[HN Gopher] NDA expired, let's spill the beans on a weird startup
___________________________________________________________________
NDA expired, let's spill the beans on a weird startup
Author : pimterry
Score : 1096 points
Date : 2021-07-09 11:34 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (shkspr.mobi)
(TXT) w3m dump (shkspr.mobi)
| cityzen wrote:
| shout out to AWS InfiniDash!
| BongoMcCat wrote:
| Why not name the company?
| creddit wrote:
| I would bet because it's not a true story.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| I definitely would have taken the job and then accepted the first
| good offer I got out of it
| bhntr3 wrote:
| I love the implication that there's this shadow company, Fronk.
| Seemingly defunct, they're actually thriving secretly behind the
| facade of a failed startup.
|
| Every marketing manager has engaged them privately to boost their
| numbers. Every developer secretly works for them on the side.
|
| But no one anywhere ever talks about it until one day a former
| consultant notices an expired NDA.
| itronitron wrote:
| I would think that Fronk is actually Google, but I doubt that
| Google would ever put an expiration date on any of their NDAs.
| mathattack wrote:
| It's a great conspiracy theory. :-) The reality is the model
| survived in new firms.
|
| This is a strange counterpoint to managers interviewing people
| to learn about a market.
| kaushalvivek wrote:
| Fronk sounds like the Fight Club of the developer world.
| Convincingly wrapped in the busted-startup fabrication, the
| cult probably lives on. :')
| gryn wrote:
| this sound like the backstory of an SCP story waiting to be
| written.
| [deleted]
| rcarmo wrote:
| Terence always had a great sense of timing. Loved the Infinidash
| mention :)
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > Every once in a while, I'll be interviewing a candidate who
| starts waxing lyrical about how rewriting everything in today's
| flavour of JavaScript really helped their last company. Or how
| their bosses were impressed with what this cool new bit of tech
| can do. Or why they could never work anywhere which didn't use
| this specific code editor.
|
| I do sometimes wonder if this is how popular frameworks, etc get
| ... um... popular. Not that I think there's a "Fronk" doing it,
| but, well, many Fronks.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| A lot of conference talks are little more than marketing. So
| you work at a big-ish company and either write or evangelize
| your framework there first, then give a talk about it that
| advertises its benefits.
|
| The idea of doing this through interviews is painfully slow by
| comparison to the number of people that will listen to a talk
| or a user group presentation and send links to it later.
| pts_ wrote:
| Jerk recruiters waste my time by calling me whole day for
| interviews which they get paid for. I should be paid for
| interviewing too.
| seumars wrote:
| Expired NDA stories are always weirdly insightful. I wonder where
| I could find a good compilation.
| analog31 wrote:
| I interviewed a guy once, after pleasantries he reached into his
| bag and pulled out a prototype of his invention, which he was
| trying to sell.
|
| It was a fascinating conversation, I basically let him educate me
| on its theory of operation, then it was the next person's turn on
| the interview team.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| Not a particularly interesting story. I bet there's tons more out
| there. Hoping for some anonymous and fresh HN accounts to pop up
| in this thread.
| pjmanroe wrote:
| I worked for a company that only had one in-house programmer. The
| outsourced to the Ukraine for most of their programming needs.
| This was 20 years ago.
| polynomial wrote:
| Maybe it's just bc InfiniDash was used as the example, but I had
| to keep reminding myself that this was real and not some
| completely made up parody. Now I really want to know how long
| Fronk lasted and if this sort of thing actually happens nowadays?
| borplk wrote:
| The ethics of this is very clear cut, it's unethical.
|
| It's unethical for a company to interview candidates if they
| don't have the intention of offering anyone a job.
|
| And likewise it's unethical for a candidate to attend an
| interview if they have no intention of considering a potential
| offer.
| nostromo wrote:
| I agree.
|
| But I'd point out that tech companies farm interviewees for
| ideas on how to approach problems all the time and don't hire
| the vast majority of qualified candidates.
|
| It's unpaid labor.
|
| It's a bit of karmic justice to hear of people turning the
| table and using this as a way to inject ideas into a target
| company.
| hinkley wrote:
| The second trade show I went to (as an exhibitor), someone
| warned me that a lot of wannabe investors walk the floor
| trying to get a gestalt of the tech industry. Those people
| are not going to buy our product so don't let them wind you
| up on a topic.
|
| Very much explained some experiences I'd had at the previous
| trade show.
| honestthrow1 wrote:
| And likewise it's unethical for a candidate to attend an
| interview if they have no intention of considering a potential
| offer.
|
| This resonates with me and I'm also conflicted about it the
| same time.
|
| I'm currently happy at my job, and don't think I'd like to
| consider another job any time soon. However, historically, in
| previous jobs, I usually don't notice that I want to move on,
| until it's too late, and I'm too burnt out to do well in
| interviews. It's been recommended to me, by multiple people to
| interview frequently, even if not interested in changing jobs,
| to get some practice in. But doing that feels unethical. I
| frequently consider it, but have never done it because it feels
| dishonest and unfair.
|
| But then by the time I want to change jobs I'll be burnt out,
| and and out of practice interviewing, creating a very
| depressive loop of failing at job interviews, depressing me
| further.
| otherme123 wrote:
| danluu talked tangentially about this in a recent twitt. He
| said that people are interviewing without intention to accept
| the offer, but roughly half of them end up switching jobs.
|
| It seems that usually companies pay their long term employees
| below the market, and they only notice when/if they go job
| hunting.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I don't think it's unethical to interview for jobs. You don't
| have to lie to progress through interview rounds; just say
| you're keen to hear more about the role and what the
| possibilities are.
|
| (I also struggle with staying too long in jobs.)
| isoskeles wrote:
| I don't see this as unethical because there is still the
| possibility that they will give you an offer that you would
| consider. It's just that they'd probably have to offer quite
| a bit in terms of compensation and opportunity to actually
| make you budge if you're happy with your current job.
|
| Although, I have never done it either. I've always been too
| busy at work, and I view the dishonest aspect as the
| potential lie I have to make up to take off a day from my
| current job to go interview.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Why do you need to give a reason? Can't you just say that
| you want to have a day off?
| hinkley wrote:
| Is this... what's the word... ethical? "Our
| investors think so!
|
| Well, I mean, if the investors think so, it must be.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| It also just seems grueling. Some interviews are stressful for
| me, even if I'm a little skeptical going in.
|
| It's not just the interview: It's picking the right clothes,
| going somewhere I've never been, getting there on time, and the
| general disruption to my day. I once went to an interview where
| it took me 90 minutes to find parking. Another time I got
| super-confused coming in the door because there was no
| receptionist and no one told me where to go in the building.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I would never take such a job, but it is probably a lot less
| stressful if you don't really care at all how well you do.
|
| Oddly, you would probably also do much better, since wanting
| to do well at an interview is bad for one's interview
| performance. Desperation is a turn-off. You might end up with
| a lot of job offers. Until you decide to leave this company,
| of course, in which case you might suddenly lose your
| appeal...
| paulcole wrote:
| I interview all the time for jobs I have no interest in. But
| I'm wrong about a lot and willing to hear someone else's pitch.
|
| It's the interviewers job to convince me I should work there.
|
| Plus I get interviewing practice and maybe get to meet
| interesting people.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Honestly, I really don't know if I want to work for a company
| after meeting a few people there.
| paulcole wrote:
| I guess I should say that I prefer to work for small < 20
| person companies. Usually in the interview process I meet
| enough to get a good idea.
| noutella wrote:
| Yet you _could_ get convinced, which in my eyes makes what
| you do honest.
| glitchc wrote:
| You and a few others have said the same, but I don't see
| the honesty angle. Window-shopping is not the same as
| entering a grocery store to buy milk. The intent is
| different in both cases regardless of the outcome.
|
| I condone the behaviour nor think it's unethical. Talent
| should be able to shop the market, just as companies shop
| the market for talent.
|
| Edit: Whoops! Grammar
| etrautmann wrote:
| Yes - there are plenty of reasons to interview for a job you
| may not take. It's crucial to have multiple offers when
| negotiating, practice interviewing, understanding the range
| of cultures, etc.
|
| I think it's quite reasonable to interview somewhere if
| there's a 10% chance or greater that you'd work there, which
| is hard to know before they've convinced you throughout the
| process.
| acatnamedjoe wrote:
| There's a big difference between interviewing for a job
| you're not interested in, but with an open mind, versus
| interviewing for a job where under no circumstances will you
| accept the role.
| sneak wrote:
| I mean, he could always quit Fronk and take the job at the
| marketing target.
|
| I don't think the difference is as big as you seem to
| think. Everyone has a price. :)
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| I struggle with this distinction. Almost any role I'd be
| willing to take for enough money. If you're upfront about
| those expectations I believe it's fine to take _any_
| interview.
| benlivengood wrote:
| Something not mentioned in the article is how willing
| 'Fronk' was to match and exceed every interviewer's offer.
| Get offers from FAANG enough times and Fronk would be
| paying quite nicely to stay competitive. It's not only
| unethical but stupid to commit to turning down a better
| offer than the one you currently have.
| paulgb wrote:
| Also, it sounds like the recruitment consultants might be in on
| it? If so, it's also unethical for them to take commission on
| what they know is a fake candidate.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| Not just unethical, isn't that just plain old fraud at this
| point?
