ctmf at 10:34 AM on February 19, 2022 [26 favorites]
posted by ctmf at 10:34 AM on February 19, 2022 [26 favorites]
My group just terminated a contract with someone who I am fairly certain did this. It sucked. When we did the interview, it sounded like they were using voice-disguising software and didn't use video, but we didn't call it out - we more care about what the candidate knows and not the reason that they might prefer to disguise their voice in remote-work interviews (I can think of a bunch of reasons why someone might want to do that). The interview went well, they knew all the stuff we needed, and we made the offer (we were doing a fast-track because of reasons, normally there would have been another round, but this time there wasn't). Oh, also, this was a contractor hire, not a full FTE. Things were only especially weird for this one candidate, the others were fine (so it's not like all contractors are shady).
After onboarding, it was clear that this person who was showing up to work was not the person that I interviewed. There were basic skills that were just totally absent, it was like they were doing everything for the very first time. They never asked questions to follow up on things, they just always had agreeable "yeah, that sounds great, i'll get it done". But then it would take a weirdly long time to submit a sort-of-correct-but-also-wrong solution. And they had really dodgy/vague responses to questions about why they chose X solution instead of Y.
We let it go for a few weeks just in case they were actually awesome but had a slow ramp up. But it didn't get better or different.
My guess is that this person worked for a contracting company that promised them work, and that the consultancy was the one that did the interviews with senior staff, and also the candidate was expected to learn on the job with some other contractors providing some backup when they got stuck. Maybe this would be fine if it was all above-board, honestly I think it could work out if it was a transparent sort of arrangement.
But instead it was extremely awkward and I felt bad about the whole thing. They didn't seem like a bad person, but it couldn't have been easy to be in their situation.
posted by pol at 10:34 AM on February 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
After onboarding, it was clear that this person who was showing up to work was not the person that I interviewed. There were basic skills that were just totally absent, it was like they were doing everything for the very first time. They never asked questions to follow up on things, they just always had agreeable "yeah, that sounds great, i'll get it done". But then it would take a weirdly long time to submit a sort-of-correct-but-also-wrong solution. And they had really dodgy/vague responses to questions about why they chose X solution instead of Y.
We let it go for a few weeks just in case they were actually awesome but had a slow ramp up. But it didn't get better or different.
My guess is that this person worked for a contracting company that promised them work, and that the consultancy was the one that did the interviews with senior staff, and also the candidate was expected to learn on the job with some other contractors providing some backup when they got stuck. Maybe this would be fine if it was all above-board, honestly I think it could work out if it was a transparent sort of arrangement.
But instead it was extremely awkward and I felt bad about the whole thing. They didn't seem like a bad person, but it couldn't have been easy to be in their situation.
posted by pol at 10:34 AM on February 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
Someone I knew once told me that I was going to have trouble finding a job because I'm unwilling to lie on my resume. I did not start lying, but I did find a better job (I was told they hired me because I aced the skills test).
I'm also really disturbed by the number of people who think lying is OK and will probably have to step away from this thread. I wish I could favor schroedinger's response thirty more times.
posted by FencingGal at 10:37 AM on February 19, 2022 [28 favorites]
I'm also really disturbed by the number of people who think lying is OK and will probably have to step away from this thread. I wish I could favor schroedinger's response thirty more times.
posted by FencingGal at 10:37 AM on February 19, 2022 [28 favorites]
there seemed to be no correlation between someone's actual qualifications and their ability to do the job. It was like throwing a dice, every time.
Yeah, I do entry-level hiring sometimes and I'm more of a believer in hiring for attitude and aptitude than for experience and pre-existing knowledge. We have our own training program, and some of the best and long-lasting employees I've ever had have been high school kids who had no idea what we even do. I try to extrapolate that to non-entry-level by having a short "deal breaker" list of experience and knowledge, but still being willing to teach a lot of things.
And... well I still like that theory, but my success isn't significantly higher than that of others who use different strategies. You win some, you lose some. It's still trying to predict the future, and you can't.
(But if I catch someone lying to me, they're a hard no, no matter what. I don't have room for having to doubt people's word and second-check everything they tell me here.)
posted by ctmf at 10:51 AM on February 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
Yeah, I do entry-level hiring sometimes and I'm more of a believer in hiring for attitude and aptitude than for experience and pre-existing knowledge. We have our own training program, and some of the best and long-lasting employees I've ever had have been high school kids who had no idea what we even do. I try to extrapolate that to non-entry-level by having a short "deal breaker" list of experience and knowledge, but still being willing to teach a lot of things.
And... well I still like that theory, but my success isn't significantly higher than that of others who use different strategies. You win some, you lose some. It's still trying to predict the future, and you can't.
(But if I catch someone lying to me, they're a hard no, no matter what. I don't have room for having to doubt people's word and second-check everything they tell me here.)
posted by ctmf at 10:51 AM on February 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
There is a dichotomy that is unfolding between “pro-liar” and “pro system of oppression” that distracts from the what I think is really going on. The reality is that for most jobs, the skill necessary is to get the job done. As pointed out by others, the ridiculous list of skill requirements for positions only contributes to an interview system that demands a level of insincerity that really just promulgates through work culture. In my field, IT, I can’t tell you how many times I come across a job posting asking for “10 years of docker expertise” when docker was only publicly released in 2013. (On quick preview the last few comments underscore this).
Sure there are fields that, as playdoughnails pointed out, I’d feel a lot better if the last mechanic who worked the plane I’m flying was a bit more competent. But if that last mechanic got the job done, then the repair is working and despite my fear the plane isn’t going to crash.
You, as an employer, are hiring me for results. That’s the deal. And I understand that you will fire me if you feel that I’m not getting you the results you want. I also know that you also very much lie to me in that you say you want an IT system but that does “X”, but what you really want is the customer to be happy so you can bill them more. Or you’re lying to me because you not sure what results you want, and I’m gambling I can meet those expectations as you figure it out.
posted by herda05 at 10:58 AM on February 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
Sure there are fields that, as playdoughnails pointed out, I’d feel a lot better if the last mechanic who worked the plane I’m flying was a bit more competent. But if that last mechanic got the job done, then the repair is working and despite my fear the plane isn’t going to crash.
You, as an employer, are hiring me for results. That’s the deal. And I understand that you will fire me if you feel that I’m not getting you the results you want. I also know that you also very much lie to me in that you say you want an IT system but that does “X”, but what you really want is the customer to be happy so you can bill them more. Or you’re lying to me because you not sure what results you want, and I’m gambling I can meet those expectations as you figure it out.
posted by herda05 at 10:58 AM on February 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
Really? I’m surprised at the number of the people on Team Nightmare System That Makes Life Hell.
The people normalizing lying are strengthening the system, not subverting it. Treating every interaction like a transaction, and deciding anything that gets you ahead personally is ethical, is Ayn Rand and not Karl Marx. The people who rack up more wins in this setting are the worst examples of the people who already win.
It's like all those people who really should be asking "why isn't there a union I can join?" instead deciding that they will be an entrepreneur, because they've bought into the idea that they can get ahead on their own. And it ends with them driving for Uber. (Actually, it ends with Uber passing a ballot initiative in California to guarantee their continued exploitation, written slightly better so it's not going to be overturned.)
I'll take stories about coworkers lying to cover for each other or staging a sickout or something, but the main victims of these scams are the people doing the work.
posted by mark k at 11:02 AM on February 19, 2022 [50 favorites]
The people normalizing lying are strengthening the system, not subverting it. Treating every interaction like a transaction, and deciding anything that gets you ahead personally is ethical, is Ayn Rand and not Karl Marx. The people who rack up more wins in this setting are the worst examples of the people who already win.
It's like all those people who really should be asking "why isn't there a union I can join?" instead deciding that they will be an entrepreneur, because they've bought into the idea that they can get ahead on their own. And it ends with them driving for Uber. (Actually, it ends with Uber passing a ballot initiative in California to guarantee their continued exploitation, written slightly better so it's not going to be overturned.)
I'll take stories about coworkers lying to cover for each other or staging a sickout or something, but the main victims of these scams are the people doing the work.
posted by mark k at 11:02 AM on February 19, 2022 [50 favorites]
Just curious what industries you all are hiring for? [...] nuclear reactor safety inspectors.
Umm... essentially that, but safety for the workers, not safety for the plant.
Physical Science Technician
posted by ctmf at 11:12 AM on February 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Umm... essentially that, but safety for the workers, not safety for the plant.
Physical Science Technician
posted by ctmf at 11:12 AM on February 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
I was about to post a snarky response to the people who think that fucking over your coworkers is sticking it to the Capitalist Man, but schroedinger said it all, far more eloquently.
posted by tavella at 11:15 AM on February 19, 2022 [14 favorites]
posted by tavella at 11:15 AM on February 19, 2022 [14 favorites]
But if that last mechanic got the job done, then the repair is working and despite my fear the plane isn’t going to crash.
And if they lied to get the job and are incompetent your plane crashes and you are dead. You seem to be not considering the idea that some people can't get the job done, that they are not lying about not having the right letters after their name, they are lying about having the skills, period. And in between the hiring and them getting fired for incompetence, coworkers suffer or even worse happens.
It is pretty common to recommend people apply to jobs where they don't have all of the requirements. Requirements lists are usually a dream. But the follow-up to "apply even if you don't meet all the requirements" is not ". . . and then lie and say you do", it's ". . . and in the resume/cover letter/interview give an honest accounting of your background and explain how you can apply your current knowledge to the stuff you haven't done".
The exception I know of is applying through USAJobs, where the very people hiring for the position will tell you that in addition to submitting a twelve page resume that contains all the words in the posting, you also have to claim you're an expert in everything in the questionnaire. But even then that's to get past the automated system to the interview, and that's when you are honest about everything.
posted by Anonymous at 11:16 AM on February 19, 2022
And if they lied to get the job and are incompetent your plane crashes and you are dead. You seem to be not considering the idea that some people can't get the job done, that they are not lying about not having the right letters after their name, they are lying about having the skills, period. And in between the hiring and them getting fired for incompetence, coworkers suffer or even worse happens.
It is pretty common to recommend people apply to jobs where they don't have all of the requirements. Requirements lists are usually a dream. But the follow-up to "apply even if you don't meet all the requirements" is not ". . . and then lie and say you do", it's ". . . and in the resume/cover letter/interview give an honest accounting of your background and explain how you can apply your current knowledge to the stuff you haven't done".
