> I see a workplace that has become shockingly inhumane.
A thousand times this. Very few of the lessons my parents taught me apply in the corporate world. Be honest and straight with people, assume good intent, take responsibility, etc.
All that behavior will do is paint you as naive. Sure there's room for honesty and responsibility, but only when used appropriately (strategically). Strikes me as acutely inhumane every time my career is rewarded for suppressing those behaviors.
I am not even allowed to tell a candidate (another human being that probably NEEDS a paycheck) why I didn't hire them and what they can do to improve their viability.
Just because the company has discarded this person it also means I must discard them as well? It kills me every time, but I NEED my paycheck more than I prefer to help my fellow human.
Not really the company's fault here. Policies like this exist because candidates have and will sue the shit out of you for any flimsy accusation of discrimination they can cobble together.
Companies didn't create these policies arbitrarily and unprovoked. They became necessary because of some people who took advantage of the legal system to get settlements. It's in the company's best interest to protect itself from frivolous lawsuits, so it's better to be safe than sorry.
Which isn't to say that there aren't people who actually are discriminated against, but in this example it's not a company "discarding" someone as much as it is covering its bases.
This fear is overblown in my opinion. If people really want to sue then they will sue based on the fact that companies hire H1Bs into the position that they applied for. Then the company would have to prove not that the H1B was the better candidate but that the American was not qualified. Who decides on that qualification? Well a judge/jury based on the job description. If your resume matches those qualifications and it's truthful then you may have a case. I think that is a bigger risk than giving feedback. Giving objective feedback may actually help you since you communicated the specific lack of qualifications. However, I do think that you can implicitly derive the feedback based on the interview questions anyway.
I worked for a company who was sued because a candidate told us he was the second coming of Christ. We didn't really address it, and ended up not hiring him. He used The fact that he mentioned it as grounds for religious discrimination.
He didn't win, but we still had lawyer costs and what not. It is not an overblown fear at all.
If he sued with representation this illustrates another point. His lawyer took on a stupid frivolous case, probably because he also needed the money.
I think the real problem is that people today are on an economic treadmill. That need to survive economically is what make people willing to put up with all the other things.
This is exactly it. The thirst for the dollar makes us more willing to swallow bullshit with a (feigned) smile. But what can we do about it? That's the worst part. To dismantle the machine requires the coordination of a significant number of cogs.
Or you simply avoid consumerism, do your best to improve your situation, and try to hit the $50k/year point where its practical (in much of the US) to retire early if you are willing to live on a living wage rather than an inflated middle class lifestyle.
Something like 27% of the country could retire by 45 if they were willing to make the sacrifices necessary.
You don't have to be so extreme as to live off the land. If people would just love below their means and save, they wouldn't be in an absolute crisis the moment they lose their job.
Given that we have material wealth 5-50 times higher than most people who have ever lived, virtually all of us.
Given that we are on a status treadmill with legally created artificial scarcity -- well, I still don't think it should be that hard, but apparently it is.
People also act like everyone has access to good lawyers or ones that would take on a case like this. The aforementioned 'lying in business' part comes in to play here where instead of 'we don't hire [race x]' it's 'The candidate did not meet the qualifications' or some other bullshit excuse.
It would take some hard evidence for me, the unemployed or in the less powerful position, to really make a go of proving I wasn't hired because of some discrimination.
The fear of blackballing on the employee side for many things and the fear of lawsuits (which, when you sign on at employer, typically includes some language about arbitration these days) on the employer side are overblown, I agree, and makes everyone cut throat.
I want to make enough to pay for rent, food, and have some time off to chill. Your company wants to stay and business and make money. Let's make a deal that benefits us both.
This goes for firing too. I've seen people who were categorically under performing try to bring lawsuits claiming discrimination upon firing many times.
Correct in most cases but if they put an identical job title out at an identical location, they are still vulnerable so you have to pick someone a grade more junior or a grade more senior to replace them.
True, but.... A company can (does) decide how much time, energy and money to put into protecting its executives. There is a strong trend that all business decisions are made because execs desire for self preservation makes them prioritize legal safety over every other consideration, including productivity and innovation, not just over being humane.
>> I am not even allowed to tell a candidate (another human being that probably NEEDS a paycheck) why I didn't hire them and what they can do to improve their viability.
> Policies like this exist because candidates have and will sue the shit out of you for any flimsy accusation of discrimination they can cobble together.
I thought that it was the other way around. You need to have always ready the reasons why a candidate has been rejected and give them on request. Otherwise, they can sue you as your reasons are not clean and transparent.