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| If a company agrees to pay a consultant just for fielding
| candidates for interview that's their problem.
|
| The standard practice is for recruiters to be paid only in
| case of successful placement (and often only in case of
| successful probation period).
| some_random wrote:
| Yeah that was kinda confusing, did that use to be standard
| practice?
| behringer wrote:
| It's not their problem that they were defrauded. But yes it
| would be stupid.
| hinkley wrote:
| They could be paying a fee for candidates that get an
| offer.
|
| Of course that incentivizes recruiters to get a single
| candidate multiple offers. On the face of it this is good
| for the candidate, but it makes me wonder about some of my
| previous experiences.
| celticninja wrote:
| They get comission when the job is filled by a candidate they
| supplied, not just for sending someone to an interview.
| OJFord wrote:
| The article says otherwise, and that they gave a cut of
| their commission to the company supplying the fake
| candidate.
| celticninja wrote:
| It may have been the case for some segment of the market
| one time, it is not the case now and I have never know it
| to be. So I'm not saying they were lying to him but given
| their ethics this is entirely possible.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > And likewise it's unethical for a candidate to attend an
| interview if they have no intention of considering a potential
| offer.
|
| If FAANG recruiters keep contacting me without my applying to
| them, I think it's fair game to expect that you'll get a number
| of people who interview "for fun".
|
| If you're going to use sales tactics to get future hires, you
| have to accept a certain level of waste.
| havelhovel wrote:
| I don't know why the ethics for this is clear cut or what
| priors that statement is built on. Technical interviews are a
| relatively new social development. People are saying x or y are
| unethical, but it would be nice to see some actual
| justification one way or the other.
| phreack wrote:
| Because you're wasting the company's time and money, making
| them spend resources on interviewing someone with no
| intention of actually joining the company. All in order to
| underhandedly advertise to them without their knowledge or
| consent.
| wyldfire wrote:
| It's deceptive and exploits the interviewers' time in bad
| faith. That is a clear justification IMO.
|
| Similar but less clear cut whether it's unethical is when
| people go on 'practice' interviews where they don't have a
| serious interest in the position.
| bluGill wrote:
| It is also unethical to abide by a NDA if the company is doing
| something unethical. It might or might not also be legal to
| talk though, ask a lawyer. Of course NDAs might not even be
| legal in the first place. If the company is doing something
| illegal, then the NDA doesn't have any meaning for sure.
| aj3 wrote:
| There's no indication that company was doing anything illegal
| though.
| rswail wrote:
| Perhaps not illegal, but by definition, unethical,
| otherwise the NDA on the actual intended role would not be
| needed.
| bluGill wrote:
| ethics and legality are different things of course. You
| need to figure out how to handle things when they are
| opposed. There are no easy answers.
| JackFr wrote:
| There is an easy answer. If you feel that there are
| circumstances under which you cannot abide by the terms
| of the NDA, then don't sign the NDA.
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| How would that work? Normally you don't get to hear much
| until _after_ you sign the NDA.
| bluGill wrote:
| The problem is most NDAs are for things I can abide by,
| and I won't know until after signing that this is an
| exception.
|
| In fact in this case I wouldn't have expected the things
| the NDA is stopping me from talking about were even
| things.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| That highly depends. You need to sign an NDA to do any
| classified work, and if you find illegal activity, you still
| can't just disclose classified information to uncleared
| individuals. If you want to be a whistleblower, you're
| supposed to either go the agency's ethics office, the IG, or
| possibly straight to whatever Senate subcommittee has
| oversight and clearance, but not just release to Wikileaks or
| Glenn Greenwald unless you want to spend the rest of your
| life in prison or permanent exile.
| mrfredward wrote:
| You've confused ethics and morals. The ethical action (which
| is about professional standards rather than your conscience)
| is usually to follow the legal agreement you've signed
| (barring something that supersedes the NDA like being legally
| required to report something to regulators).
|
| So no, it isn't unethical for the author to abide by his NDA,
| arguably the exact opposite is true, though exposing these
| shenanigans at a personal risk could be argued to be the
| better moral decision.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| It is you who is confused - ethics and morals are basically
| the same thing, and both are about processes to figure what
| is ethical and what isn't according to some set of ideas;
| neither is about prescribing anything, and there certainly
| isn't anything like The Set of Ethical Things and The Set
| of Unethical Things. "X is ethical" is _always_ a short-
| hand for "within the framework I and/or my surroundings or
| audience subscribes to X can be argued to be ethical".
| klenwell wrote:
| "Is this a moral situation or an ethical situation?"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBgM_Kw6PSM&t=93s
| eropple wrote:
| Has he confused them? The only code of professional ethics
| in this industry I've ever been asked to consider is the
| ACM one. https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics
|
| By my reading of it, I'd feel obligated to publicly address
| this, and I don't consider it a breach of any sort of
| ethics I'd _believe_ in, besides.
| mrfredward wrote:
| From the code you linked:
|
| > Computing professionals should protect confidentiality
| except in cases where it is evidence of the violation of
| law, of organizational regulations, or of the Code. In
| these cases, the nature or contents of that information
| should not be disclosed except to appropriate
| authorities.
| _game_of_life wrote:
| >You've confused ethics and morals
|
| Ethics and moral philosophy are synonymous. I don't think
| they're confused, but you can consult a dictionary if you
| like.
|
| >The ethical action (which is about professional standards
| rather than your conscience)
|
| No, as somebody who has studied moral philosophy
| academically, this is your own unique definition and not
| normal. Any amount of research from a credible source like
| plato.standord.edu or even wikipedia will support this.
| mrfredward wrote:
| The dictionary defines ethics as the field of knowledge
| dealing with moral principles, sure, and that's not at
| all what I'm talking about here. Perhaps I erred in using
| the word too generally and should have been specific in
| talking about ethics in the professional sense.
|
| The ethical codes that are associated with a profession
| are different from moral principles that may usually
| guide us. The first example they gave when I studied this
| in engineering was that of a defense attorney: trying to
| help a guilty person get away with a serious crime
| violates most people's moral standards, but the code of
| ethics for attorneys demands that they defend guilty
| people anyway, because our law system is set up with that
| expectation.
|
| To my original point, someone may claim a moral
| imperative to tell the world about the company in this
| article, but the fact of the matter is just about every
| professional ethics committee or handbook would tell you
| to uphold your NDA in the situation here. Wasting
| people's time under false pretenses may be bad, and it
| isn't ethical to do it yourself, but it isn't so bad that
| you can just drop your own obligations and blog about it.
|
| And yes I admit some handwaving here since programming
| doesn't have widely adopted ethical codes yet, but I can
| guarantee that when they do exist, they won't tell you to
| violate a contract for something that won't injure anyone
| and doesn't break any laws.
| zamalek wrote:
| I agree that it's blatantly unethical, but there's also a
| degree of "evil genius" or supervillain here.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yup
|
| It is basically spamming, not in email, SMS, or robo-calls, but
| in job interviews.
|
| It seems there are no bounds to the areas that marketers will
| go to insert their message into your life, welcome or not.
| paxys wrote:
| Not unethical if you make your intentions clear from the get go
| and recruiters/hiring managers are still not willing to take no
| for an answer. Every single day I'll reply to a cold call with
| "not interested" and the recruiter will still press on.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| So because the recruiters keep wasting minutes of your time,
| you're going to waste hours of it in an interview? That seems
| like exactly the wrong answer.
| erdo wrote:
| I've encountered a fake candidate before (recruiter with a fake
| linkedin profile applying for jobs to scope out the market and
| build contact lists). I don't think they went as far as actually
| turning up to anyone's interview of course.
|
| This particular person claimed to have worked as a senior
| developer in our team. Someone contacted them to ask who they
| were, they apologized and removed the linkedin profile.
|
| We were originally tipped off by another recruiter who had
| received the fake candidate's profile for one of their jobs.
| pjmanroe wrote:
| I worked for a company 20 years ago that only had one in-house
| programmer. The rest were contracted from the Ukraine. About 5 of
| them.
| tiku wrote:
| Programming with the Joneses haha.
| roland35 wrote:
| This seems like a service which is impossible to scale! The more
| well known it becomes, the less effective it will be.
|
| That said, some candidates have inspired me to check out a new
| tech or project from their resume.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| IMO: Part of the problem of "Fronk" is the assumption that
| everyone is a salesperson. IMO, developers who are also good
| salespeople, and enjoy selling, are a rare breed. They can
| probably find more rewarding work elsewhere.
| billytetrud wrote:
| This is some real life creepy pasta
| ineedasername wrote:
| _it makes me wonder if Fronk is still out there..._
|
| It's definitely still out there in the context of evangelizers
| who will never consider another tool/language mostly because
| that's what they learned or resonated with them first.
|
| It might still be out there in the sense of paid shills on the
| level of the author's experience, but I think the majority of
| paid shills are probably getting their word out in other ways.
|
| #hashtagAWSissuperiortoAzure
| #reallyi'mjustsaying,totalynotpaidoranything
| lmilcin wrote:
| I had a candidate once.
|
| He was way overqualified for the position, so I asked him "Why do
| you want to work for us?"
|
| He said he doesn't, he just wanted to "sharpen his interviewing
| skills".
|
| He was very surprised I have unceremoniously ended the meeting
| immediately.
| paxys wrote:
| I had an interview recently where the hiring manager went
| through his usual list of questions ("why do you want to work
| for us?" "Why are you looking to switch?" "what interests you
| about the role?") and my only answer was "your recruiter
| hounded me for weeks and begged me to do this interview."
| BeetleB wrote:
| This is how all my Amazon contacts with recruiters go. They
| contact me N times a year (one particular recruiter emailed
| me 3 times in 2 months). Then at some point in the
| conversation, they _always_ ask "Why do you want to work for
| us?" My response is always "You contacted me, not the other
| way round."