The exception I know of is applying through USAJobs, where the very people hiring for the position will tell you that in addition to submitting a twelve page resume that contains all the words in the posting, you also have to claim you're an expert in everything in the questionnaire. But even then that's to get past the automated system to the interview, and that's when you are honest about everything.
posted by Anonymous at 11:16 AM on February 19, 2022
USAJobs, [...] you also have to claim you're an expert in everything in the questionnaire.
I hire through USAJobs, and I'd say even that is defeating the purpose, and I consider it lying. When I hire, I can ask HR to go as deep in those scores as I want them to. If there aren't enough "expert" scores to make a reasonable competitive pool, ok, give me the next tier. So if you're honest and say you're not an expert in a thing, still the only reason your application is not getting in my hand is all the liars who say they are.
And then I find out all my supposed "expert" candidates are liars, and I have to pull the next tier from HR, which has wasted my time considerably, prolonged my resource shortage, and achieved the same effect. Win?
I just wish there was some sort of shadow record for each person on USAJobs where if I mark them as a liar on a particular question, it's averaged with their self-assessment or something in all their future applications. Obviously, that's impractical and fraught with danger, so it will never happen. But you're right in that there's currently no penalty for lying beyond "not getting the job", so might as well give it a shot.
posted by ctmf at 11:28 AM on February 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
I hire through USAJobs, and I'd say even that is defeating the purpose, and I consider it lying. When I hire, I can ask HR to go as deep in those scores as I want them to. If there aren't enough "expert" scores to make a reasonable competitive pool, ok, give me the next tier. So if you're honest and say you're not an expert in a thing, still the only reason your application is not getting in my hand is all the liars who say they are.
And then I find out all my supposed "expert" candidates are liars, and I have to pull the next tier from HR, which has wasted my time considerably, prolonged my resource shortage, and achieved the same effect. Win?
I just wish there was some sort of shadow record for each person on USAJobs where if I mark them as a liar on a particular question, it's averaged with their self-assessment or something in all their future applications. Obviously, that's impractical and fraught with danger, so it will never happen. But you're right in that there's currently no penalty for lying beyond "not getting the job", so might as well give it a shot.
posted by ctmf at 11:28 AM on February 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Speaking of lying…. Nine years ago I had my last, as in last, job interview with a company that did adaptive presentation systems for education. That is online course material that can track the student’s performance as they work through the material and adapt to their performance. To audition for the interview I had two days to put together such a presentation on photosynthesis. This required me to refresh my knowledge of the subject, produce illustrations, text, and structure all this to be adaptive. Plus a paper to describe my process. I emailed them all the stuff. I guess they liked what I did, and called me for a two hour in person interview. I got there, waited around, and finally someone else came and told me the person who I was scheduled to see was offsite looking at new office chairs for their new office. And the person who I was talking to would interview me but they didn’t have a place to do it. I said why not over there in the corner of a first floor cafe. Ok. Right off it was clear that this person wasn’t prepared to talk to me and didn’t really have any questions. I finally asked them if they had a client who was doing this photosynthesis thing and they were working on it. Yes. Hmmmmm…. After about 40 minutes of not much of a real interview this person said they had another meeting to go to. I left feeling that I just got ripped off doing free work for them. I went home tracked down the email addresses of the heads of the company and informed them of my experience interviewing at their company. The first email I got back was from one of them to another basically saying they fucked up, and I got erroneously cc’d on it! The next email I got five minutes later saying oops, I wasn’t meant to see that. The third email had a weak apology and then silence. The bullshit is on both sides of the table at an interview.
posted by njohnson23 at 11:28 AM on February 19, 2022 [27 favorites]
posted by njohnson23 at 11:28 AM on February 19, 2022 [27 favorites]
Yeah, I do entry-level hiring sometimes and I'm more of a believer in hiring for attitude and aptitude than for experience and pre-existing knowledge.
A rather structured aptitude and attitude test got me my first job despite lacking actual expertise as well as the required credentials, 35 years ago, which led to my third* job and all but one of the ones following that.
And as to lying/faking: as a contractor I've had my share of intermediaries arranging job interviews that turned out rather different from what they had described, and being surprised (and in one case appalled) that I turned down those jobs for being a bad fit.
* second job started out as a fair match despite not being my actual field of expertise, but degraded into not-at-all matching after half a year due to shifting workload, and after another six months I went back to doing what I had become good at in job #1.
posted by Stoneshop at 11:36 AM on February 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
A rather structured aptitude and attitude test got me my first job despite lacking actual expertise as well as the required credentials, 35 years ago, which led to my third* job and all but one of the ones following that.
And as to lying/faking: as a contractor I've had my share of intermediaries arranging job interviews that turned out rather different from what they had described, and being surprised (and in one case appalled) that I turned down those jobs for being a bad fit.
* second job started out as a fair match despite not being my actual field of expertise, but degraded into not-at-all matching after half a year due to shifting workload, and after another six months I went back to doing what I had become good at in job #1.
posted by Stoneshop at 11:36 AM on February 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
I hire through USAJobs, and I'd say even that is defeating the purpose, and I consider it lying.
Thank you for clarifying the process--like I said, I was told to lie on the questionnaire portion (not the resume) by people who also did hiring through USAJobs. They seemed to consider it a necessary evil? Maybe they recommended that because of the number of people faking answers.
posted by Anonymous at 11:40 AM on February 19, 2022
Thank you for clarifying the process--like I said, I was told to lie on the questionnaire portion (not the resume) by people who also did hiring through USAJobs. They seemed to consider it a necessary evil? Maybe they recommended that because of the number of people faking answers.
posted by Anonymous at 11:40 AM on February 19, 2022
Yeah, exactly. Gaming the system for convenience is circularly the thing that slowly makes gaming the system necessary. Some hiring managers won't wait long enough to get a second slate from HR and just pick from the first one out of impatience, and some will be fooled by one of the liars in the first round. I'm the crazy person who insists on using it like it's meant to be used.
posted by ctmf at 11:45 AM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by ctmf at 11:45 AM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
QA will catch that. I mean, they have a robust QA department that other departments are responsive to, right?
You mean the place where all the bad engineers are reassigned after HR tells the original engineering manager they need six months of documented poor peformance to fire someone with protected status?
posted by pwnguin at 11:53 AM on February 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
You mean the place where all the bad engineers are reassigned after HR tells the original engineering manager they need six months of documented poor peformance to fire someone with protected status?
posted by pwnguin at 11:53 AM on February 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
Just because the system is shitty it does not justify you being shitty to other people.
By the same token, I'm not sure honesty means being free to shit on people looking for work that are having to choose between being honest and being homeless. Speaking as someone who lucked their way into a good job they weren't really qualified for: it's easy to be honest when your belly's full and the rent is paid.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 11:54 AM on February 19, 2022 [19 favorites]
By the same token, I'm not sure honesty means being free to shit on people looking for work that are having to choose between being honest and being homeless. Speaking as someone who lucked their way into a good job they weren't really qualified for: it's easy to be honest when your belly's full and the rent is paid.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 11:54 AM on February 19, 2022 [19 favorites]
One point that's missing from this conversation is that the major alternative to lying on your resume to get a job is "networking" to get a job.
If you don't go with at least one of those, you're going to find yourself inexorably pushed into one of the ever-narrowing fields where you can actually get hired based on objective evidence of skills rather than schmoozing or puffery. (From personal experience I can say that it is possible to carve out an OK sort of existence that way, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it as a career path.)
Is there any evidence that people who got hired because they were drinking buddies with the boss's cousin do any better than people who got hired because they "lied" about being experts in Thing when their skills were really just intermediate? If not, the OP just seems like people who are upset their preferred form of ethically questionable self-promotion is losing ground.
posted by Not A Thing at 12:08 PM on February 19, 2022 [15 favorites]
If you don't go with at least one of those, you're going to find yourself inexorably pushed into one of the ever-narrowing fields where you can actually get hired based on objective evidence of skills rather than schmoozing or puffery. (From personal experience I can say that it is possible to carve out an OK sort of existence that way, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it as a career path.)
Is there any evidence that people who got hired because they were drinking buddies with the boss's cousin do any better than people who got hired because they "lied" about being experts in Thing when their skills were really just intermediate? If not, the OP just seems like people who are upset their preferred form of ethically questionable self-promotion is losing ground.
posted by Not A Thing at 12:08 PM on February 19, 2022 [15 favorites]
To rephrase my last post, with apologies to Mike Tyson: Everyone's got an ethical plan until life punches them in the face.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 12:13 PM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by lefty lucky cat at 12:13 PM on February 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
By the same token, I'm not sure honesty means being free to shit on people looking for work that are having to choose between being honest and being homeless. Speaking as someone who lucked their way into a good job they weren't really qualified for: it's easy to be honest when your belly's full and the rent is paid.
No one is shitting on those people. The examples of outright fraud in the article aren't someone lying to a retail outlet manager about having a car so they can pay rent next month, or pretending to have reliable child care.
It's six figure jobs in IT or doing trendy data science visualizations. The choice for these people is not "get this job or be homeless," it's "get this job or apply for other jobs that I think are beneath me."
posted by mark k at 12:15 PM on February 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
No one is shitting on those people. The examples of outright fraud in the article aren't someone lying to a retail outlet manager about having a car so they can pay rent next month, or pretending to have reliable child care.
It's six figure jobs in IT or doing trendy data science visualizations. The choice for these people is not "get this job or be homeless," it's "get this job or apply for other jobs that I think are beneath me."
posted by mark k at 12:15 PM on February 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
What I'm aghast at is that the folks excoriating the liars for "making their co-workers' lives harder" or "endangering customers and patients" are just letting management completely off the hook.
I, in fact, have one coworker who very clearly lied during her interview. Her skills were subpar, and 3 years in, remain subpar. She makes my job a lot harder. I blame management, though. Not her.
Management did not set her straight. Management did not set expectations. Management did not fire her when her "six month probationary period" would ostensibly allow them to let her go.
If something is mission-critical, there should be redundancy and review within the job. Fakers and liars will be caught out quickly if they're not able to learn on the job. A "lean", poorly-managed office or department that can be brought down by a single incompetent worker is management's fault, not that single worker's fault.
posted by explosion at 12:20 PM on February 19, 2022 [28 favorites]
I, in fact, have one coworker who very clearly lied during her interview. Her skills were subpar, and 3 years in, remain subpar. She makes my job a lot harder. I blame management, though. Not her.