But, I guess that this depends on the country's laws.
The reason is simple: "We've found a candidate who is a better fit" although that is, in my experience, due in no small part to the fact that we've never not been able to fill a position.
Conversely, one company I worked for did have us provide candidates thorough feedback, though that was only for those who didn't pass from a code challenge to an interview. Perhaps the hiring managers have them feedback, I'm not sure.
PS: the code challenge we gave was carefully put together so as to both be reasonably quick to complete for a skilled developer, but be vague enough in requirements to not have a single answer that could be copy-pasted from a Google search. For anyone who didn't pass, I'd typically write two to three pages, focused entirely on objective metrics, and online resources for further learning should the candidate choose to apply again in the future. We didn't use it as a binary yes / no test, but to inform the discussion we would have in the in-person interview assuming the candidate had a sufficient level of skill.
> I thought that it was the other way around. You need to have always ready the reasons why a candidate has been rejected and give them on request. Otherwise, they can sue you as your reasons are not clean and transparent.
"We found someone more qualified. Thank you for your interest."
It would be valuable if a 3rd party solved the problem of feedback minus the liability. Could be a business there. No idea what that would look like though.
I can name at least two established companies (FB and SpaceX) that will tell you why you were rejected. I 100% respect when companies are willing to do difficult, potentially perilous stuff like this.
Yeah, basically everything my parents, teachers taught me was wrong. Been unlearning and retraining my mind for the last 3-4 years via YouTube and listening to people who learned the same lessons I did as a kid and changed themselves. I’ve worked so hard and in the corporate world had basically nothing to show for it so started something else. As long as your realize this and adapt you will be ok but I was in anger/denial for too long. People cannot do anything but ‘surive’ on a company wage. I had colleagues (engineers/devs) stressing about how to pay rent or bills while expected to come in early/leave late and focus.
> All that behavior will do is paint you as naive.
Then you aren't doing it right. There is something exceedingly shocking about a brutal bluntness. Master this and you will forever change your perspective on job interviews, relationships, marriage, and leadership. You will know when you really nail it because people will begin to describe you as articulate or eloquent.
Honesty is highly valued, which is counter-intuitive to perceptions of the corporate work culture where kindness is the most highly valued interpersonal quality. How can you be brutally honest if honesty often hurts peoples' feelings? Be confident and frame your remarks with a dose of empathy. People don't like having their feelings trampled upon, but they generally prefer that to little white lies.
> but only when used appropriately (strategically).
Epic fail. Always be honest and direct with people. If there is some policy preventing the most direct and appropriate answer then don't respond at all. People are generally good at discerning when you are tap-dancing or spinning your wheels (cowardly bullshit).
> but I NEED my paycheck more than
Once you have allowed your ethics to be compromised the blood is in the water. This is a natural stress that other people will detect as a deception and a weakness. You are compromised and available for manipulation. You are a puppet. If a job makes me feel that insecure, like the last one, I will leave and go work somewhere else.
> Epic fail. Always be honest and direct with people. If there is some policy preventing the most direct and appropriate answer then don't respond at all. People are generally good at discerning when you are tap-dancing or spinning your wheels (cowardly bullshit).
I'm doing that in my current company and I feel it will get me fired (which I don't mind that much). When asked why my development tasks are taking so long, I'm honestly pointing out the myriad of architecture/design and infrastructure/CI/CD fuckups I have to spend time dealing with every day (I work in a major bank). Of course, people responsible for setting up things this way are still running things, and don't want to hear about consequences of their previous decisions.
I remember hearing this when I was at Travelocity. "uggghhh, they are being a bottleneck". The easiest solution to this is to vocalize and advocate for best practices. If doing that crushes a project timeline then make the product owner or project manager accountable for defying product quality in email. The old "I want that in writing".
If the product is crap in production everybody will be harmed, but at least you might have a get out of jail card. When I have pulled this in the past it serves as a forcing function for decision makers to revisit their poorly conceived decisions. For some reason it is so much easier to make bad decisions and order the consequences of such across an organization than it is to simply own it.
The oddest thing about this culture is how people perceive "honesty" as equivalent of brutal. Honest praise exists too. Honesty means also saying things like "that was actually Andy idea". Honest criticism is almost never dunking on somebody till you tear them down. Honest criticism is nuanced and labels minor or honest mistake as minor or honest.
Honesty is not bullying and if someone's idea of honesty is that, then that someone is likely a dick.
Honesty is not about unleashing ones negative emotions on other people, but geek culture tend to equate the two and then proceed from there.