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| If that was his answer, then yeah, he _really_ needed to
| sharpen his interviewing skills!
| stuart78 wrote:
| sounds like you helped him sharpen his skills.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Suppose he had said:
|
| "The market is heating up and I'm looking around. You look like
| you're doing interesting work, and I think that I could prove
| my real value to you in a relatively short amount of time."
| stickfigure wrote:
| > "Why do you want to work for us?"
|
| "That's what I'm here to find out. Tell me, why should I pick
| you?"
| lmilcin wrote:
| This is bad take, very unlikely to get any favors from the
| recruiter. You are trying to show your superior position
| but are doing quite badly from negotiation standpoint. You
| are showing you are not at all interested in mutual
| profiting from the cooperation but rather only what you can
| get for yourself.
|
| It is possible this gets overlooked or you might even get
| somebody impressed, especially if they are an engineer and
| share the sentiment, but very unlikely if it is going to be
| your future manager and he doesn't know anything else about
| you.
|
| Here is better way if you really absolutely need to go this
| route:
|
| "I am here to find out how I can help you and your business
| to succeed."
|
| Everybody knows you want to profit. Here you show it may
| even be possible for this to be beneficial to both sides.
| myWindoonn wrote:
| What you've revealed in this thread is a callous greed
| and desire to exploit your employees. But none of us are
| impressed by that. Rather, what we want in an employer is
| somebody who will leave us alone and not harm the world.
| It is up to you to show us that you're a respectful and
| decent employer.
|
| At the end of the day, it's not like you could write your
| own code. So you need to beg us to work for you, not the
| other way around.
| notahacker wrote:
| It's not "callous desire to exploit employees" to prefer
| not to hire candidates whose ego isn't so enormous they
| think interviews should consist of employers begging
| them, or indeed to prefer to hire the candidates that
| have enough motivation to take the job or at least basic
| social skill to be able to think of a reason it might be
| interesting or suited to them.
|
| Candidates usually get the opportunity to ask the
| employer what's good about working for them at the end of
| the interview if the interviewer hasn't spent the entire
| interview emphasising it anyway, and also have the
| opportunity to say no if they're not impressed. If their
| answer was "we're the ones with cash, and you're the one
| who's short enough of cash to be interviewing here", I
| suspect quite a lot of candidates _would_ pass....
| AQuantized wrote:
| The term "I am here to find out how I can help you and
| your business to succeed." rings so untrue to me. I'd
| have to resist the temptation to roll my eyes.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > You are trying to show your superior position but are
| doing quite badly from negotiation standpoint.
|
| I'm not trying to do that at all. The question makes
| sense if I apply to your company. The reality is that
| it's a recruiter who contacted me cold. They need to tell
| me what their needs are and why they contacted me.
|
| What you describe makes sense if there is a 2-way
| conversation and 2-way data sharing. In most of my
| interviews, it's always going in one direction, and then
| the company perfectly describes this sentiment of yours:
|
| > You are showing you are not at all interested in mutual
| profiting from the cooperation but rather only what you
| can get for yourself.
|
| with "you" being the company/manger/interviewer. I'm
| happy to have a detailed conversation on how I can help
| the company, if you're ready to have a detailed
| conversation about how you can help me. When they ask me
| if I have any questions, I often say "Sell this position
| to me." They never have a prepared answer. In fact, they
| never have good answers to _any_ behavioral question I
| ask them, but somehow they expect me to have good
| answers.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| That just makes you sound like you have no idea what the
| company does, and you're only here because a recruiter said
| they have a great ping-pong league (which is pretty common,
| actually, I've had candidates who couldn't describe what
| the company does).
|
| But it's a fine answer if you can remove that aspect. "Oh
| I'm interested in a company that does Widgets, and I hear
| your company is one of the best in the Widget business.
| Tell me, is that true?"
| lmilcin wrote:
| It doesn't matter. I just expect an intelligent answer that
| reflects understanding of the circumstances in which you, as
| a candidate, are in. I also look for signs that you might be
| bad fit, a risk, a fraud or a waste of time.
|
| We all know that most people don't exactly love their jobs. I
| think it is fine. Just because I do doesn't mean everybody
| has to. You can still be productive without being workaholic
| and abandoning your friends and family and promising eternal
| love and devotion to your company.
|
| But I am also obligated to find people that will actually
| help the project and bring value to the company and try to
| find a compromise between seeking perfection and filling
| positions.
|
| On that end I need to somehow judge, from a very limited
| amount of information during a very broken process if it is
| worth to continue with somebody.
|
| If you can't find a semi-convincing answer to a question you
| should have expected to be asked, there is probably some
| problem with you. Do I really want to spend effort trying to
| figure it out?
| throwaway088 wrote:
| All good points. Why do you want to work here is just a
| dumb question for this purpose. It basically forces me to
| lie and say you guys sound awesome instead of just saying
| your company ticks the right boxes for me.
|
| Have you ever asked your plumber or handyman why they want
| to work for you ? Same circumstances, there also you want
| someone passionate.
| icedistilled wrote:
| it's very different in some ways and the same in another.
| In this situation it's not the same.
|
| There is no real online review of software jobs seekers.
| There is word of mouth recommendations of who is good at
| their job like with a trade.
|
| In plumbing and short contract jobs it matters less what
| the company does, it's a one off job. If one were hiring
| a short term contractor dev then it would be the similar,
| not a full time dev.
|
| For a full time software hire it makes sense to ask their
| motivation of where they want to spend most of their
| waking time. There's a huge different between someone
| just working for money who'd work at a pay day lender
| just as willingly as working at an outdoor lifestyle
| brand versus someone into that brand. Most situations
| will fall in between, but who would you hire, the person
| who has some connection to the field or something about
| the company, or just wants to earn a buck and doesn't
| care.
| wffurr wrote:
| You helped him sharpen the skill of never putting all your
| cards on the table. Having a convincing answer to that
| particular question other than "I need to pay the rent and
| think maybe I wouldn't hate this job" is a key interviewing
| skill.
| jeffbee wrote:
| I pretty much always go with a straight answer like I need to
| pay the rent. Also when people ask where I see myself in ten
| years, I always say retired. When they ask about career
| growth I always say I'm already at the top of my game. What
| you call a "convincing answer" strikes me as ceremonial
| dishonesty.
| vikramkr wrote:
| At least in tech there's a genuine distinction to be made
| between people who want to keep progressing as engineers
| and ICs their whole lives and people who want to move into
| management type roles.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| >I pretty much always go with a straight answer like I need
| to pay the rent
|
| I always find this reasoning confusing. As a reasonably
| competent engineer, I've always felt like I have many
| employment options open to me. Yes I need to pay rent, but
| I always have an honest answer to the question that goes
| well beyond that. If I only cared about paying my rent, I
| would go work for a FANNG and triple my salary. I don't,
| because there are genuinely much more interesting reasons
| to work for a particular organization than money.
| lmilcin wrote:
| You want to be snarky, it is your choice. But from my
| experience this is just going to show you don't understand
| how to behave befitting the situation.
|
| When you are meeting your family do you tell them to their
| face that you don't want to sit with them because you have
| something more interesting to do, or do you play the game
| and try to extricate yourself gracefully?
|
| It is the same thing, really. Showing you know how to
| behave.
|
| Both sides might be playing a game, but the fact you are
| playing the game shows you have comprehension and you are a
| player.
|
| If you show you are willing to make problems on such a
| simple question you may leave impression you are
| unreasonable and nobody wants to work with unreasonable
| divas, even if they are highly capable.
| zepolen wrote:
| > Both sides might be playing a game, but the fact you
| are playing the game shows you have comprehension and you
| are a player.
|
| Yeah, except don't think for a minute you're a player in
| that situation, you're the one being played.
| hannasanarion wrote:
| By expressing interest in a professional relationship?
|
| By trying to endear yourself to the person you're going
| to spend 8 hours per day with for the forseeable future?
|
| Look, I'm as anticapitalist as the next guy, but trying
| to make yourself appealing as a coworker in a job
| interview is not a sign that you're "being played".
| Having an appealing answer to the question "why do you
| want to work here?" isn't a symbol of class oppression,
| it's a common-sense attribute of work life.
| jeffbee wrote:
| It's not snark at all. It is setting expectations. At
| this point in my career nobody should hire me because of
| what I might grow into. They should hire me because they
| need what I already do. Concocting some flim-flam about
| my growth goals would be misleading.
|
| Anyway, this approach has always succeeded for me,
| including when I told the fintech company that I wanted
| to work there because it was the job in my industry
| nearest to my house. Both sides seemed happy with the
| outcome.
| specialist wrote:
| Those lame questions happen because no one can think of a
| better way.
| mbauman wrote:
| There's honesty (which is indeed largely good) and then
| there's being honest about your overinflated ego, which
| is what I suspect is earning you the downvotes above.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| A company is not your family, the pretense that you are
| super interested in working this job instead of doing
| what you actually want in your life, and if you do
| anything else except toeing that line you are an
| unacceptable candidate is frankly nauseating.
|
| Nobody is being a "diva" by upfront stating things
| everyone already knows, but lies about. It doesn't
| require being an asshole about it either.
| [deleted]
| Iv wrote:
| It should be taught somewhere at school that if your job involves
| lying, there is probably something deeply unethical about it.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| That's taught in kindergarten.
| wiredone wrote:
| So is this a real story that just happens to use "Infinidash" as
| a stand in for their real product name, or is this just another
| artefact of the Infinidash ruse?
|
| https://twitter.com/jna_sh/status/1410178986978775040?s=21
| z3t4 wrote:
| Sometimes "a technology" can have a multi million marketing
| budget, and sometimes there is zero budget for anything related
| to it. And you don't really know... Sometimes you recommend a
| technology that you only heard people talk good about, whom in
| turn has never used it, just heard others talk good about...