Management did not set her straight. Management did not set expectations. Management did not fire her when her "six month probationary period" would ostensibly allow them to let her go.
If something is mission-critical, there should be redundancy and review within the job. Fakers and liars will be caught out quickly if they're not able to learn on the job. A "lean", poorly-managed office or department that can be brought down by a single incompetent worker is management's fault, not that single worker's fault.
posted by explosion at 12:20 PM on February 19, 2022 [28 favorites]
It's six figure jobs in IT or doing trendy data science visualizations. The choice for these people is not "get this job or be homeless," it's "get this job or apply for other jobs that I think are beneath me."
You encounter the exact same nonsense when applying for minimum wage positions. The article cherry-picks the sort of jobs you describe A. because the writer is upper middle class (oh look, they went to Yale and Cambridge) and these are the kind of people they know and B. it serves the anti-worker narrative of the article to set the working class against the middle class by implying people applying for low six-figure jobs somehow don't really need that money and are just greedy.
In the context of business ethics as they are practiced what these interviewees do is standard behavior. They're just employing the same bullshit tactics management uses with both employees AND customers, and the bosses are predictably outraged that the workers would try and use the same tactics they use to stay rich to get rich. As I said, if employers want this to stop, they have to lead by example. Make the hiring process both transparent and fair, show us CEOs and HR Departments getting meaningfully punished for dishonesty, stop deceiving customers. How employers behave sets the standard for how employees behave. They have to stop first, because they have an outsized influence in an economy where organized labor is almost nonexistent.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 12:32 PM on February 19, 2022 [18 favorites]
You encounter the exact same nonsense when applying for minimum wage positions. The article cherry-picks the sort of jobs you describe A. because the writer is upper middle class (oh look, they went to Yale and Cambridge) and these are the kind of people they know and B. it serves the anti-worker narrative of the article to set the working class against the middle class by implying people applying for low six-figure jobs somehow don't really need that money and are just greedy.
In the context of business ethics as they are practiced what these interviewees do is standard behavior. They're just employing the same bullshit tactics management uses with both employees AND customers, and the bosses are predictably outraged that the workers would try and use the same tactics they use to stay rich to get rich. As I said, if employers want this to stop, they have to lead by example. Make the hiring process both transparent and fair, show us CEOs and HR Departments getting meaningfully punished for dishonesty, stop deceiving customers. How employers behave sets the standard for how employees behave. They have to stop first, because they have an outsized influence in an economy where organized labor is almost nonexistent.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 12:32 PM on February 19, 2022 [18 favorites]
It's six figure jobs in IT or doing trendy data science visualizations. The choice for these people is not "get this job or be homeless," it's "get this job or apply for other jobs that I think are beneath me."
In places where tech job wages are setting rental prices, it's not because those jobs are beneath people, it's because those jobs are homelessness with extra steps unless you have a way to get a good deal on a place to stay in your support network.
posted by Zalzidrax at 12:37 PM on February 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
In places where tech job wages are setting rental prices, it's not because those jobs are beneath people, it's because those jobs are homelessness with extra steps unless you have a way to get a good deal on a place to stay in your support network.
posted by Zalzidrax at 12:37 PM on February 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
Management is absolutely to blame, but taking pity on cheaters is exactly the mentality that gets them in this situation.
Remember in school group projects, how the teacher always swore that this was how you’d “learn to work well with other people in The Real World?” And inevitably, one entitled and inept guy was always The Load?
I still wonder, at age 40, if “carrying The Load” is what the teacher meant about preparing for The Real World. Some teachers seemed to assign groups with that express purpose in mind.
I have to assume some people have never been expected to wipe the chin of a senior colleague whose interview and resume presented them as some kind of dazzling polymath, but who suddenly became unable to read documents, write a coherent sentence, do basic math, boot up a computer, or play well with others the moment they reported to work.
I have to assume that’s the line I’m looking across at the people advocating for fraud as a valid leveling mechanism here. Because they’re all arguing too eloquently to have been that person.
It seems we can all agree that this is how you get The Load in the Real World: Let certain people cheat their way in, and then count on other people to carry them. You make it those other people’s job to clean up after The Load, and if they point out the unfairness you tell them they’re not working well with others.
Sympathizing with the cheaters doesn’t disrupt that pattern, though. It is the pattern.
posted by armeowda at 12:48 PM on February 19, 2022 [29 favorites]
Remember in school group projects, how the teacher always swore that this was how you’d “learn to work well with other people in The Real World?” And inevitably, one entitled and inept guy was always The Load?
I still wonder, at age 40, if “carrying The Load” is what the teacher meant about preparing for The Real World. Some teachers seemed to assign groups with that express purpose in mind.
I have to assume some people have never been expected to wipe the chin of a senior colleague whose interview and resume presented them as some kind of dazzling polymath, but who suddenly became unable to read documents, write a coherent sentence, do basic math, boot up a computer, or play well with others the moment they reported to work.
I have to assume that’s the line I’m looking across at the people advocating for fraud as a valid leveling mechanism here. Because they’re all arguing too eloquently to have been that person.
It seems we can all agree that this is how you get The Load in the Real World: Let certain people cheat their way in, and then count on other people to carry them. You make it those other people’s job to clean up after The Load, and if they point out the unfairness you tell them they’re not working well with others.
Sympathizing with the cheaters doesn’t disrupt that pattern, though. It is the pattern.
posted by armeowda at 12:48 PM on February 19, 2022 [29 favorites]
The person who seriously lies or schmoozes about their ability to do the job is only advantaged over someone with more job-ability and less faking-ability. Exactly as many people left jobless. No moral counterweight. (Pity, yes.)
Plus, low-trust societies seem worse the more I know about them. Usually they revert to affinity group organization, yes? And with the affinity groups we have that’s not going to improve much that Metafilter likes.
posted by clew at 12:49 PM on February 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
Plus, low-trust societies seem worse the more I know about them. Usually they revert to affinity group organization, yes? And with the affinity groups we have that’s not going to improve much that Metafilter likes.
posted by clew at 12:49 PM on February 19, 2022 [12 favorites]
The choice for these people is not "get this job or be homeless," it's "get this job or apply for other jobs that I think are beneath me."
I suspect in many hiring fraud cases, it's "get this job or be deported from the US." Greencards have per country quotas, with India and China having decades long backlogs.
H1-B, the well known tech visa, requires you to find a new employer in 60 days. It took me almost six months to find comparable work when I was laid off in 2017 without lying on my resume or faking anything.
posted by pwnguin at 12:56 PM on February 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
I suspect in many hiring fraud cases, it's "get this job or be deported from the US." Greencards have per country quotas, with India and China having decades long backlogs.
H1-B, the well known tech visa, requires you to find a new employer in 60 days. It took me almost six months to find comparable work when I was laid off in 2017 without lying on my resume or faking anything.
posted by pwnguin at 12:56 PM on February 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
Also, there's a lot of space in the realm of "lying on your resume." Off the top of my head I can think of three or four lies on my resume--mostly start and stop dates from long ago jobs that I can't quite remember the exact day or even month I started. Or worse, when you have to fill out forms with the addresses and names of former managers. Some of my old companies are now defunct and who the hell knows where this or that person is now? But I need to provide their contact info, over a decade later? So yeah, I just make that stuff up but I just trust any reasonable person reading my resume knows it's a silly request anyway.
posted by zardoz at 12:56 PM on February 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
posted by zardoz at 12:56 PM on February 19, 2022 [8 favorites]
I'm gonna be another voice pushing for the idea that binarizing this as sympathizing with either The System or The Cheaters isn't a real useful way of approaching this, as much as I get how conversational dynamics end up going that way: a reaction to a reaction to a reaction ends up badmintoning the whole complex sick system into an escalating volley between people who probably don't largely disagree.
The problem is a sick system that doesn't provide a practical path to straightforward ethical outcomes. You can't fix that with any particular line in the sand, because it's not a one-dimensional issue, it's a whole nasty soup. Is it ethical to lie/cheat during hiring and thus burden your coworkers when you can't do the job? Of course not. Is it ethical to create the need for your new hires to lie to be allowed to compete for jobs they'd actually be good hires for? Of course not. Is making the uncompromisingly ethical decision to be un- or underemployed because the system is fucked a good outcome? Maybe for a martyr, but most people have to eat.
It's a big fucking mess, and any specific example of particularly shitty and unethical behavior by one or both parties is a sliver of it, a narrow lens into a broad problem. And there will always be especially shitty situations and audacious people ripe to use as examples to flatten the context down to Pick A Side once we start getting into the bad volley. Ignore enough of the surrounding mess and there's always a nice clean ethical stance to take.
I lean pretty heavily to the "the problem is the system, and the employers have the power in the system" view in my practical assessment of all this, and I empathize pretty strongly with the folks individually trying to find their way through a fucked system even if it involves some ethical compromises in how they have to represent themselves to the system vs. what they'd do if they were supported in just being straightforward. That super duper does not extend to bullshitty hijinks and misrepresentation like what the article talks about. But of course the article is talking about this in the first place because it's interesting and weird and not baseline normal. Hard cases make bad law; nobody's baseline sense of the problems with interviewing and hiring is about people doing elaborate fakery.
So, I dunno. The stuff in the article is interesting because it's weird, audacious, an outlier event in a much more boring but nonetheless complicated and fucked up system of mass-produced hiring situations. I think it makes sense to talk about those wierd/audacious outliers; I think it makes sense to talk about the broader systemic issues with hiring and power imbalance in employment; I don't think it makes a lot of sense to conflate the two or dig in at one another because of that conflation.
posted by cortex at 1:27 PM on February 19, 2022 [30 favorites]
The problem is a sick system that doesn't provide a practical path to straightforward ethical outcomes. You can't fix that with any particular line in the sand, because it's not a one-dimensional issue, it's a whole nasty soup. Is it ethical to lie/cheat during hiring and thus burden your coworkers when you can't do the job? Of course not. Is it ethical to create the need for your new hires to lie to be allowed to compete for jobs they'd actually be good hires for? Of course not. Is making the uncompromisingly ethical decision to be un- or underemployed because the system is fucked a good outcome? Maybe for a martyr, but most people have to eat.
It's a big fucking mess, and any specific example of particularly shitty and unethical behavior by one or both parties is a sliver of it, a narrow lens into a broad problem. And there will always be especially shitty situations and audacious people ripe to use as examples to flatten the context down to Pick A Side once we start getting into the bad volley. Ignore enough of the surrounding mess and there's always a nice clean ethical stance to take.