Most any form of helping someone out carries risks. Part of what makes acts of kindness praiseworthy is the acceptance of those risks for the sake of another person.
>> Most any form of helping someone out carries risks.
Really? I've never heard that. Can you give some examples? Preferably ones that seem harmless but could go wrong. I guess providing such examples is my job but I'm too tiered, so help me out.
Killing the messenger - it's true but they'll punish you for hearing it. You may remember that saying, if not: "No good deed goes unpunished."
All actions can backfire, I remember an old friend getting reamed out by his friend he'd given a computer to, when the hard drive failed, for not providing enough free maintainence. Given!
I had a friendship nearly end when I repaired a friend's computer. Something else went wrong a week later and he just assumed it must have been something I did.
A generous uncle of mine is forever finding that temporary favors like free rent are bitterly resented when withdrawn. People ain't all nice all the time.
Benefiting someone is not the same as pleasing them; psychopaths and narcissists please others, but the rest of us like to mix in a little benefiting-but-not-necessarily-pleasing now and then. Otherwise, the world just falls apart.
''Dressed in faded, threadbare GoreTex, a couple of months shy of his sixty-ninth birthday, Pete was a gangly, slightly stooped man who had returned to the high reaches of the Himalaya after a long absence. In 1966 he’d made the first ascent of the Vinson Massif, Antarctica’s highest point. In 1958 he’d made history as the driving force behind the first ascent of Hidden Peak, a 26,470-foot mountain in the Karakoram Range of Pakistan—the highest first ascent ever achieved by American climbers. Pete was even more famous, however, for playing a heroic role in an unsuccessful expedition to K2 in 1953, the same year Hillary and Tenzing reached the peak of Everest.
The eight-man expedition was pinned down in a ferocious blizzard high on K2, waiting to make an assault on the summit, when a team member named Art Gilkey developed thrombophlebitis, a life-threatening altitude-induced blood clot. Realizing that they would have to get Gilkey down immediately to have any hope of saving him, Schoening and the others started lowering him down the mountain’s steep Abruzzi Ridge as the storm raged. At 25,000 feet, a climber named George Bell slipped and pulled four others off with him. Reflexively wrapping the rope around his shoulders and ice ax, Schoening somehow managed to single-handedly hold on to Gilkey and simultaneously arrest the slide of the five falling climbers without being pulled off the mountain himself. One of the more incredible feats in the annals of mountaineering, it was known forever after simply as The Belay.*''
Someone knocks on your door, bleeding from a wound on their arm. Are the a person in need or an armed assailant waiting to gain entry into your home?
A person flagging down help on the side of the road. Are they going to do something while you're in a vulnerable position changing a tire?
Most any interactions where "help" is more than verbal information transfer usually lead to situations where the helping party is put into a position of vulnerability. To help someone is to literally "go out on a limb" i.e. put yourself in a precarious position.
^ this. also, there's an entire family of laws[1] designed to protect people from certain risks they take on when they decide to help someone in dire need.
These are all extreme examples, but I think the parent post example (not giving feedback b/c of liability issues) is cut from the same cloth.
Businesses take liability risks day in & day out. For some, the calculus concludes that (practically) selfless gestures, like giving applicants feedback, aren't worth that risk. That, imo, is a shame.
>A person flagging down help on the side of the road. Are they going to do something while you're in a vulnerable position changing a tire?
There have been at least 2-3 different murderers who have used that technique in my local area within the last 5 years alone.It's just so wrong that I can't even wrap my head around it.
That is, in the US. I live in San Francisco, but I'm from Italy and have worked (and hired, and fired) people there in the past. I can assure you that all this "legal wall" around everything doesn't really exist in Italy, or at least it's vastly mitigated.
As a consequence, I was able to provide detailed feedback every time I rejected a candidate, for example, without even thinking of the legal consequences.
Because the way our laws protect protected classes make it trivial to hustle employers.
I’ve been sued and served with human rights complaints for firing a sleeping employee (I wasn’t checking on the sleep/wake status of employees not in protected classes) and for allegedly terminating an employee because of their protected substance abuse issues.
It’s an incredibly time consuming, expensive and stressful process.
Medical conditions give you certain protections for good reason -- otherwise employers would just fire employees with cancer to keep insurance rates down.
99/100 these things are good, but it takes a couple of jerks to make life miserable for all.
>>Agree this is a US problem and I don't understand why.
Because the US has very severe issues related to racism, sexism, ageism and many other types of discrimination. So the laws are much tighter, which results in extreme caution and risk aversion on the part of employers.