| neoCrimeLabs wrote:
| This makes me want to have candidates sign a document that states
| they are there interview for their own personal employment; not
| hired or otherwise paid to interview with us for the purposes of
| intelligence gathering or promotion of products or services.
|
| I wonder how enforceable that would be. Probably, "It depends."
| As my lawyer friends would tell me. :-)
|
| I also wonder how many candidates would see that and perhaps
| question their application to our company.
| nicholassmith wrote:
| There's a plot point in Zero History by William Gibson where one
| of the characters does viral marketing by engaging people in
| conversation in bars and promoting various things, I always
| thought it was reasonably neat because we tend to pick things up
| organically like that.
|
| Fascinating to see that companies were actually trying approaches
| like that in the days where hearing about the hot new tech very
| much came from conversations with other engineers, rather than
| the wealth of places we have now for hearing about the latest &
| (potentially) greatest.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I had the idea of going out and flirting with guys directly,
| then giving them your onlyfans as your contact. I imagine this
| would effectively be a money printer.
|
| I'm surprised onlyfans women don't do this routinely. If you
| were an even marginally attractive women, and you could hold a
| decent conversation for 20 minutes, I probably would be stuck
| ponying up $10 to see you naked. Even knowing that I got
| played.
| Kalium wrote:
| You gotta think about conversion rates and expected value. If
| flirting with a guy for twenty minutes gives you an 80%
| conversion rate, it might work if they go for the higher
| tiers. If it gives you a 1% conversion rate, that's a lot of
| work for not a lot. An hour of conversation with three people
| for $10-$15? You may as well go get an actual hourly job. For
| $0.45? No.
|
| You also have to know that word will get around pretty
| quickly. People do _not_ like being misled like that and will
| compare notes and bars do not like being parasitized this
| way. Instead the spammers (and these people are spammers!) go
| for dating apps and Instagram to spread their links.
|
| Remember, Onlyfans is a power law thing. Only a small
| percentage do well. The rest are struggling and dumping lots
| of work into something that only brings in a few bucks. It's
| pretty far from printing money for most.
| xwdv wrote:
| The efficient way to do it is to go to clubs or parties,
| chat with a bunch of guys, get numbers or social medias,
| and then later text them links to your OnlyFans page.
|
| Girls can easily clean up and grab about 20-30 guys a night
| like this.
|
| Later you can try to go after the whales by going on 1 on 1
| dates and making them special offers for higher tier
| content.
| spoonjim wrote:
| "higher tier content" is one way of describing the
| world's oldest profession
| kbelder wrote:
| Email everybody from your highschool. 90% conversion, I
| bet.
| glouwbug wrote:
| I'd laugh in their face if they ended a little flirtation
| with a link to their only fans page. I'm waiting on good ol'
| Musky to spam my waking hours with thought intrusive
| advertising, not your average bar goer.
| bpiche wrote:
| I believe they called her a 'coolhunter' in that book. Which I
| was, at my age, surprised to learn was even a term once. But
| that sort of guerrilla marketing does seem very effective.
| vinsci wrote:
| In fact, the PR firm for the makers of a vodka brand did hire
| someone to order <insert brand> Vodka with a loud voice in
| various places when exporting it to the USA began, according to
| Carl Hamilton's book about the design of the bottle.
|
| The practice is known as astroturfing, for the artificial
| grass. Okdo seems to do alot of it for Raspberry Pi. At this
| point I'm more or less expecting to see articles and videos on
| having Raspberry Pi take out the trash. If it could be done
| with any microcontroller or SBC, but it is pushed, the headline
| always includes the brand.
|
| edit: typo
| floatingatoll wrote:
| FWIW, I don't know if I've read too much Gibson or not
| Enlight marketing textbooks, but <insert brand> Vodka would
| be visually attractive to me on a bottle label.
| reaperducer wrote:
| This actually happened in some places.
|
| In Chicago, there were ad agencies who would hire actors to
| engage in "spontaneous" conversations on the subway about
| various products. I read a couple of articles about it in the
| newspaper at the time.
|
| This was around 2005ish. It's interesting to think back to that
| era. I wonder if a book or movie will ever capture the energy,
| optimism, and audacity of a time when everything seemed
| possible, urban startups were awash in cheap cash, and there
| were so many young people full of vim, ready to reinvent the
| world.
| rswail wrote:
| > This was around 2005ish. It's interesting to think back to
| that era. I wonder if a book or movie will ever capture the
| energy, optimism, and audacity of a time when everything
| seemed possible, urban startups were awash in cheap cash, and
| there were so many young people full of vim, ready to
| reinvent the world.
|
| I think it's sad that you don't thing there are many young
| people out there today, full of vim, ready to reinvent the
| world. They are always there, the next generation.
|
| They will have lived through a Great Recession and a
| pandemic, they know that climate change is real and must be
| avoided. The opportunities are endless and it's only older
| people that are holding them back.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| > they know that climate change is real and must be
| avoided.
|
| Uh, we knew that in 2005 already, quite a lot of
| educational projects following the Kyoto protocols !
| reaperducer wrote:
| _They are always there, the next generation._
|
| They exist, but it's not the same. Not in the same numbers.
| You're right that a bunch of it is economy-driven, but
| every generation goes through hard times. Millennials (I
| assume you reference Millennials) like to moan a lot, but
| they had it easier than a lot of people before them.
| Millennials have never known food rationing, mass
| migrations because of natural disasters, gas shortages, a
| real war, or many other things that older Americans have.
|
| _They will have lived through a Great Recession and a
| pandemic_
|
| They weren't the first. They won't be the last.
|
| _they know that climate change is real_
|
| I'll give you that one.
|
| _it 's only older people that are holding them back._
|
| That's simple ageism. The "older" people created all the
| things you take for granted: computers, space travel, cell
| phones, satellites, jet travel. You're standing on the
| shoulders of giants.
| _jal wrote:
| A friend of mine did something similar in San Francisco, in
| the 90s. She was paid to go to expensive bars, look fabulous
| and have a good time drinking Hennessey Martinis,
| occasionally mentioning the booze and buying drinks.
|
| She had a great time doing it.
| OJFord wrote:
| These days we call it 'Instagramming'.
| steveklabnik wrote:
| My favorite version of this was " Find the Mystery Cougher" by
| Ricola. This was like... 2005? Basically they had a contest
| where they announced they'd be sending someone to various
| cities, walking around and coughing. If you offered the mystery
| cougher a Ricola, you'd win the contest and get a million
| dollars or whatever.
|
| It's like inverse astroturfing, and also arguably incentivizes
| friendly social behaviors. Genius.
| samatman wrote:
| Man. Talk about a pre-pandemic strategy!
|
| "Viral marketing" has a whole different feeling now...
| packetslave wrote:
| nitpick: the plot point with Voytek's sister doing viral
| marketing is in Pattern Recognition (the first in the trilogy,
| Zero History is the third)
| pwinnski wrote:
| I'm not sure how often this happens post-2008, but before that
| I knew several people (most would describe them as "beautiful
| young women") who were paid to go to busy bars and order a
| particular brand of alcohol. Or to encourage other people to
| buy those drinks for them, I guess. It seemed like a waste of
| money to me until I realized that I'd started ordering Jack
| Daniel's Honey liqueur because they'd installed one of those
| machines with the upside-down whiskey bottles at a bar I was
| in, and it sounded interesting.
|
| So people are pretty susceptible to steering on things like
| alcohol preference, and it doesn't seem to take much to steer
| us.
| utzucti wrote:
| My understanding is that bars in Vegas do this with
| "atmosphere models" who are payed to fill out bars and
| encourage people to order more drinks in general. I heard
| about it in this podcast:
| nodumbquestions.fm/listen/2021/5/20/109-what-happens-in-vegas
|
| starting at 37:00 with context and about 39:50 when he gets
| into atmosphere modeling. This guy started working in the
| back of a bar for a few days a week and part of the deal was
| he would spend some nights sitting in a related bar. He also
| goes into a lot of other interesting stuff that happens in
| Vegas which I don't remember off the top of my head.
| tootie wrote:
| https://youtu.be/Q0GjxhQewug
| walshemj wrote:
| OMG I hadn't seen that ill have to share that with my co
| workers :-)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's funny -- this isn't too foreign to the way I think these
| days.
| tyingq wrote:
| Sounds silly, but I imagine it could have an impact. Especially
| if combined with stuffing the name of the product into the
| resume. I know if I starting seeing "ProductX" in a few resumes,
| and hadn't heard of it, I'd look it up.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| I've often played around with the idea of doing reverse
| interviews for finding badly needed senior talent. After some
| time I realized that interviews are typically done by senior
| talent...
|
| So the idea is to go to good companies, make a good connection
| with the interviewers, and contact them later to try and hire
| them.
| lkrubner wrote:
| Anyone interested in a story written in defiance of an NDA, I
| give you "How To Destroy A Tech Startup In Three Easy Steps":
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Destroy-Tech-Startup-Three-Steps-eboo...
|
| I wrote this because it seemed important to warn people about the
| dark corners of the startup world. So much of the coverage of
| startups is pure hype,so we need more books that offer a sober,
| realistic view of how chaotic these places can be.
|
| Oddly enough, the startup seemingly died in 2018, and one of the
| Board members went to jail, but (I just learned) they apparently
| got an injection of new capital and now they are trying it all
| again.
| ElijahLynn wrote:
| That looks like a good read. Can you publish it on Google Play
| Books too? I am not in the Kindle ecosystem.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> Is this... what's the word... ethical?
|
| > "Our investors think so!..."
|
| Oh boy.