I lean pretty heavily to the "the problem is the system, and the employers have the power in the system" view in my practical assessment of all this, and I empathize pretty strongly with the folks individually trying to find their way through a fucked system even if it involves some ethical compromises in how they have to represent themselves to the system vs. what they'd do if they were supported in just being straightforward. That super duper does not extend to bullshitty hijinks and misrepresentation like what the article talks about. But of course the article is talking about this in the first place because it's interesting and weird and not baseline normal. Hard cases make bad law; nobody's baseline sense of the problems with interviewing and hiring is about people doing elaborate fakery.
So, I dunno. The stuff in the article is interesting because it's weird, audacious, an outlier event in a much more boring but nonetheless complicated and fucked up system of mass-produced hiring situations. I think it makes sense to talk about those wierd/audacious outliers; I think it makes sense to talk about the broader systemic issues with hiring and power imbalance in employment; I don't think it makes a lot of sense to conflate the two or dig in at one another because of that conflation.
posted by cortex at 1:27 PM on February 19, 2022 [30 favorites]
What I'm aghast at is that the folks excoriating the liars for "making their co-workers' lives harder" or "endangering customers and patients" are just letting management completely off the hook.
If you're not determined to turn a story about one entertainingly weird case into a screaming purple-faced bunfight, fault can be found with both parties! You only have to be aghast at people letting management completely off the hook if you make up people who are doing that!
posted by ominous_paws at 1:42 PM on February 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
If you're not determined to turn a story about one entertainingly weird case into a screaming purple-faced bunfight, fault can be found with both parties! You only have to be aghast at people letting management completely off the hook if you make up people who are doing that!
posted by ominous_paws at 1:42 PM on February 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
Like they say, once a cheater, always a cheater. If someone's very first interaction with me is to lie like a cheap rug, how will I ever trust anything they say? I'm not in HR (who I hate), but I do have talks with prospective new employees and give feedback. These coworkers are going to be collaborating with me on scientific experiments and will be coauthors on papers with me. I'm less worried that they are unqualified, and more worried that they will fake data.
posted by 445supermag at 2:26 PM on February 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
posted by 445supermag at 2:26 PM on February 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
The company I used to work for contracted with a firm in India to provide engineering services. The people they brought to the US to meet with the (remaining) local engineers were all experienced and competent. Then they went back to India and assigned new and barely trained people to the contract. Shady but within the terms of the contract. The whole system is rife with fraud and misrepresentation.
posted by tommasz at 2:31 PM on February 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by tommasz at 2:31 PM on February 19, 2022 [10 favorites]
Metafilter: A screaming purple-faced bunfight
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 2:33 PM on February 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 2:33 PM on February 19, 2022 [7 favorites]
Thinnish article saying the last five years have seen a reduction in spurious degree requirements. Started before the pandemic, even.
posted by clew at 5:07 PM on February 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by clew at 5:07 PM on February 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
I only saw this referenced a couple of times, but regardless of whether its stories were true, it seemed apparent early on that this article was a reactionary puff-piece, negging against workers having anything resembling an upper hand in the hiring game (in certain industries, but nowadays more than usual). Interviewees are often at a huge disadvantage carrying a hope that eventually they will be allowed to negotiate their compensation the once per job (over how many years) against an HR person who conducts them all day every day for years and is actually a large part of their skillset, aka "what they're hired for." By the by, I wonder if unfair/inequal outcomes in HR negotiations with prospective hires (to the company's benefit) is seen within that profession as incompetence, or if maybe HR incompetence is an inability to subjugate new hires no matter what the job market. I don't think "subjugation" is inapt here.
This story seems to be about the unequal aspects of interviewing resulting in the benefit see-saw leaning to the worker side, providing a moralistic argument against being a bad person who makes the money mad. However, as someone once said: "capital is amoral." How about this: non-emergency deadlines in most companies are largely invented out of whole cloth and how fast or slow you and your team execute on them doesn't make the universe more likely to blow up. In a way I can see people lambasting the bad coworker because they're getting in the way of the boss's orders. This doesn't mean you, but look! Management turning the underlings against each other again!
But that's just talking out of my ass. Overall in this thread there doesn't seem to be anything new other than Zoom Cyrano. Heck, I've read rumors that Trump had an entirely different person take all of his tests at Wharton, and he has never been the first person to do anything. His classmates and general cohort are the management leadership of many of the unmentioned companies in this thread.
Protestant work ethic is not a natural law. There's no real reason why your money-making job should make you feel bad, and there's no reason why you should think your incompetent coworker is the cause of it. There's no reason to get mad at them for sucking, why not sit back and match their pace? There's no real reason why a company has to move at a particular speed. Capitalism was invented as a way to manage slave-based economies, so I'm not sure which of its rules are the good ones to hold against each other, but some of them are being used to convince us that we aren't working hard enough, that we're making just as much as we deserve, and that our psychological integrity and well-being should not be important. All of the downsides implied here are invented and imposed.
posted by rhizome at 5:33 PM on February 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
This story seems to be about the unequal aspects of interviewing resulting in the benefit see-saw leaning to the worker side, providing a moralistic argument against being a bad person who makes the money mad. However, as someone once said: "capital is amoral." How about this: non-emergency deadlines in most companies are largely invented out of whole cloth and how fast or slow you and your team execute on them doesn't make the universe more likely to blow up. In a way I can see people lambasting the bad coworker because they're getting in the way of the boss's orders. This doesn't mean you, but look! Management turning the underlings against each other again!
But that's just talking out of my ass. Overall in this thread there doesn't seem to be anything new other than Zoom Cyrano. Heck, I've read rumors that Trump had an entirely different person take all of his tests at Wharton, and he has never been the first person to do anything. His classmates and general cohort are the management leadership of many of the unmentioned companies in this thread.
Protestant work ethic is not a natural law. There's no real reason why your money-making job should make you feel bad, and there's no reason why you should think your incompetent coworker is the cause of it. There's no reason to get mad at them for sucking, why not sit back and match their pace? There's no real reason why a company has to move at a particular speed. Capitalism was invented as a way to manage slave-based economies, so I'm not sure which of its rules are the good ones to hold against each other, but some of them are being used to convince us that we aren't working hard enough, that we're making just as much as we deserve, and that our psychological integrity and well-being should not be important. All of the downsides implied here are invented and imposed.
posted by rhizome at 5:33 PM on February 19, 2022 [13 favorites]
We aren't talking about *slow*, we are talking about people that have none of the skills needed for the job. "Sit back and match their pace?" People are just being bizarre about this, you do know that some people actually do jobs that are worthwhile? Like, say, making sure that workers at a nuclear power plant are kept safe.
posted by tavella at 5:55 PM on February 19, 2022 [22 favorites]
posted by tavella at 5:55 PM on February 19, 2022 [22 favorites]
There's no reason to get mad at them for sucking, why not sit back and match their pace?
Not everybody despises what they do or despises the mission of the place they work for. Sometimes when you're mad at the incompetence of your coworkers it's not because you're a dirty bootlicker, it's because you believe in what you're doing and the value you help bring to the world and your coworker's incompetence doesn't just put more load on your own back, it makes the world a shittier place for the people you're trying to help.
posted by Anonymous at 6:01 PM on February 19, 2022
Not everybody despises what they do or despises the mission of the place they work for. Sometimes when you're mad at the incompetence of your coworkers it's not because you're a dirty bootlicker, it's because you believe in what you're doing and the value you help bring to the world and your coworker's incompetence doesn't just put more load on your own back, it makes the world a shittier place for the people you're trying to help.
posted by Anonymous at 6:01 PM on February 19, 2022
>*you do know that some people actually do jobs that are worthwhile?*
Yes, I do know that. Like doctors and other life-death occupations implied in this thread, I imagine the faker factor is extremely low, and often criminal when it does happen. But school principals who didn't actually get that one degree? IIRC they were usually doing a fine job until the moment that was discovered!
I don't think any of these jobs are what the OP article are talking about, though.
posted by rhizome at 6:03 PM on February 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
Yes, I do know that. Like doctors and other life-death occupations implied in this thread, I imagine the faker factor is extremely low, and often criminal when it does happen. But school principals who didn't actually get that one degree? IIRC they were usually doing a fine job until the moment that was discovered!
I don't think any of these jobs are what the OP article are talking about, though.
posted by rhizome at 6:03 PM on February 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
But school principals who didn't actually get that one degree? IIRC they were usually doing a fine job until the moment that was discovered!
just gonna quote tavella:
we are talking about people that have none of the skills needed for the job.
rhizome, you are deliberately conflating "does a great job but doesn't have the letters after their name" with "faked everything and is irreparably fucking up" because endorsing the latter is less defensible. Nobody is mad about the former and you know it.
posted by Anonymous at 6:08 PM on February 19, 2022
just gonna quote tavella:
we are talking about people that have none of the skills needed for the job.
rhizome, you are deliberately conflating "does a great job but doesn't have the letters after their name" with "faked everything and is irreparably fucking up" because endorsing the latter is less defensible. Nobody is mad about the former and you know it.
posted by Anonymous at 6:08 PM on February 19, 2022
I wonder if the pro-lying people would apply that to people they hire. Is it OK if the plumber says he's experienced with installing toilets or the furnace installation people say they've done furnace installation before? Is it fine if the babysitter doesn't actually have CPR and first aid training, is taking the kids to the pool, but can't really swim, or the person you've hired to care for your aging parent isn't really a licensed practical nurse? And if they're lying, is that OK because you're a homeowner or have enough money to hire help, so you're privileged, which means they're sticking it to the man?
posted by FencingGal at 6:11 PM on February 19, 2022 [28 favorites]
posted by FencingGal at 6:11 PM on February 19, 2022 [28 favorites]
I don't think many uh babysitting firms are big enough to have an HR department for which people face fake interviews to get in.
posted by bootlegpop at 6:21 PM on February 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by bootlegpop at 6:21 PM on February 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
the pro-lying people
This is a helpful illustration of how, once discussion of an interesting systemic issue has been sidetracked into individual morality, there is nothing constructive to be gained from discussing further.
posted by Not A Thing at 6:25 PM on February 19, 2022 [21 favorites]
This is a helpful illustration of how, once discussion of an interesting systemic issue has been sidetracked into individual morality, there is nothing constructive to be gained from discussing further.
posted by Not A Thing at 6:25 PM on February 19, 2022 [21 favorites]
If you aren’t working in a crappy sub shop, or maybe some parts of Italy, it could be a job-losing disaster to “sit back and match their pace.”