And other paces dont? Almost every country has severe issues related to all the above. In the US, we have litigation everywhere, you fall and slip in a supermarket? Lawsuit! You tripped over a pothole? Lawsuit! Heck, lawyers advertise to do this...
Part of this is we don't have a social safety net, like universal health insurance.
>you fall and slip in a supermarket? Lawsuit!
You fall and slip in a supermarket, due to a careless employee and now you owe hundred of thousands in medical bills. Some executive somewhere realized it was easier to extract that cash from a corporation than putting some person deep in debt.
Secondly, I believe America's relationship with race/sex/age discrimination goes a lot deeper than most countries, despite the fact we are younger.
Because nobody wants to be caught holding the bag. I went to the ER once because of a bad reaction to a burrito. (Serious pain and my fiancé made me go)
When I needed back surgery a few years later, I attracted the attention of my insurer’s subrogation team, who tried on several occasions to get me to state that I was in a car accident during the burrito incident.
You get hurt in a big way, your insurer will make you sue.
I have had this experience with a few companies I interviewed with in EU, where I got feedback after rejection.
It feels so pleasant, yet strange, after having taken it for granted that I'll just get a templated rejection letter based on interview experiences in the US.
I've heard the "MeToo" movement, with its guilt by accusation, is having unintended consequences. Male executives are starting to avoid women employees in any situation where there are not other people present.
This means no going out for drinks to make a deal, no business lunch to brainstorm, no meeting on the golf course to pitch your plan. Not even a discussion of confidential matters in the private office of one or the other.
Huh. Well, for my part, I haven’t changed my behavior one bit due to it, and I’m (still) not worried in the least about being sued or something for treating my women colleagues as ordinary people. Shrug.
Male school teachers I know in Canada tell me its common sense to never be alone with a female student in a room. One false accusation and your livelihood is DOA.
There are reasons for everything. The liability isn't so great that is outweighs the benefit; it's simply that the corporation ascribes 0 value to helping the candidate improve.
Liability as in the more that you have said, the more likely it is that a lawsuit will be filed based on a misunderstanding of what you did say.
It doesn't matter how unlikely the lawsuit is to win on the merits. Fighting in court and discovery both bring costs and distractions that institutions would prefer to avoid.
Companies also tend to settle frivolous lawsuits because it's cheaper. Not giving feedback is not leaving any opening for frivolous lawsuits over the reason given.
> I am not even allowed to tell a candidate (another human being that probably NEEDS a paycheck) why I didn't hire them and what they can do to improve their viability
I really like interview questions that have binary results. If you can do X, you can do this job. That way if a candidate fails, they pretty much know why they failed. They couldn't do X. It's not always possible to phrase questions like that, but when I can, I do.
"Very few of the lessons my parents taught me apply in the corporate world. Be honest and straight with people, assume good intent, take responsibility, etc."
"All that behavior will do is paint you as naive. Sure there's room for honesty and responsibility, but only when used appropriately (strategically). Strikes me as acutely inhumane every time my career is rewarded for suppressing those behaviors."
The corporate world is only a reflection of the society that makes it up. There are plenty of people who are dishonest and manipulative. There is no real way to "fix" the corporate world.
Ergo there are only two ways to fix it, both of them only involving yourself:
I see a number of comments here opining that the current workforce health crisis is driven by a "money is happiness" society.
You know what money buys you in this case? Freedom. The freedom to act how you wish and not care about this game.
Once you are free from that, it is a matter of perspective:
"The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it. This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing."
>Just because the company has discarded this person it also means I must discard them as well? It kills me every time, but I NEED my paycheck more than I prefer to help my fellow human.
I think they should have given you a personality test before giving you HR responsibilities. I'm not trying to disparage you, but you seem not particularly suited to that job.
It sounds less like workplaces are broken, and more that you're working at a broken workplace. Go somewhere better - don't give your best efforts to the place you're at. There are workplaces where being honest and straight, assuming good intent, taking responsibility etc will move you UP.
Comments like these are naive, if well-intentioned. Work cultures permeate industries, cities and more. Moreover, for most people, even in the lucrative tech industry such as ourselves, don't have the luxury to peacefully and calmly pick and choose the ideal job: rent is due, mortgage is due, savings go down, or anxiety goes up and we take what comes up.
The myth of equal contactual relationship between employer/employee is painful to see turned into a helpful platitude of the genre "if you don't like it, find somewhere else."
I always wonder what the life experiences and world view of someone like the person you're replying to, consists of.