| erdo wrote:
| Hmm, we did actually start using a CI product that we hadn't
| heard of before, because two people we interviewed mentioned it
| (after checking it out obviously)
| nodejs_rulez_1 wrote:
| Given the deeply unethical hiring and interviewing practices
| across the entire industry, I would not be worried about the
| ethics of leveraging the process for the benefit of the "smaller
| guy".
| [deleted]
| tfehring wrote:
| I've interviewed a few DS candidates from teams that were very
| invested in particular data/ML platforms who I could have sworn
| were doing this. ("How would you implement X if $PLATFORM didn't
| implement it for you?" "I'm not sure, but I don't see a reason
| not to just use $PLATFORM.")
|
| I never _really_ thought they were doing this, and I think they
| were employed by big well-known companies (definitely not the
| company that makes $PLATFORM). Just kind of a weird pattern.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| It would almost make me feel better to find out they were doing
| this. The number of people who can't think laterally beyond the
| tool in front of them is scary.
| kvakvs wrote:
| It is a valid behaviour to not join a company who use a
| technology you dislike. Rather continue looking for a job which
| will make you happy waking up every morning and starting your
| work.
| darepublic wrote:
| Which way I fly is Fronk; myself am Fronk; And, in the lowest
| deep, a lower deep Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To
| which the Fronk I suffer seems a Knorf.
| jakeva wrote:
| I had to know so I googled it. Paradise Lost, John Milton. The
| original quote is "Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And
| in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threat'ning to devour
| me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a riot!
|
| Guerrilla marketing at its most sleazy.
|
| Modern jargon is crazy. Really hard to verify. I guess that's why
| these "draw spunky" tests are so prevalent, these days, because
| we can't trust a word out of anyone's mouth.
|
| Makes me wonder why we would hire folks we can't trust, but I'm
| old-fashioned, and out of touch with what the kids are into,
| these days...
| beckingz wrote:
| what is a "draw spunky" test?
|
| Besides horrifyingly named.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I think he's referring to those white board coding sessions
| where the interviewer forgets that you're a human being and
| not a dog.
|
| "Draw Spunky" as a reference to the ubiquitous "If you can
| draw Tippy, you can be an artist!" ads in the back of comic
| books where a kid would connect the dots to form a turtle and
| then send five bucks to some fly-by-night diploma mill.
|
| Putting the two concepts together as "draw Spunky" you get a
| real-life CAPTCHA.
|
| Or maybe I've been smoking crack again.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| No, you got it.
|
| I'm old, so I remember "Draw Spunky." I refer to the test,
| here: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/evolutionary-
| design-...
| comicjk wrote:
| I'm guessing this is a psych/creativity test about drawing an
| abstract concept, like courage. "Spunky" would then be the
| abstract concept of spunkiness.
| jfk13 wrote:
| I guess the Americans here may be blissfully unaware that
| this word could have other connotations on the right-hand
| side of the pond.
|
| https://british-american-dictionary.com/bad-words/spunk-uk/
| Wohlf wrote:
| It has the same meaning in the US.
| danvesma wrote:
| I was once asked to sign an NDA in order to discuss developing an
| app for someone. Upon signing, I learned that they wanted to make
| an App that let people check their makeup on their phone, without
| using the camera, by simply converting the pixels to 'mirror'
| colour. NEXT!
| Andrex wrote:
| I had to re-read this several times to even understand what
| they were asking. That's absolutely insane.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| You mean turning the phone off?
| leke wrote:
| Easiest app to develop ever.
| [deleted]
| 0x456 wrote:
| "We want to hire people like you to go and interview at other
| companies."
|
| "During the interview, you'll evangelise our clients' products."
| mathgenius wrote:
| This sounds a bit like "Ad buddy", from a Netflix sci-fi series
| called 'Maniac':
|
| "If you're broke, you can sell yourself to an "Ad Buddy," whereby
| your bills get paid in exchange for a person accompanying you
| everywhere and spouting advertisements, like a human pop-up you
| can't close."
|
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/maniac-statue-e...
| prepend wrote:
| How much were they offering? I've heard of these kinds of
| "grassroots" type promotion jobs and the pay seems so low as to
| not be worth the bother.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| That's the thing, not only is this unethical, I can't imagine
| how much you would have to pay me to make it worthwhile to
| interview on a regular basis ...
| miga wrote:
| Many companies ask for enthusiasm for a particular technology in
| their job postings.
|
| I think this is a better explanation that having many companies
| that lose their money on unviable business model.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I'm certain this is being done today, too. See Rust, etc.
| [deleted]
| zmix wrote:
| I use Arch, btw. It's even better than Slack!
| Zababa wrote:
| I agree that it's being done, but I don't think it's being done
| by a company paid by clients. If I really really loved Rust, or
| OCaml, or whatever, joining with a few people to promote it (by
| talking about it, writing articles, but also writing high
| quality libraries and contributing to the ecosystem) would be
| the logical thing to do. You often hear "I'd love to use
| $NEW_THING but the ecosystem isn't big enough.". That's
| something you can start fixing with a few dedicated people. If
| you really believe in a technology, or really love it, you can
| try to influence its course and popularity. You can promote it
| at your job, try it on a greenfield project, etc.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Yeah, the phrase Developer Advocacy is still being used, and I
| think most 'big' libraries and tools have it - it's a form of
| marketing. Ideally they manage to astroturf themselves into
| becoming popular, so that the people work with the tools become
| advocates themselves.
|
| I mean it works, to a point, as a sales / marketing tactic.
| _fizz_buzz_ wrote:
| What's the problem with rust?
| 0x456 wrote:
| Often you'd see HN posts near the top, with few votes or
| comments. Although Rust sounds amazing, it has a Submarine*
| feel to it. Would the project be on the front page if the
| title didn't mention Rust?
|
| I think Haskell had this problem years ago as well: it was
| like any obscure algorithm you'd lookup on Wikipedia had
| sample code ... in Haskell only.
|
| * http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
| hobofan wrote:
| This is often being done by the mods of the site though,
| and not by the submitters. I've had it happen to a post of
| me, and I've seen multiple comments by other submitters
| that the post title was added to include "in Rust".
|
| I'm not sure what the incentive for the mods is here
| (overall higher engagement on the site?), or if it's still
| being done, but from a certain point on, I think it could
| even be harmful to Rust, by preventing it from being
| recognized as a "normal/mainstream" language.
| simias wrote:
| I'm doing it for free!
|
| Jokes aside I don't think it's a plausible example, because
| it's not like Rust is a product people directly buy. Whose
| interest would it be to astroturf Rust adoption? If people only
| pretend to use a programing language, it's not going anywhere
| and not going to generate revenue for anybody.
| bisRepetita wrote:
| >A company - let's call them "Fronk" - asked me to come in for a
| consultation about a Developer Advocacy programme
|
| So if I follow the logic, the OP must have signed an NDA for a
| consultation, then they talk about something quite different and
| fishy, and he feels bound by the NDA not to say anything.
|
| Wondering 2 things: is that a valid NDA? Should he have signed
| such an NDA?
| dogman144 wrote:
| Reminds me of this threat model:
|
| Long term moles at a company, able to climb high and perform well
| due to remote work which enables:
|
| - never really meeting the mole
|
| - the "mole" is a superstar because they have a team of corporate
| raider-employed 10x'ers evaluating and executing everything that
| this mole does at work. The mole's code is written by 3x MIT
| grads hot swapping on the keyboard. The mole's biz ideas come
| from a few HBS grads. And so on.
|
| Productivity, business intuition, and engineering talent is off
| the charts for this mole. It rises far enough in the hierarchy
| such that it maneuvers the company towards favorable action for
| that corporate raider. Every idea the mole suggests, the
| corporate raider works in the background to enable via favorable
| market conditions. Whoever is the public face of the mole'a
| reputation might be in flames if found out, but what's that vs
| netting 3% of a corporate buyout valuation.
| paxys wrote:
| This is more common than you may think, but is carried out by
| state-sponsored actors because random people and corporations
| won't have the time, resources or even a real need to plan a
| decades-long operation. Also whether the position is physical
| or remote has very little bearing. Moles can be planted either
| way. Heck the Manhattan project had Soviet agents working for
| it.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Ya fairly common to catch PLA plants in priv
| sector/universities, agreed.
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| https://www.npr.org/2019/11/06/777098293/2-former-twitter-
| em...
| time0ut wrote:
| This is possibly the most interesting thing I have read this
| week. It is possible this happening now. The pinnacle of a
| social engineering attack.
|
| So how would this be detected and countered? It seems
| undetectable if the mole has perfect opsec. I guess an
| organizational structure with a lot of checks and balances
| might be resilient to their manipulation...
| xvector wrote:
| There are not really any effective counters. You can assume
| most major tech corporations have moles from most major
| intelligence agencies.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Insider threat programs, ultimately. But it would be hard to
| catch if it's actually operationalized in this way.
| FredPret wrote:
| This would make a good movie
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| This would be a more plausible conspiracy theory with state-
| level actors; I imagine the TLA's have the resources to do
| this, and it might make sense to do at somewhere like
| google/intel/microsoft with some juicy payoffs. Otherwise it
| seems like more work than actually starting a company to do
| whatever the mole is accomplishing. I like that the mole's
| preferred pronoun is "it"..
| troymc wrote:
| This sounds like the plot for a really fun movie.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Love it. I'd watch this movie.
|
| In the real world, I suspect most corporate threats require
| significantly less effort.
|
| When I first started interviewing candidates I was surprised at
| how readily some people volunteered confidential information
| about their previous employer. I frequently have to ask people
| to stop sharing confidential details about their current
| projects or even problems their current employer is having.
|
| I've long suspected that the easiest way to extract
| confidential information from a company would be to pose as a
| reputable recruiter from a glamorous company with high wages,
| then simply get in touch with a company's employees and ask
| them what they're working on.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Absolutely. This is less of a threat to a corp, and more of
| an extended takeover that avoids the challenges/risks with
| other forms of takeovers.