(I saw a Tumblr history post claiming that if a man worked too fast in a factory at the turn of the century, he’d get a beating after hours for being a “pace-setter.” There is a certain appeal to this, as hard as it is to believe)
posted by Countess Elena at 6:33 PM on February 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
(I saw a Tumblr history post claiming that if a man worked too fast in a factory at the turn of the century, he’d get a beating after hours for being a “pace-setter.” There is a certain appeal to this, as hard as it is to believe)
posted by Countess Elena at 6:33 PM on February 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
I mean, to expound: Like, a kid dies VS the capitalist tech product that would have been late and flubbed half the deliverables anyway comes out a month later are two very different outcomes, and two situations in which the ethics behind being dishonest differ. It's not either/or. Usually it's ok to lie if you can do the work, sometimes it's ok to lie when you may not be able to, and sometimes it's not ok to lie at all. You can't really use the latter situation to condemn the other two.
-----
(I saw a Tumblr history post claiming that if a man worked too fast in a factory at the turn of the century, he’d get a beating after hours for being a “pace-setter.” There is a certain appeal to this, as hard as it is to believe)
I believe it. When I was nearly a kid, a clearly tripping manager at an entry level Customer Service job had the audacity to require a 4 year degree, and I let a 2 year degree seem like a 4 year degree on my resume by not being specific (for anyone who didn't bother to look up that it was a 2 year school). Within a week, my pace of sending out shitty email templates was faster than the rest of the department combined because this was when using a computer daily wasn't as common, so my fucking around on the internet habit was an unusual help. People definitely tried to get me fired, messed with my workstation, and swore at me while the manager encouraged them. One even threatened violence, but she was on meth, so that may have happened no matter what.
At the time I thought that they were assholes. I ended up getting repeatedly promoted to different areas by asking for more work when mine was done and learning things, and thus exponentially increasing my (meager) salary. So, I didn't do the wrong thing for myself exactly, but I now have far more understanding for where they were coming from. They didn't see the job as a place where one could advance, and working that hard (well, not hard, but quickly) would be utterly pointless at a place where one couldn't advance.
You can't get yourself noticed without excelling. Getting yourself noticed fucks people who are time serving at a shitty job. There isn't really a way to satisfy both parties. A pace setter *is* kind of an asshole at a job where advancement isn't viable. A pace setter at a place where the more desperate crabs are airlifted out of the bucket may not be an asshole, but they make it harder for people who just want to chill for 6 months before moving on, and people who can't do better.
---
To circle back to lying, I learned how to do a shitload of different things that people normally need degrees that I don't have to do at that job because they were a rapidly expanding company going public who were also incredibly cheap. I haven't had to lie about having a degree because of networking and luck. If I did lie about having one to get a job doing something that I had already done successfully, I would feel zero guilt.
posted by bootlegpop at 7:10 PM on February 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
-----
(I saw a Tumblr history post claiming that if a man worked too fast in a factory at the turn of the century, he’d get a beating after hours for being a “pace-setter.” There is a certain appeal to this, as hard as it is to believe)
I believe it. When I was nearly a kid, a clearly tripping manager at an entry level Customer Service job had the audacity to require a 4 year degree, and I let a 2 year degree seem like a 4 year degree on my resume by not being specific (for anyone who didn't bother to look up that it was a 2 year school). Within a week, my pace of sending out shitty email templates was faster than the rest of the department combined because this was when using a computer daily wasn't as common, so my fucking around on the internet habit was an unusual help. People definitely tried to get me fired, messed with my workstation, and swore at me while the manager encouraged them. One even threatened violence, but she was on meth, so that may have happened no matter what.
At the time I thought that they were assholes. I ended up getting repeatedly promoted to different areas by asking for more work when mine was done and learning things, and thus exponentially increasing my (meager) salary. So, I didn't do the wrong thing for myself exactly, but I now have far more understanding for where they were coming from. They didn't see the job as a place where one could advance, and working that hard (well, not hard, but quickly) would be utterly pointless at a place where one couldn't advance.
You can't get yourself noticed without excelling. Getting yourself noticed fucks people who are time serving at a shitty job. There isn't really a way to satisfy both parties. A pace setter *is* kind of an asshole at a job where advancement isn't viable. A pace setter at a place where the more desperate crabs are airlifted out of the bucket may not be an asshole, but they make it harder for people who just want to chill for 6 months before moving on, and people who can't do better.
---
To circle back to lying, I learned how to do a shitload of different things that people normally need degrees that I don't have to do at that job because they were a rapidly expanding company going public who were also incredibly cheap. I haven't had to lie about having a degree because of networking and luck. If I did lie about having one to get a job doing something that I had already done successfully, I would feel zero guilt.
posted by bootlegpop at 7:10 PM on February 19, 2022 [6 favorites]
if you hold life and death in your hands with your job you should have to have certifications, regularly updated, that are difficult if not impossible to forge. if you can fake your way into those jobs that's a failure of the systems that should be in place to protect us all.
if your job is to create surplus value by building or selling widgets, or to serve, clean, or repair said widgets, then you should be happy some dumb phony got hired and is there to make you look better by comparison. if you care much more than that then you've internalized the interests of the people who you are making rich. bad superego of the bosses, bad!
posted by dis_integration at 7:51 PM on February 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
if your job is to create surplus value by building or selling widgets, or to serve, clean, or repair said widgets, then you should be happy some dumb phony got hired and is there to make you look better by comparison. if you care much more than that then you've internalized the interests of the people who you are making rich. bad superego of the bosses, bad!
posted by dis_integration at 7:51 PM on February 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
I'm trying to be charitable in reading this thread. Capitalism and its related excesses are powerful sources of moral injury for all of us. Sometimes to cope, we develop calluses, scar tissue, that may make it harder or more painful to flex our moral muscles as we otherwise would. I think the frequent redirecting here from the focus on people lying blatantly about their ability to do a job to instead trying to focus on the evil of management/HR, or conflating it with inflation of qualifications or resume overselling or other more venal lies, is perhaps a symptom of such moral injury.
I think with self-examination, we aren't doomed to let the injuries capitalism does to us permanently damage our moral compasses. But it does require self-examination.
posted by biogeo at 8:41 PM on February 19, 2022 [16 favorites]
I think with self-examination, we aren't doomed to let the injuries capitalism does to us permanently damage our moral compasses. But it does require self-examination.
posted by biogeo at 8:41 PM on February 19, 2022 [16 favorites]
if you hold life and death in your hands with your job.... if your job is to create surplus value by building or selling widgets, or to serve, clean, or repair said widgets
These aren't separate or segregated systems. Those widgets wind up in the computers I use to send prescriptions to the pharmacy and that the pharmacy uses to dispense the right amount of the right medicine. Those widgets wind up in the medical devices that fuck up and take a life instead to saving a life. Those widgets wind up in whatever magic is used to transform the loud bangs of an MRI into a series of pictures that allows me to peer inside someone's skull. Those widgets wind up in the cell phone I use to return pages from colleagues and patients, in the car I drove to stroke alerts (and the piezoelectric crystals that ensured I didn't have to wait at unnecessary reds at 3am), in the crappy processed food I snarfed down on call so I wouldn't pass out in the middle of my fifteenth consult....
In some of those cases, the widget is specifically designed for medical use, but in most cases they aren't. During the first wave of the pandemic, ICU staff were MacGyvering ventilators out of everything they can think of. My intern year, there was a shortage of sodium bicarbonate (used for fixing an acidotic pH), and I was only half joking when I offered to donate baking soda to the hospital. We use Zoom now for telehealth; I don't kid myself that the Zoom people are in it for anything but $$, but I still need them to make a product that delivers consistently, is resistant to hackers, and requires minimal effort from my elderly cognitively impaired patients. (Zoom downtime last week was a disaster. Have you ever tried to evaluate tremor of gait over the phone? Don't!)
Bottom line, I can't do my job properly without depending on a million other jobs being done properly. If you've learned nothing else from the last two years, you ought to have learned how fucking interconnected this world is, and how your life, your wild and precious widget-making life, can be directly affected by a meat market in a town you'd never heard of.
Last thought: there's little light between those justifying a fake interview/resume and those justifying a fake vaccine card. You could literally copy-paste some of these comments into an antivax Facebook group and get a bunch of likes and shares. (Particularly the stuff about sticking it to the man, that line seems to go over well with the libertarians.)
posted by basalganglia at 2:45 AM on February 20, 2022 [33 favorites]
These aren't separate or segregated systems. Those widgets wind up in the computers I use to send prescriptions to the pharmacy and that the pharmacy uses to dispense the right amount of the right medicine. Those widgets wind up in the medical devices that fuck up and take a life instead to saving a life. Those widgets wind up in whatever magic is used to transform the loud bangs of an MRI into a series of pictures that allows me to peer inside someone's skull. Those widgets wind up in the cell phone I use to return pages from colleagues and patients, in the car I drove to stroke alerts (and the piezoelectric crystals that ensured I didn't have to wait at unnecessary reds at 3am), in the crappy processed food I snarfed down on call so I wouldn't pass out in the middle of my fifteenth consult....
In some of those cases, the widget is specifically designed for medical use, but in most cases they aren't. During the first wave of the pandemic, ICU staff were MacGyvering ventilators out of everything they can think of. My intern year, there was a shortage of sodium bicarbonate (used for fixing an acidotic pH), and I was only half joking when I offered to donate baking soda to the hospital. We use Zoom now for telehealth; I don't kid myself that the Zoom people are in it for anything but $$, but I still need them to make a product that delivers consistently, is resistant to hackers, and requires minimal effort from my elderly cognitively impaired patients. (Zoom downtime last week was a disaster. Have you ever tried to evaluate tremor of gait over the phone? Don't!)
Bottom line, I can't do my job properly without depending on a million other jobs being done properly. If you've learned nothing else from the last two years, you ought to have learned how fucking interconnected this world is, and how your life, your wild and precious widget-making life, can be directly affected by a meat market in a town you'd never heard of.
Last thought: there's little light between those justifying a fake interview/resume and those justifying a fake vaccine card. You could literally copy-paste some of these comments into an antivax Facebook group and get a bunch of likes and shares. (Particularly the stuff about sticking it to the man, that line seems to go over well with the libertarians.)
posted by basalganglia at 2:45 AM on February 20, 2022 [33 favorites]
For a site that is about worker solidarity the people commenting here are showing a marked lack of concern for other workers.