The older I get, the more apparent it becomes that most of my peers and friends have lived extremely "privileged" lives solely based on the freedom of choice that they've had over certain aspects of life. In most cases the source of the privilege is a combination of well educated guardians and money.
I find when talking to these people, they can never seem to fathom why someone can't just simply "get out" of a situation like this, or don't seem to understand what it could possibly be about their upbringing that lets them see the world this way or gives them a certain advantage. A lot of them seem to just see this privilege as a scalar value that just corresponds to a net worth, rather than seeing it as this incredibly powerful resource that can seed safety, well-being, knowledge, personal skills, mental stability, ... the list goes on.
Yes workplaces are broken. I have been in those that are broken and in some cases I have persevered because of mortgage and other bills. But, I made choices to leave, even in the face of not having a new job to go to. Yes, it can be very difficult to do this.
However, if you stay in a job that is killing you in any kind of fashion, health, mental, emotional or spiritual, then you are staying for the wrong reasons.
There is always some kind of work available, even if you have to move to get it that will be better for you than what you may be in now. If you are in a horrible high tech job paying great money but it is killing you, then you may be better off riding the back of a garbage truck or cleaning the local municipal toilets.
Too many people fall into the trap that they have to stay in a soul-killing job because they have to pay the mortgage, the school bills, etc, etc,etc.
You don't have to do this and if more people actually bit the bullet and left, the reputation of those businesses would filter out into the broader community. As long as more people don't stand up and challenge the wrongness of these systems then they will continue to perpetrate.
The older I get, I have more and more peers and friends who are from all walks of life and at every socio-economic level. All face problems of some sort or another. It is a matter of what and how you do things. There are many situations that are extremely difficult to "get out" of. But you can, if you are willing to look beyond where you are and seek help. It is just that people don't seem able to do this.
When I first read the words "Fear is the mind-killer" in the Frank Herbert novel Dune, it struck me as having significance in everyday life. People fear many things. This fear stops them from moving forward. There is a solution to this fear, but for many people that solution is more troublesome for them than the fears they face, because it means giving up a lot of things (individual to each person) that they hold dear to themselves.
Seeking and knowing Jesus Christ is that way, but on His terms not ours. He never promised easy times or prosperity in the here and now. He did promised freedom and peace of mind in the troubles of the day. But of course, for those who rely on their own capabilities and knowledge such words are of little meaning and no effect.
The worst thing though is being at a particularly bad company, expressing this to a trusted few, and having them say "oh yeah, that's just corporate life, every place has it that bad."
They don't all have it uniformly bad in all areas in exactly the same way, and there is no shame looking for something that better matches your ethics, personality, productive style of working, etc. Don't stay at a place you know is wrong longer than you need to for being called "naive".
I'm afraid these better workplaces are relatively small and there is not much at stake at positions UP (and not even much room UP). Otherwise it would've attracted people who knows how to make workplace work "as expected" to ensure benefits for their level and up and to some extent for shareholders
You get to choose your actions. All actions are allowed, though you may not like the consequences.
> "It kills me every time, but I NEED my paycheck more than I prefer to help my fellow human."
What's killing you here? "It" is your decision to comply. A more active phrasing might be "I kill me every time I choose to comply with management's requests..."
Also, it sounds like you chose to believe, if only by accident, that money is a human need. This is false...we simply have cultures around the world where asking our community for support is not considered acceptable. Again, this is a lie. If you ask enough people for help, you'll eventually find someone willing. There's more than enough of everything to go around, especially money.
> Also, it sounds like you chose to believe, if only by accident, that money is a human need. This is false...we simply have cultures around the world where asking our community for support is not considered acceptable. Again, this is a lie. If you ask enough people for help, you'll eventually find someone willing. There's more than enough of everything to go around, especially money.
But ultimately, it all comes back to money. That's the rub, isn't it? Whether it's your or someone else's, "money makes the world go round".
Yes, for now. Capitalism won't be dismantled instantly and will need to be phased out. It'll happen as people around the world relearn it's ok to ask for what we need.
A thousand times this. Very few of the lessons my parents taught me apply in the corporate world. Be honest and straight with people, assume good intent, take responsibility, etc.
All that behavior will do is paint you as naive. Sure there's room for honesty and responsibility, but only when used appropriately (strategically). Strikes me as acutely inhumane every time my career is rewarded for suppressing those behaviors.
I am not even allowed to tell a candidate (another human being that probably NEEDS a paycheck) why I didn't hire them and what they can do to improve their viability.
Just because the company has discarded this person it also means I must discard them as well? It kills me every time, but I NEED my paycheck more than I prefer to help my fellow human.