| fny wrote:
| Lol. You're talking about 3x MIT grads and 3x HBS grads... the
| mole needs to be paid north of $1M out the gate to compensate
| everyone.
| halgir wrote:
| They're not talking about the mole outsourcing his work so he
| can slack. The whole operation runs at a net loss in order to
| place the mole in a position to support the financier's
| goals.
| Groxx wrote:
| That said, given how much larger high-level position
| compensation is in many companies... maybe it could be a
| source of revenue.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Exactly. The "mole" is a team in reality, a long term
| payout makes it worth it. Described it further down in
| another comment. Ya, this would be a huge undertaking with
| risks all over the place. But are there enough sociopaths
| at the funds who care about this area of corporate takeover
| and at tech companies doing shades of ethical stuff? I
| think there are, for sure.
| Kylekramer wrote:
| This reminds me of the Key and Peele robber sketch when the
| heist plan is to get a job at the bank, work there 30 years,
| and get a regular paycheck so the bank is giving you the loot
| without ever suspecting it.
| _air wrote:
| Here's the Key and Peele sketch:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceijkZQI1HM
| hammock wrote:
| This is commonplace. It's called a no-show job. (Yes I get
| the joke. Just saying)
| anamexis wrote:
| No, it's a show-up-every-day-for-30-years job.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| It's a job, not a no-show job.
| tbihl wrote:
| This isn't that different from what probably happened an Nortel
| in the early 2000s. While their network was completely
| compromised by Chinese attackers, the C suite people downplayed
| the threat, and there are theories that this only happened
| because there were enough moles keeping everyone complacent so
| they wouldn't get too excited about the existential threat they
| faced. And now, after the most hostile of takeovers, they go by
| the name Huawei.
|
| Edit: if you want a thorough version of the Nortel story, I
| recommend this podcast: https://malicious.life/chinas-
| unrestricted-warfare-part-1/
| dogman144 wrote:
| I want to say there was a darknet diaries episode on
| something related to this - a long term IR engagement, about
| to kick out the attack, suddenly attackers disappear. Few
| days later, M&A announcement. Hacking as due diligence.
| tailspin2019 wrote:
| > And now, after the most hostile of takeovers, they go by
| the name Huawei.
|
| I was curious about this statement but on reading up on the
| topic, it doesn't seem to me that Nortel was "taken over" by
| Huawei?
| vkou wrote:
| An alternative interpretation of what happened to Nortel is
| that they made a lot of money, got complacent, stopped
| innovating, sat on their laurels, utterly failed to adapt to
| changing demands from their customers, or to keep up with
| competing vendors, imploded, and then the C-suite covered for
| its numerous failings by blaming China.
|
| "Hackers stole our sauce" may be a plausible explanation for
| why a competitor got a jump-start, but its not a plausible
| explanation for why your business fell apart - especially
| considering that Cisco, Nokia, RIM, and many, many other
| western communication vendors continued to thrive after
| Nortel's disaster.
|
| Nortel died because it couldn't adapt, the same way that RIM
| invented the smart phone, and then died, because it couldn't
| compete with Apple.
|
| Also, worth noting that Canadian tech firms don't pay well,
| so all the talent goes south, and then those same firms
| grouse about their inability to compete with the valley.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > An alternative interpretation of what happened to Nortel
| is that they made a lot of money, got complacent, stopped
| innovating, sat on their laurels, utterly failed to adapt
| to changing demands from their customers, or to keep up
| with competing vendors, imploded, and then the C-suite
| covered for its numerous failings by blaming China.
|
| A third option is all the fraud that happened at the
| company. Hard to keep investor's confidence when everyone
| is being audited for accounting fraud [0].
|
| > Also, worth noting that Canadian tech firms don't pay
| well, so all the talent goes south, and then those same
| firms grouse about their inability to compete with the
| valley.
|
| Why would they do that? I recall someone telling me that an
| internship at BlackBerry was a positive signal, but a full
| time position not so much when looking at resumes. How do
| they think they can compete for talent?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nortel#After_the_Internet
| _bubb...
| vkou wrote:
| I don't think low investor confidence was the reason for
| Nortel's spectacular negative cash flow, as much as
| customers losing faith with crappy, overpriced products.
|
| That, and basing their business on selling film in an age
| of digital cameras.
| marnett wrote:
| Wow this is fascinating. Can you recommend any further
| reading on this subject? This is a degree of corporate
| espionage I've never thought of before.
| tbihl wrote:
| Edited my post to add a multi part podcast recommendation.
| marnett wrote:
| Fantastic. Thank you for that! Excited to give it a
| listen
| slumdev wrote:
| It's an interesting idea, but ascending the ladder (beyond
| "senior" or "line manager") usually has very little to do with
| productive output.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Right, but in come the MBAs and acting classes, and corporate
| raider smoothing the path on all strategic decisions this
| mole makes.
| slumdev wrote:
| Even doing all the right things, it's so rare to ascend
| without quitting.
|
| Spending 3 years, earning a single promotion, and then (not
| immediately but shortly after) quitting and going somewhere
| else (for another promotion) is the surest route if applied
| consistently. Another route is to parlay one's background
| as a senior at a large company into an outsized role at a
| small company. Perhaps even CTO if it's a startup. After a
| few years as CTO, that person can work his way back into
| senior management at bigcorp.
|
| It's difficult to see how someone could turn this into a
| profitable business. But if the backer isn't interested in
| profit, it's a great way to get assets inside the upper
| echelons of a lot of major companies...
| dogman144 wrote:
| What backfills the motivation to do this is:
|
| 1) who is behind it, actually.
|
| This isn't about dogman144 making CTO. It's
| BlackRock/private fund/whatever steering companies of
| interested towards long term, favorable outcomes, at the
| cost of the salaries for 20 people mole-strike team,
| tough NDAs, a large finder's fee at the end, and at the
| benefit of 0% of the negative publicity they get for
| doing this sort of action out in the open. No % shares
| reporting anymore, no PR, no protests for buying up
| residential real estate in bulk, and so on.
|
| 2) how much does the figurehead mole make, as this could
| be an excruciatingly stressful experience
|
| Start with a fee model like 2/20 for hedge funds, and
| data like FireEye is getting bought out in "an all-cash
| transaction for $1.2 billion." At a 3% mole fee of the
| final transaction, thats a $36mil (edit, math :( ) payout
| for the mole, using FireEye numbers, putting aside 5-7
| years of double-dipping Raider pay, FireEye pay. Kraft
| bought Cadbury for $19B. Some of the larger LBOs push
| $45B. There are a number of ways the incentives can work
| here - if this takes less time to make $3.6m than an IPO
| would, more surety of outcomes because you have a titan
| of a fund steering things, and guaranteed Partner at the
| fund once this is complete, and so on, the numbers likely
| make a bit of sense.
|
| 3) Jumping companies: also doable. Either way the mole
| team wants to play the long game: they really want
| X-company, and to do that they could do a few years of
| jumps. Few years at a single company, or a few years at
| separate companies until that "senior" mole team lands at
| the target company - same/same.
|
| You nail it with this: it's a great way to get assets
| inside the upper echelons of a lot of major companies.
| And add in the above, the payouts look good too.
|
| Is this legal, do you get on the wrong side of outside
| employment regs at the company, and so on? Not sure! But
| what's interesting to me is with remote work, this
| suddenly gets a whole lot more doable, an there are a lot
| of all-remote, pretty valuable companies (revenue, or IP
| access - see GitLab) out there. This puts aside all
| considerations of intel agencies doing this, as well.
| time0ut wrote:
| Wouldn't this risk running afoul of insider trading laws,
| at least under some circumstances?
| kolanos wrote:
| Pretty sure only if a party privy to insider knowledge
| makes a trade based upon it.
| slumdev wrote:
| > This puts aside all considerations of intel agencies
| doing this, as well.
|
| This seems more plausible.
|
| But still, you make a good point about the size of the
| reward. A low probability of success might be OK if the
| payoff is measured in billions.
|
| It's almost certainly illegal, but I'm not a lawyer, so I
| don't know the specifics.
| darepublic wrote:
| A natural charmer is more valuable than someone with high
| tech ability. The charmer just needs enough tech prowess to
| come across well in brief interactions and their outsourced
| hacker team will help them with the meat of their work.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Native advertising taken to the extreme.
| [deleted]
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| The author says they did _not_ ultimately take the job, so, does
| that mean they had to sign an NDA just to interview?
| caoilte wrote:
| It's not uncommon to have to sign an NDA just to visit an
| office (you never know what you might see on a whiteboard in a
| public space).
|
| Makes coding meetups a bit awkward at those places tho.
| danpalmer wrote:
| The author does say that he was doing a consultation for a
| DevRel programme. That sounds to me like it was either paid
| consultation, or essentially a sales process by the author to
| generate consultancy work. NDAs are common in both of those
| scenarios.
|
| Signing an NDA before taking a job is indeed very atypical in
| the UK.
| alibarber wrote:
| I have exclusively signed NDAs for jobs before final
| interview stages in the UK. And now in Finland come to think
| of it. I don't really see it as particularly controversial-
| obviously I can't expect to walk into an office and tell the
| world about what I saw and the projects and clients a company
| had, and yet I'd quite like to know about them before
| committing to work full time there.
| m_a_g wrote:
| Signing an NDA before the interviews is a very common practice
| (unfortunately)
| jerf wrote:
| As long as we're signing things before an interview, maybe we
| should be adding clauses like "I'm in this interview solely
| for the purpose of applying for this job" and "I have no
| other commercial interest in this interview."