Is this... a site about worker solidarity? I guess it meets the primary traditional criterion for a site making that claim which is that everyone using it is a highly educated member of the bourgeoisie.
posted by atrazine at 4:53 AM on February 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
Is this... a site about worker solidarity? I guess it meets the primary traditional criterion for a site making that claim which is that everyone using it is a highly educated member of the bourgeoisie.
posted by atrazine at 4:53 AM on February 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
These aren't separate or segregated systems. Those widgets wind up in the computers I use to send prescriptions
There have to be processes in place to verify the quality of the output and these processes have to be built so that they're insulated from human error because even credentialed people who did not fake to their way into the job will make mistakes. None of that has anything to do with whether or not someone lied to get the job or got the job but cannot do the job. It's incredible to me how quickly people are catastrophising from someone lying their way to get benefits and a full time paycheck to planes falling out of the sky and COVID patients dying without a ventilator. Most people's jobs just don't make that much of a difference. I've had jobs that were just writing emails.
posted by dis_integration at 6:52 AM on February 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
There have to be processes in place to verify the quality of the output and these processes have to be built so that they're insulated from human error because even credentialed people who did not fake to their way into the job will make mistakes. None of that has anything to do with whether or not someone lied to get the job or got the job but cannot do the job. It's incredible to me how quickly people are catastrophising from someone lying their way to get benefits and a full time paycheck to planes falling out of the sky and COVID patients dying without a ventilator. Most people's jobs just don't make that much of a difference. I've had jobs that were just writing emails.
posted by dis_integration at 6:52 AM on February 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
Metafilter: badmintoning the whole complex sick system into an escalating volley between people who probably don't largely disagree
posted by storybored at 8:40 AM on February 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by storybored at 8:40 AM on February 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
These aren't separate or segregated systems. Those widgets wind up in the computers I use to send prescriptions to the pharmacy
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
The article here does not have a single mention of the medical field that I read, it's mostly talking about marketing, advertising, forecasting, and other paper pushing jobs. A couple of fibs on a resume is not going to bring down the medical system or make planes fall from the sky. Most people's work isn't quite so mission critical to the human project. Some might even call those jobs bullshit.
posted by bradbane at 8:59 AM on February 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
The article here does not have a single mention of the medical field that I read, it's mostly talking about marketing, advertising, forecasting, and other paper pushing jobs. A couple of fibs on a resume is not going to bring down the medical system or make planes fall from the sky. Most people's work isn't quite so mission critical to the human project. Some might even call those jobs bullshit.
posted by bradbane at 8:59 AM on February 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
Whether my work is mission-critical or not, I'd prefer to have colleagues with integrity.
posted by vincebowdren at 9:42 AM on February 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
posted by vincebowdren at 9:42 AM on February 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
There have to be processes in place to verify the quality
I have both. People of integrity and independent QA, AND effective supervision of all that. And there are still "honest mistakes". That's not what we're talking about. And without the "people of integrity" part there will just be too many shots on goal for the QA goalies (who are somehow not supposed to be incompetent liars themselves) to stop all of them.
posted by ctmf at 10:13 AM on February 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
I have both. People of integrity and independent QA, AND effective supervision of all that. And there are still "honest mistakes". That's not what we're talking about. And without the "people of integrity" part there will just be too many shots on goal for the QA goalies (who are somehow not supposed to be incompetent liars themselves) to stop all of them.
posted by ctmf at 10:13 AM on February 20, 2022 [7 favorites]
I mean, sorry, maybe it's unique to this job and it's "not super hard, but of immense importance" nature, but I can't accept people who demonstrate a lack of integrity. When they say something is safe, I can't doubt their word, and more importantly I can't have other employees doubting their word. As soon as someone demonstrates they're willing to lie for their own convenience over even the dumbest thing - they need the weekend off because their grandma died, and they don't have a grandma - then they can't have this job any more, in my mind.
In reality it's not that fast, they have to do it often enough that I can prove it and go through a lengthy due process. And that's probably a good thing. A new hire applicant or someone on initial probation though, I don't owe them a damn thing.
posted by ctmf at 10:21 AM on February 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
In reality it's not that fast, they have to do it often enough that I can prove it and go through a lengthy due process. And that's probably a good thing. A new hire applicant or someone on initial probation though, I don't owe them a damn thing.
posted by ctmf at 10:21 AM on February 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
The article here does not have a single mention of the medical field that I read, it's mostly talking about marketing, advertising, forecasting, and other paper pushing jobs. A couple of fibs on a resume is not going to bring down the medical system or make planes fall from the sky.
I don't see how it's relevant that the article doesn't specify the medical field. Basalganglia's excellent post shows how all jobs can be interconnected and ultimately affect the medical field. The article doesn't specify that this is only happening in what you call bullshit jobs. And having someone else do your interview or feed you answers is not "a couple of fibs on a resume." The article focuses on people who did not remotely have the qualifications for the jobs they got.
Looking through the article again, I noticed that for all of the truly egregious examples, the perpetrators were men. I think it's very likely that gender plays into this.
posted by FencingGal at 10:24 AM on February 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
I don't see how it's relevant that the article doesn't specify the medical field. Basalganglia's excellent post shows how all jobs can be interconnected and ultimately affect the medical field. The article doesn't specify that this is only happening in what you call bullshit jobs. And having someone else do your interview or feed you answers is not "a couple of fibs on a resume." The article focuses on people who did not remotely have the qualifications for the jobs they got.
Looking through the article again, I noticed that for all of the truly egregious examples, the perpetrators were men. I think it's very likely that gender plays into this.
posted by FencingGal at 10:24 AM on February 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
but I can't accept people who demonstrate a lack of integrity.
I guess I'm arguing a different thing than some people. Sure, having a person who isn't as skilled as I thought they were is a drag and is unfair to the other employees. But I could live with that occasional mistake, fault myself for not discovering that in the hiring process, and train them to where I need them to be. Or get rid of them if they're unwilling or unable to learn. If I forgot to ask them if they can X, then that's my fault not theirs.
Also, I'll fully admit there are things in the "qualifications" section I don't care so much about. I don't write them, and yes that's sub-optimal and also affects me personally as mentioned above. But if someone straight up told me they aren't super-strong in those things, I might choose them anyway.
To me it's the original willingness to lie though. Can't get over it. Not acceptable.
posted by ctmf at 10:47 AM on February 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
I guess I'm arguing a different thing than some people. Sure, having a person who isn't as skilled as I thought they were is a drag and is unfair to the other employees. But I could live with that occasional mistake, fault myself for not discovering that in the hiring process, and train them to where I need them to be. Or get rid of them if they're unwilling or unable to learn. If I forgot to ask them if they can X, then that's my fault not theirs.
Also, I'll fully admit there are things in the "qualifications" section I don't care so much about. I don't write them, and yes that's sub-optimal and also affects me personally as mentioned above. But if someone straight up told me they aren't super-strong in those things, I might choose them anyway.
To me it's the original willingness to lie though. Can't get over it. Not acceptable.
posted by ctmf at 10:47 AM on February 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
Looking through the article again, I noticed that for all of the truly egregious examples, the perpetrators were men. I think it's very likely that gender plays into this.
Seems rigorous.
posted by atrazine at 11:11 AM on February 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
Seems rigorous.
posted by atrazine at 11:11 AM on February 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
I think it's fair to say that the lying described in this article, egregious though it is, pales in comparison to the lies these very employers are telling these very candidates in these very interviews. And even though candidates lying is immoral, and I wish candidates wouldn't do it, and I personally would not like to hire or work with someone who lied, etc., I also don't think it's reasonable to expect individual candidates to stop lying first before the employer stops lying to them. Employers lie as a way to have more control over the candidate, and candidates lie to take back some of that power. Two wrongs don't make a right, for sure. But employers have more power. It's on them to stop lying first, and thus set a reasonable expectation of integrity in the process. Since they won't, whatever happens next is the employer's fault 100%.
Like, consider the story about the Indian candidate interviewed for a remote role by American employers. The American employer is lying during this interview - not in some iffy nebulous "systemic injustice" kind of way, but directly and personally: about how this individual candidate will be targeted by the employer for mistreatment (just for starters, HR isn't providing very pertinent info to the candidate about what percentage of the "required" qualifications for this job are bullshit; they don't reveal how racist they are and how much racist treatment this candidate will experience from their team on the job; they aren't going to admit how much less they're paying the Indian candidate compared to American candidates; they don't reveal their company's intention to commit wage theft via unpaid overtime; etc.).
If I were to start listing all the ways in which the employers are lying to the candidate in general - not just in ways that target this candidate specifically for mistreatment but also in all ways that merely *happen* to impact the candidate along with others - I'd be here typing for weeks.
This article is pulling a trick on us by pretending the lies are only being told by candidates. It would behoove us not to fall for this trick. The employers are lying to candidates all the time. Normalizing employers lying and tut-tutting candidates for much smaller lies is wrong.
posted by MiraK at 11:29 AM on February 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
Like, consider the story about the Indian candidate interviewed for a remote role by American employers. The American employer is lying during this interview - not in some iffy nebulous "systemic injustice" kind of way, but directly and personally: about how this individual candidate will be targeted by the employer for mistreatment (just for starters, HR isn't providing very pertinent info to the candidate about what percentage of the "required" qualifications for this job are bullshit; they don't reveal how racist they are and how much racist treatment this candidate will experience from their team on the job; they aren't going to admit how much less they're paying the Indian candidate compared to American candidates; they don't reveal their company's intention to commit wage theft via unpaid overtime; etc.).
If I were to start listing all the ways in which the employers are lying to the candidate in general - not just in ways that target this candidate specifically for mistreatment but also in all ways that merely *happen* to impact the candidate along with others - I'd be here typing for weeks.
This article is pulling a trick on us by pretending the lies are only being told by candidates. It would behoove us not to fall for this trick. The employers are lying to candidates all the time. Normalizing employers lying and tut-tutting candidates for much smaller lies is wrong.
posted by MiraK at 11:29 AM on February 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
You think I should put all that in the job announcement? Seems impractical.
posted by ctmf at 11:34 AM on February 20, 2022
posted by ctmf at 11:34 AM on February 20, 2022
In fact, I'm often teased for "trying to talk candidates out of the job" for coming clean right in the interview about forced overtime rates (with statistics to back it up), involuntary travel, shift work, etc. I believe in two-way interviews and am prepared to answer all kinds of questions about demographics, pay (government, so ours are public knowledge), even harassment/discrimination cases, investigations, and areas management are trying to improve. If they stump me with a question, I email them back the answer before they decide to move forward. The radical integrity applies to me too.