|
| Or, to put it another way, this is not a large-scale
| sustainable enterprise for a startup; even if it "succeeded",
| the business environment will adapt to eliminate it.
| Interviews are too expensive to let companies be screwing
| around getting paid to pitch crap at you in an "interview".
| jdowner wrote:
| My favorite is when you've finished interviewing or whatever
| and then they ask you to sign an NDA. Haha, no.
| zeusk wrote:
| maybe in UK, never heard of in US.
| nwsm wrote:
| Google has you sign an NDA to interview. I wonder if I've
| just broken it.
| jkaplowitz wrote:
| I've done it in the US once, for a well-known tech company
| too. It's a bad practice but certainly present.
| hhh wrote:
| I have signed multiple NDAs for interviews in the states.
| JoBrad wrote:
| I've never done this in the states. It seems borderline
| unethical to require someone to sign a contract without
| any compensation.
| brianwawok wrote:
| That's ok, thousands of other people will.
|
| Seems weird to let leak "secrets " during an interview
| that require a NDA though. Just be vague and tell them
| the secrets later.
| OJFord wrote:
| And scrub whiteboards etc. every time you want to show
| around (or even just to the interview room) an
| interviewee?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| ...yes? If your secrets are worth an NDA, they're worth a
| little opsec.
| OJFord wrote:
| I was responding to a suggestion not to use an NDA, and
| to 'just share secrets later'. Just pointing out that
| that's more involved than simply not breaking down
| (explicitly, in the actual interview) exactly how your
| middle-out compression algorithm works or whatever.
| edabobojr wrote:
| Many years ago I interviewed at a military contractor.
| Every time we walked through a work area someone went
| ahead and announced I was coming through to ensure nobody
| had something that would require a clearance to see.
| joombaga wrote:
| If they have secrets, yes! Don't give candidates access
| to secrets.
| OJFord wrote:
| Yes, again, I was replying to the suggestion that 'oh
| it's easy no need for NDA, just share the secrets later
| if they get the job'. Point was it's not just deliberate
| sharing of secrets you need to avoid in that case. When
| candidates are asked to sign an NDA, it's probably _not_
| because they 're going to be explicitly told anything
| sensitive.
| wsc981 wrote:
| My current Australian client asked me to sign an NDA before
| doing the interview as they were busy applying for a
| patent.
| indigochill wrote:
| I've never seen this (though also not interviewed a ton).
| What are they afraid is going to leak from an interview?
| Presumably you're not diving into trade secrets with someone
| you're merely deciding whether you're going to work with?
| user-the-name wrote:
| > What are they afraid is going to leak from an interview?
|
| Well, in this case, probably exactly what is in this
| article?
| slumdev wrote:
| Yes, some companies still do this. In fact, the oneNO CARRIER
| [deleted]
| mromanuk wrote:
| It's interesting how they saw an untapped marketing channel to
| sell more garbage, at least it was creative.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > Oh, we work with loads of recruitment consultants. They get
| paid for every decent candidate who gets interviewed, so they
| give us a cut of their commission.
|
| Is this a thing? Could I offer to go interview at all the crappy
| companies I get recruiters for in exchange for $100?
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| http://www.June.win
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Signed up.
| peteretep wrote:
| No, recruiters get paid for placements, not interviews
| ipaddr wrote:
| Some do and some get paided per interview, per resume. And
| some you have to pay.
| peteretep wrote:
| > some get paided per interview
|
| I guess over a large enough number you'll find people doing
| anything, but with a long history with the recruitment
| industry in a couple of countries, I've never seen this.
| With good reason too: there is no end to the number of fake
| developer CVs I could generate.
|
| > some you have to pay
|
| In many countries that's illegal, and I'm also yet to see
| this in the Real World
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Fronk is like a cashback type of deal, but you also have to
| push ads.
| incrudible wrote:
| _" And it makes me wonder if Fronk is still out there...?"_
|
| Fronk realized that people will voluntarily evangelize technology
| if it meets certain criteria. Having signed an NDA, I can not
| disclose what those criteria are.
| forgingahead wrote:
| Consensus building is a real thing that happens every day all the
| time. Most of us here who self-identify as "engineers" or
| "hackers" don't truly understand this - when we code, we rarely
| build actions by proxy, there are usually very explicit
| instructions being written and therefore we bias ourselves to
| assuming the rest of the world also works in an explicit, up-
| front way.
|
| This "startup" had a shady business model and sounds fishy as
| hell, but sadly every day some group, person, or org is trying to
| consensus-build us to thinking and feeling in a certain way.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Reminds me of something.
|
| I used to work with a senior guy who went freelance and then
| bunched together with several other freelancers, also seniors, to
| form... "an operation". The MO was that one of them would go and
| interview for a permanent job, impress the heck out of everyone
| and then say "there's more like me, be happy to help you out,
| _but_ on a contract basis _and_ as a group. " They were basically
| bait-n-switching them to outsource parts of their development and
| in some cases it worked, because their fees were very reasonable.
| And the fees were reasonable because they did very little of the
| actual work themselves and instead re-outsourced it to some
| Ukranain dudes.
|
| Looked fishy as fuck and I'm not sure how it ended because I felt
| out of touch with the guy.
| 0x456 wrote:
| Apparently surgeons can do something similar. The experienced
| surgeon you talked to is just there you get to you agree to
| surgery, without explicitly telling you a first year
| (poorly/un)supervised resident will do all the cutting.
| mlac wrote:
| This happened with my wife's anesthesiologist during labor -
| the resident did his first epidural on her. I didn't love it,
| but everyone has to learn at some point - and calling it out
| at the time could have caused more frustration, concern, and
| delay in the procedure (missing the window for getting one
| due to contractions). I also didn't ask how many he had done,
| but I overheard it prior to him starting. I think asking him
| about his experience could have caused him to get nervous.
|
| It turned out fine.
| mike_ivanov wrote:
| Experienced that. I was under a local anesthesia, so I could
| hear the surgeon hissing at that poor fellow things like "no,
| not there! here! - _this_ is how you cut it! ".
| UseStrict wrote:
| I'm not sure it's that straightforward, if it's their name on
| the case and they was totally absent, that would be a huge
| liability for them and the hospital.
|
| Newbies need to learn, there's only so many cadavers you can
| cut into before you need experience on living flesh.
| Experienced surgeons are often observing the procedure, and
| step in as necessary if there is a complex part, or if the
| junior isn't doing something correctly.
|
| Beyond just the surgeon there is a good number of incredibly
| professional secondary staff who are running the whole
| operating theatre, from imaging, instrument preparation, to
| labs and vitals. When you speak to a surgeon you're not just
| getting them, you get their entire team, junior to
| professional.
| notatoad wrote:
| but that's exactly the same scenario as software - the
| experienced guy isn't just there to be a pretty face to
| make the sale, he's there because he's staking his
| reputation on the ability of his juniors to get the job
| done. if the juniors can't get the job done, the senior and
| the consultancy firm lose credibility.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| 100%. True experience with ACL surgery in New York: It's an
| assembly line with the junior surgeons cutting open and
| patching up. The main guy goes OT to OT and does the most
| critical part and then moves on to the next one. They
| schedule 6-7 surgeries at once; the whole process is quite
| impressive.
|
| Exactly the same process for my mom's knee replacement in
| India. By the time the actual knee guy walks in, patient is
| knocked out, opened up and ready for the heavy hitter.
| namdnay wrote:
| That's standard practice in nearly all hospitals worldwide.
|
| In the UK, the most senior doctors are actually called
| "consultants" - they consult on the work being done by the
| others
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| I'd say thats something different: letting others do the
| time-consuming routine parts, so the senior surgeon can
| concentrate on what he does best. This is actually
| desirable: more patients benefit of his skill that way.
| rswail wrote:
| I would be suing the surgeon and reporting them to the
| surgical regulatory authorities if something like that
| happened.
| h0h0h0h0111 wrote:
| I've never had surgery - how would you know? Is it even
| against regulations? (I imagine this is country dependent)
| pjerem wrote:
| You would know just before the surgery. The surgeon is
| supposed to be there before you are put down. At least
| it's what happened to me twice.
|
| Last time I had a different anesthetist than the one I
| saw before. But I was happy because I did not have
| affinity with the one I met and the one I had was very
| welcoming and kind. Which is a really good trait for the
| person that is responsible to supplant your vital
| functions for some hours.
| voakbasda wrote:
| Bait and switch is illegal everywhere, right? If the
| surgeon stated that they were the one that would be doing
| the job, they are guilty of this.
| goguy wrote:
| They most likely didn't though as it would be a flat out
| lie. He probably explained the procedure etc but never
| commited to doing it himself specifically.
|
| Or maybe something more important came up just prior.
| Ultimately people have the learn and have a go at some
| point - with your attitude they would be no more doctors.
| derangedHorse wrote:
| There doesn't have to be any deception on anyone's part
| for their to be new surgeons. If a new surgeon is doing
| the operation, he/she should be the one to meet the
| patient and explain the operation
| zo1 wrote:
| Exactly, there are "teaching" hospitals where the entire
| premise is that it's for newer doctors to learn. They're
| usually cheaper as well and people know this.
| mattkrause wrote:
| It depends on how you're defining as the job.
|
| The nominal surgeon usually does the "heart" of the
| procedure: replacing your ACL, removing a tumor, etc.
| Their assistants just get you into/out of the state where
| that happens.
|
| Surely you don't expect the surgeon to personally do
| everything related to the case, right? Wash the drapes,
| prep the instruments?
| karlding wrote:
| This does pose a sort of chicken-and-egg problem for
| residents, although I would hesitate to call it a bait-and-
| switch.