I realize not all companies are like this, but I like it for me.
posted by ctmf at 11:43 AM on February 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
I realize not all companies are like this, but I like it for me.
posted by ctmf at 11:43 AM on February 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
> I realize not all companies are like this, but I like it for me.
IDK if this is about individual HR people's lies? It's great that you do this and I hope that the field of HR professionals makes your practices standard - maybe that's the way to fix a big part of the problem, I wouldn't know. But I'm not sure that you can ever be honest with a candidate about how racist someone's manager is if the manager isn't telling you, you know? Nor are you privy to, say, exactly how many company dollars are going towards supporting immigration policies in your country which ensure that Indian candidates will only be granted temporary work visas tied to your company and not green cards which would allow them to switch jobs. Even if you knew, it might be protected information that you're not allowed to reveal to candidates. Employers lying to candidates is so normalized that it can be literally illegal for individuals like you to tell the truth!
That's what allows people to write articles like this. Employers lying is made invisible and kept invisible by intention. So I think it's reasonable to react to this by - okay, doing what you do in your capacity as a hiring manager - but also by doing our best to make *candidates* lying as invisible as employers lying. Stop drawing attention to this type of story. Candidates lying is simply not that big a deal in America. There is no epidemic of people who have lied their way into jobs and cause harm because people believed their lies about their qualifications. That simply isn't a problem we're facing in our communities. So why are people writing these articles? Who benefits from this manufactured outrage?
Or to think about it another way, it's like the problem with Batman. If you're a resident of Gotham City, you should be asking who's funding Arkham and where exactly the billionaire gets his money from... NOT getting outraged about small time street muggers. We have to pay attention to the right problems.
posted by MiraK at 12:12 PM on February 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
IDK if this is about individual HR people's lies? It's great that you do this and I hope that the field of HR professionals makes your practices standard - maybe that's the way to fix a big part of the problem, I wouldn't know. But I'm not sure that you can ever be honest with a candidate about how racist someone's manager is if the manager isn't telling you, you know? Nor are you privy to, say, exactly how many company dollars are going towards supporting immigration policies in your country which ensure that Indian candidates will only be granted temporary work visas tied to your company and not green cards which would allow them to switch jobs. Even if you knew, it might be protected information that you're not allowed to reveal to candidates. Employers lying to candidates is so normalized that it can be literally illegal for individuals like you to tell the truth!
That's what allows people to write articles like this. Employers lying is made invisible and kept invisible by intention. So I think it's reasonable to react to this by - okay, doing what you do in your capacity as a hiring manager - but also by doing our best to make *candidates* lying as invisible as employers lying. Stop drawing attention to this type of story. Candidates lying is simply not that big a deal in America. There is no epidemic of people who have lied their way into jobs and cause harm because people believed their lies about their qualifications. That simply isn't a problem we're facing in our communities. So why are people writing these articles? Who benefits from this manufactured outrage?
Or to think about it another way, it's like the problem with Batman. If you're a resident of Gotham City, you should be asking who's funding Arkham and where exactly the billionaire gets his money from... NOT getting outraged about small time street muggers. We have to pay attention to the right problems.
posted by MiraK at 12:12 PM on February 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
Yeah, I know. But I can't change capitalism by myself, and I refuse to believe that means I need to accept people lying to me. I mean, they're probably going to, and that's sad, but no.
It also doesn't matter if I'm doing something completely frivolous like making plastic doo-doo or running a hockey team. I want my hockey team to win and I have a right to pick the best players, not just count on the goalie to make up for everyone else.
posted by ctmf at 12:17 PM on February 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
It also doesn't matter if I'm doing something completely frivolous like making plastic doo-doo or running a hockey team. I want my hockey team to win and I have a right to pick the best players, not just count on the goalie to make up for everyone else.
posted by ctmf at 12:17 PM on February 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
That simply isn't a problem we're facing in our communities. So why are people writing these articles? Who benefits from this manufactured outrage?
That I agree with 100%. A little suspicious editorially, even if there's specific content I can agree with.
posted by ctmf at 12:21 PM on February 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
That I agree with 100%. A little suspicious editorially, even if there's specific content I can agree with.
posted by ctmf at 12:21 PM on February 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
If you are ok with someone having a more competent person interview in your stead you should be ok with randomly hiring people for any job as a lottery system. And as much of a non-fan of the current version of capitalism you might be, there's no way you are going to convince me that would be an improvement.
And I'm sorry, working with someone who makes work for the rest of the team is stressful for everyone. If I have to work, adding more stress on top of a shitty experience is not something I want. And for everyone who seems to think that there should be a magic system that catches bad work and, what, makes it better? what do you think that system is? It's people. Adding stressors is what makes thing fail. Every (and i mean every) failsafe system has it's breaking points.
posted by aspo at 12:48 PM on February 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
And I'm sorry, working with someone who makes work for the rest of the team is stressful for everyone. If I have to work, adding more stress on top of a shitty experience is not something I want. And for everyone who seems to think that there should be a magic system that catches bad work and, what, makes it better? what do you think that system is? It's people. Adding stressors is what makes thing fail. Every (and i mean every) failsafe system has it's breaking points.
posted by aspo at 12:48 PM on February 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
So why are people writing these articles?
I'd wager a modest amount of money that the genesis of this particular article went more or less as follows: Ask A Manager publishes a letter from a reader about her husband's experience with a new employee who is blatantly not the same person who showed up at his interview. The Ask A Manager column goes viral, leading people to share stories about similar situations they've encountered. The writer or editor of this article sees the viral column and subsequent responses and goes, oh, huh, can we report this out a bit?
You can definitely take issue with social media as assignment editor or with the human tendency to focus on colorful anecdote over systematic problems, but I kind of doubt the decision to write this was made as some sort of ideological promulgation.
posted by eponym at 12:51 PM on February 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
I'd wager a modest amount of money that the genesis of this particular article went more or less as follows: Ask A Manager publishes a letter from a reader about her husband's experience with a new employee who is blatantly not the same person who showed up at his interview. The Ask A Manager column goes viral, leading people to share stories about similar situations they've encountered. The writer or editor of this article sees the viral column and subsequent responses and goes, oh, huh, can we report this out a bit?
You can definitely take issue with social media as assignment editor or with the human tendency to focus on colorful anecdote over systematic problems, but I kind of doubt the decision to write this was made as some sort of ideological promulgation.
posted by eponym at 12:51 PM on February 20, 2022 [6 favorites]
I doubt the decision to write per se, sure, but I think the choice to tell the story from the perspective of the more-powerful participant while eliding their participation in the problem-as-they-see-it is ideological. As is the implication that it's bad to make your own job easier for the same amount of money by lowering your productivity to the level of the weakest link's (where it doesn't result in death or suffering), as is the indifference toward someone maybe just trying to get by with a GED. As is, really, the idea that the suffering that the liar might experience in service of capitalism, if they don't lie, is deserved.
I wonder if this is a problem in countries with better safety nets.
posted by rhizome at 1:29 PM on February 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
I wonder if this is a problem in countries with better safety nets.
posted by rhizome at 1:29 PM on February 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
The false dichotomy here is killing me. The world cannot, should not, be boiled down to two strawmen to enable easier ranting. Most companies are not evil empires out to crush the working poor and obfuscate the horrible nature of the stormtrooper jobs on hire, but some do. Most job applicants would like a simple process where they can be evaluated on their records and abilities for a job where they can be paid fairly with a chance to learn and grow their skills, but some would prefer to skip all that and plunge ahead of their abilities to score more salary than they are worth. Life's a mix, and the simplest answers are usually incomplete or wrong, and most companies and applicants are not near either of these extremes. The hiring process sucks because, like most arms races, escalating automation has displaced common sense. Automating hiring tools implemented by the companies led to automated application tools by the workers and headhunters, which led to tougher sorting algorithms at the companies to manipulated data from the applicants to GIGO randomness in selecting resumes to outright lying by applicants to this state of affairs.
Some jobs are inherently crappy and some companies have toxic employees that make certain jobs awful and some are wonderland for the right person, some are easy and some require credentials and experience. Fibbing on a resume may not matter at the low end of the skills spectrum, but the impact is larger the further you move up that ladder. I'm not sure what you can do about inserting "Sue is kind of awful, so that's going to continue being a problem for anyone in this role" in the Indeed listing, but a qualified applicant can and should straight up ask why the job reqs included eight years of CICD when it doesn't sound like you guys are using it at all. Every interview has time for questions and applicants can cut through a lot of crap by drilling into the posting.
I hire for straight up concrete specific IT skills, ones that are easy to interview for and obvious when new hire doesn't have them. We do pretty much every hire as a 90 day contract for hire so that we have a built-in decision point after three months. Occasionally someone doesn't make it the whole way, but most do. The key is trying to be transparent in hiring and also encouraging them to ask more about us. I talk about how what the previous folks who held this manager job are doing within our org, and try to be honest in my answers. I'm not a recruiter who gets commission on a fill, I'm a co-worker who has to live with the hire and I want it to be a good fit. I honestly believe many, most even, hiring managers and job applicants are like that.
posted by Cris E at 1:56 PM on February 20, 2022 [12 favorites]
Some jobs are inherently crappy and some companies have toxic employees that make certain jobs awful and some are wonderland for the right person, some are easy and some require credentials and experience. Fibbing on a resume may not matter at the low end of the skills spectrum, but the impact is larger the further you move up that ladder. I'm not sure what you can do about inserting "Sue is kind of awful, so that's going to continue being a problem for anyone in this role" in the Indeed listing, but a qualified applicant can and should straight up ask why the job reqs included eight years of CICD when it doesn't sound like you guys are using it at all. Every interview has time for questions and applicants can cut through a lot of crap by drilling into the posting.
I hire for straight up concrete specific IT skills, ones that are easy to interview for and obvious when new hire doesn't have them. We do pretty much every hire as a 90 day contract for hire so that we have a built-in decision point after three months. Occasionally someone doesn't make it the whole way, but most do. The key is trying to be transparent in hiring and also encouraging them to ask more about us. I talk about how what the previous folks who held this manager job are doing within our org, and try to be honest in my answers. I'm not a recruiter who gets commission on a fill, I'm a co-worker who has to live with the hire and I want it to be a good fit. I honestly believe many, most even, hiring managers and job applicants are like that.
posted by Cris E at 1:56 PM on February 20, 2022 [12 favorites]
I wonder if this is a problem in countries with better safety nets.
It's not a problem even in the US! This is like when people harp on about welfare fraud: yes maybe there's some [insert particular race and gender] person out there who really does get paid by the government to eat bon bons and buy [insert raced car brand] because theys've manipulated the system, yes bad actors exist, fraud exists, but this isn't an instance where the fraud rises to the level of a problem, and focusing on the fraud will lead to humanitarian disaster.
posted by MiraK at 2:37 PM on February 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
It's not a problem even in the US! This is like when people harp on about welfare fraud: yes maybe there's some [insert particular race and gender] person out there who really does get paid by the government to eat bon bons and buy [insert raced car brand] because theys've manipulated the system, yes bad actors exist, fraud exists, but this isn't an instance where the fraud rises to the level of a problem, and focusing on the fraud will lead to humanitarian disaster.
posted by MiraK at 2:37 PM on February 20, 2022 [9 favorites]
...being able to hire the person you actually interviewed for a position is a humanitarian disaster?
posted by tavella at 2:58 PM on February 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by tavella at 2:58 PM on February 20, 2022 [2 favorites]
This thread is full Dunning-Kreuger: Some job that I don’t have and probably don’t understand is probably not that hard or important, so it doesn’t matter who has those jobs.
posted by freecellwizard at 3:10 PM on February 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
posted by freecellwizard at 3:10 PM on February 20, 2022 [10 favorites]
The Ask A Manager column goes viral ...
I hadn't heard about this, so I looked it up. It's pretty buckwild. I could imagine a tragic backstory about how badly this man needed the job, but equally I could imagine one about him being an entitled piece of shit like the kind of rich guys who hire people to take exams for them. I don't know either way, but I suspect the company started out wasting his time with the three interviews in the common way to which they had long been accustomed, only to find that they were dealing with the master of wasting somebody else's fucking time.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:32 PM on February 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
I hadn't heard about this, so I looked it up. It's pretty buckwild. I could imagine a tragic backstory about how badly this man needed the job, but equally I could imagine one about him being an entitled piece of shit like the kind of rich guys who hire people to take exams for them. I don't know either way, but I suspect the company started out wasting his time with the three interviews in the common way to which they had long been accustomed, only to find that they were dealing with the master of wasting somebody else's fucking time.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:32 PM on February 20, 2022 [3 favorites]
...being able to hire the person you actually interviewed for a position is a humanitarian disaster?
No, eroding the minor increase in power workers have seen in today's US labor market (by spinning a narrative that it/workers are suspicious/liars/dangerous) is.
posted by MiraK at 4:01 PM on February 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
No, eroding the minor increase in power workers have seen in today's US labor market (by spinning a narrative that it/workers are suspicious/liars/dangerous) is.
posted by MiraK at 4:01 PM on February 20, 2022 [5 favorites]
Here's a thing I know, though. The hiring manager will never see my resume or ever know I applied, because HR will throw it in the trash at the first step. No college degree.
I have the same experience, with the added disadvantage of being 60. Pretty much any company where applications are filtered before reaching the person who actually has to make the hiring decision and then be responsible for their performance will automatically exclude me simply based on not meeting the 'mandatory' qualification requirement that wasn't stated as mandatory in the advertisement.
I have recently been doing some consulting work for a company where I applied for a management job that I was well and truly overequipped and overqualified for and didn't even get an interview. The reason they've now needed to call in a consultant is that the person they hired for the job I applied for has NO FUCKING IDEA of how to do their job in key areas that were specifically listed as being mandatory requirements for the job. But at least they're young, pretty and have an MBA so have the skills to hire a consultant to do their job at well over three times the hourly rate the company is paying them...
posted by dg at 4:04 PM on February 20, 2022 [11 favorites]
I have the same experience, with the added disadvantage of being 60. Pretty much any company where applications are filtered before reaching the person who actually has to make the hiring decision and then be responsible for their performance will automatically exclude me simply based on not meeting the 'mandatory' qualification requirement that wasn't stated as mandatory in the advertisement.
I have recently been doing some consulting work for a company where I applied for a management job that I was well and truly overequipped and overqualified for and didn't even get an interview. The reason they've now needed to call in a consultant is that the person they hired for the job I applied for has NO FUCKING IDEA of how to do their job in key areas that were specifically listed as being mandatory requirements for the job. But at least they're young, pretty and have an MBA so have the skills to hire a consultant to do their job at well over three times the hourly rate the company is paying them...
posted by dg at 4:04 PM on February 20, 2022 [11 favorites]
> You want to reclaim some control and power and show how useful you are.The sociopaths at the top don’t need you and they never did and the people at the bottom hate you because you’re boot-licking traitors. It must suck to be in the middle of an org tree during what feels like a big paradigm shift. You’re the group with the most to lose. For what it’s worth, I empathize.
I'm a low-mid level hiring manager and this is a pretty broad and unhelpful brush to paint with. What sort of meaningful discussion or change are you expecting when starting from a position like that?
Also, the tacked-on empathy would imply you are, or have been, in that position before, so maybe you're projecting your own bad experiences and insecurities, in which case you have my sympathy.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 9:47 AM on February 21, 2022 [5 favorites]
I'm a low-mid level hiring manager and this is a pretty broad and unhelpful brush to paint with. What sort of meaningful discussion or change are you expecting when starting from a position like that?
Also, the tacked-on empathy would imply you are, or have been, in that position before, so maybe you're projecting your own bad experiences and insecurities, in which case you have my sympathy.
posted by Godspeed.You!Black.Emperor.Penguin at 9:47 AM on February 21, 2022 [5 favorites]
The extent of dishonesty embodied in faking an interview with a stooge candidate to facilitate hire seems roughly on par to me with hiring someone to write python code and then they show up and are handed a shovel and told the actual job is to slop out the pig sty (which is inexplicably alongside the parking area of the business park, but anyway). People gonna people, but aligning with the notion that this level of dishonesty scales with "what all employers are doing anyway" is just baffling to me. Admittedly I say this from a position of relative privilege as an accredited member of a professional industry (environmental engineering consultancy) but I just can't wrap my head around some of these claims of equivalence.
I do most of my own hiring to my own team. I hire mostly for a preexisting skill set (process design with a focus on industrial wastewater) or my own impression of a more junior candidate's ability to grow into a role and effectively receive instruction and mentorship. I try very hard to be scrupulously honest about the requirements of the job (challenging clients, travel, crunch time demand etc) and believe the demands are justified by total compensation, but I'd much rather scare someone off telling the truth than misrepresent, hire someone not prepared for what's expected of them, and then need to deal with the consequences of that. i am able to put a fair bit of care and attention into my hiring process because I only hire one or two a year. As we grow I am becoming aware that my bespoke approach doesn't scale well. I have not figured out the answer to that one.
Indirectly related to this but what I have concluded is that if someone is underperforming or toxic or whatever, the best thing to do is show them the door and move on. Fixes generally don't.
posted by hearthpig at 2:27 PM on February 21, 2022 [7 favorites]
I do most of my own hiring to my own team. I hire mostly for a preexisting skill set (process design with a focus on industrial wastewater) or my own impression of a more junior candidate's ability to grow into a role and effectively receive instruction and mentorship. I try very hard to be scrupulously honest about the requirements of the job (challenging clients, travel, crunch time demand etc) and believe the demands are justified by total compensation, but I'd much rather scare someone off telling the truth than misrepresent, hire someone not prepared for what's expected of them, and then need to deal with the consequences of that. i am able to put a fair bit of care and attention into my hiring process because I only hire one or two a year. As we grow I am becoming aware that my bespoke approach doesn't scale well. I have not figured out the answer to that one.
Indirectly related to this but what I have concluded is that if someone is underperforming or toxic or whatever, the best thing to do is show them the door and move on. Fixes generally don't.
posted by hearthpig at 2:27 PM on February 21, 2022 [7 favorites]
I am pro-Lying On Your Resume in that I know I could handle some things I have not really professionally demonstrated (mostly because I learned it academically or personally and the position doesn't expect me to hit the ground running). But I have always seen it as a way to get past gatekeeping in positions where you -can- perform; if your education has been unorthodox or if you can deliver using methods that are not the requested methods.
posted by solarion at 3:54 AM on February 22, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by solarion at 3:54 AM on February 22, 2022 [2 favorites]
Just because the article ludicrously conflates hiring an impostor to fake your interview with "acting perky even if you aren't feeling it" doesn't mean we have to.
posted by goblin-bee at 4:01 AM on February 22, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by goblin-bee at 4:01 AM on February 22, 2022 [4 favorites]
Freelance Demiurge: "Given mefi's particular demographics it wouldn't take that many of us to collectively possess enough domain knowledge, market conditions, and insight into manager-brain to ace practically any entry to mid-level job interview. Deepfake technology has come far enough that, with sufficiently poor lighting and tight bandwidth limitations, we could overlay a candidate's lip movements in realtime with enough accuracy that no-one is the wiser. "
This is the pitch letter for the new MaskMeFi subsite
posted by chavenet at 5:31 AM on February 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is the pitch letter for the new MaskMeFi subsite
posted by chavenet at 5:31 AM on February 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
Responding to some stuff way upthread, while I do not KNOW that there is no sinister, coordinated intent behind a couple of these articles appearing recently, I think the fact that people click on them and like them because they are entertaining is all that is needed to propagate them. It's not a new genre of story - I recall The New Yorker had an article by a guy who showed up to work at a dot-com that had not hired him (had to walk it back, iirc his Mom worked there or something and he did not think to mention this). I remember hearing at least an urban legend of a guy holding down two full-time jobs in two companies on different floors of the same building, and I've seen various stories about people outsourcing their work in software. The appeal seems obvious, to the web-surfing cubicle dweller.
posted by thelonius at 6:41 AM on February 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by thelonius at 6:41 AM on February 23, 2022 [2 favorites]
I would think it's obvious it's not a black and white/win-lose/binary situation.
Please do not say you can perform cpr if you cannot.
If you can conceptualize simple work, you can probably perform it.
posted by firstdaffodils at 7:51 AM on February 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Please do not say you can perform cpr if you cannot.
If you can conceptualize simple work, you can probably perform it.
posted by firstdaffodils at 7:51 AM on February 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
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