|
| In a vacuum, everyone would choose the best care available
| to them. Of course this is expected. How can anybody be
| expected to do otherwise when it's _their_ life (or family
| member 's) at stake?
|
| Atul Gawande talks about this experience in Complications:
| A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science [0], where his
| son had been cared for by a full team of cardiologists,
| ranging from fellows in specialty training to attendings
| who had practiced for decades. However, due to certain
| complications, they needed to choose a pediatric
| cardiologist with which to schedule follow ups and decide
| on what procedures would be necessary in the future. One of
| the fellows, who had been the one putting most of the time
| in caring for his son, proactively approached them the day
| before discharge and suggested setting up an appointment.
|
| It's common for fellows to receive patients this way, and
| at any teaching hospital, an attending is there to
| supervise and take over if needed. The entire system is set
| up such that residents and trainees are given opportunities
| to learn.
|
| He says:
|
| _> A resident intubated him. A surgical trainee scrubbed
| in for his operation. The cardiology fellow put in one of
| his central lines. None of them asked me if they could. If
| offered the option to have someone more experienced, I
| certainly would have taken it. But that was simply how the
| system worked--no such choices were offered--and so I went
| along. [...]
|
| > The advantage of this coldhearted machinery is not merely
| that it gets the learning done. If learning is necessary
| but causes harm, then above all it ought to apply to
| everyone alike. Given a choice, people wriggle out, and
| those choices are not offered equally. They belong to the
| connected and the knowledgeable, to insiders over
| outsiders, to the doctor's child but not the truck
| driver's. If choice cannot go to everyone, maybe it is
| better when it is not allowed at all._
|
| [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4477.Complications
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Legends
| varispeed wrote:
| In the UK the tax system actually promotes such behaviour. But
| this the domain of larger consultancies that charge 1000 and up
| per day per developer and hire junior developers on a lowest
| salary they can get away with and have a senior supervising
| them. Now with IR35 changes this will be more common.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I once interviewed a guy who put on a great show during the
| interview. The kind of interview that feels more like a well-
| practiced sales pitch than an honest conversation with the
| candidate.
|
| Checking his LinkedIn, I discovered that he had a consulting
| company that ran concurrently with his most recent jobs. His
| most recent jobs were all less than 12 months of tenure, and
| the start/end dates didn't match what he provided on his resume
| in some cases.
|
| Curious, I started digging more. Through some LinkedIn friend-
| of-friend backchannel references I eventually deduced that he
| was trying to run his freelancing shop as his primary job while
| getting full-time employment at companies with flexible and/or
| remote employment where his real daily activities could go
| unnoticed (for a time). He collected a paycheck and benefits
| while running and building his freelance company. He would also
| try to recruit some of his coworkers to become part of his
| consulting company "on the side". I suspect he was trying to
| outsource his own work to his freelancers as well.
|
| Eventually each company would catch on and get sick of his
| behaviors, strange lack of availability and presence during the
| day, and work output that varied depending on how much contract
| work he was trying to do.
|
| Then he'd move on to the next company to continue collecting
| benefits and a paycheck remotely while running his freelance
| shop.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| True hero of the resistance
| sonograph wrote:
| Not really. His team paid the price of carrying the burden
| of his laziness/treachery for a year. If they hired a
| competent person, they would have been better off.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Exactly. He was taking advantage of everyone around him
| to enrich himself. The companies were fine (most caught
| on quickly and fired him) but he left a mark on the teams
| he left behind.
|
| There's nothing heroic about joining a team and then
| sabotaging their work.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| That's their problem...shoulda worked less hard
| tharkun__ wrote:
| There's a gradient there if you ask me.
|
| There's the "gives everything up for the company, no
| questions asked" types of people. Tesla et al come to
| mind for companies that like to hire this type. I don't
| get that to be honest. Your family and life are not worth
| whatever they're paying you, even if the work is 'fun'
| and engaging. YMMV as always.
|
| Then there's the opposite end which you're alluding to
| but I'm not entirely sure where on the gradient you are.
| The slackers or someone like the guy described by the OP.
| I had someone like that recently. I caught it within the
| probation period and he was gone after 2 months.
|
| Then there's what I would consider the proper position on
| the gradient line. You do your work, you do your best,
| every day without question or being 'made' to. But in
| return you ask for the company to be reasonable too.
| Proper pay and benefits, flexibility, nice perks but not
| the kinds of 'perks' that are just designed to make you
| 'live' at the office, mandatory 'fun' etc. No BS 'do this
| yesterday because I say so' requests. The list goes on.
|
| There are companies out there, that are close enough to
| that/let you do that if you don't just say yes to
| everything :)
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >Tesla et al come to mind for companies that like to hire
| this type. I don't get that to be honest. Your family and
| life are not worth whatever they're paying you, even if
| the work is 'fun' and engaging. YMMV as always.
|
| On the other hand these companies are producing some
| great results. I religiously watch the teardown analysis
| of the Tesla cars vs others like the Ford Mach-E and the
| Tesla is just so much better designed in pretty much
| every regard(except things that require slow
| methodological improvement such as fit and finish). Whats
| more, all the Musk companies are moving at the speed of
| thought. They are so much faster in implementing any new
| innovation that any competitor makes that they dont have
| and incorporate it into their product faster than any
| other company does.
|
| >Then there's what I would consider the proper position
| on the gradient line. You do your work, you do your best,
| every day without question or being 'made' to. But in
| return you ask for the company to be reasonable too.
| Proper pay and benefits, flexibility, nice perks but not
| the kinds of 'perks' that are just designed to make you
| 'live' at the office, mandatory 'fun' etc. No BS 'do this
| yesterday because I say so' requests. The list goes on.
|
| Don't you think these companies are going to eventually
| be eaten by the companies that have the demanding work
| environment? For better or worse all else being equal,
| those companies get more done in the same amount of time.
|
| I am experiencing this at my company, an old bloated
| payroll company. They have superb work life balance, I
| get my work done but I know the company is sinking to
| Silicon Valley rivals, its just a matter of time. The
| product is old and competitors are just doing a better
| job. Im currently in a dilemma where I get paid fairly
| well but not doing any advanced projects, that will bite
| me long term but the freedom and 0 stress is just so
| good. I get my stuff done and have time to take hour long
| breaks.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| That's why I mentioned the gradient.
|
| The kinds of people that work at such companies I am very
| very sure would do great things regardless. In fact, I
| know quite a few people like that, some of which I work
| with, which is awesome. It's like finally finding your
| true 'home' company wise, when you have that feeling that
| your are mostly working with people that both know their
| stuff and just want to do great work together.
|
| In my book there's a huge difference in whether you have
| your own company for example and you work on something
| you love with other like minded people in every free
| minute you have. But when your kid is sick and needs to
| be fetched from daycare and mommy has an important
| meeting to attend it is absolute clear that you won't be
| working and instead driving to the daycare and nobody
| even blinks an eye at that and there's no bad feelings on
| your end, worrying what people might think. Of course you
| will take care of your kid. And no you won't be working
| all weekend long just because some sales guy promised the
| moon to a customer, you will actually be playing with
| your daughter. Some days you will work 10 hours because
| you just want to finish that one thing as you're on a
| roll or there's a Prod incident or something and your SO
| has got your back. Friday after you definitely go home
| early and enjoy the weekend. What's not OK is for some VP
| to have dragged his feet on something and when he
| remembers about that important presentation the next day
| he tells you to "get him those numbers by EOD or else".
|
| The proper point on the gradient that I like is
| definitely _not_ the old bloated payroll company you are
| referencing. I think that sounds like the kind of company
| that has tolerated a probably >90% slacker population for
| way too long and I would be miserable, because I'd
| constantly ask myself why those guys get paid to be on
| Facebook all day or pretend that adjusting the background
| color of that button takes a whole sprint. Taking hours
| and hours of breaks and nobody blinks an eye is
| absolutely not OK at all. That's not "You do your work,
| you do your best, every day without question or being
| 'made' to". Absolutely that company _should_ get eaten.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Oh come on, that attitude is shameful
| okprod wrote:
| He could have done his job and met all the requirements,
| including attendance, and had his side business. A former
| boss of mine worked for a city office where he was in the
| morning that let him have a flexible schedule, owned a
| consulting business where he worked in the afternoon, and was
| a partner in a gym where he worked in the evenings. He did
| all that for 6 years and eventually reached his goal -- no
| boss, all passive income (ownership of the gym, tanning
| salon, real estate), paid-off house, etc.
| jamespo wrote:
| He could have, but the less than 12 months for all the
| recent roles is a red flag.
| rcurry wrote:
| I'd say that depends. I got sucked into a couple of
| different "opportunities" that turned out to be clown
| shows and I had to leave under six months both times. It
| was pretty hard on my CV, but what are you going to do?
| rcurry wrote:
| I got you beat (no offense intended). Back in the dotcom boom
| my company hired a guy who would come in to the office, throw
| his jacket over a chair and then go to his other full time
| job. It took them two months to catch on.
| keredson wrote:
| That can be done in a non-sleazy way. For a long while there
| were effective caps on what you could earn as an IC, no
| matter how good. Everyone talks about 10x devs, but a decade
| ago the only real way to capitalize on it was to hold
| multiple remote gigs, each where you're accurately emulating
| the performance of say a $150-200k dev. 2-3 of those is very
| do-able, and a darn nice income if you're outside the major
| tech hubs.
|
| As long as you're performing akin to your salary for each
| position, and you read your employment contracts carefully, I
| see nothing wrong w/ this approach.
| fsloth wrote:
| Bait-and-switch is consulting 101. Entice client in with the
| most senior person with the impressive resume. Assign someone
| else to do the actual work. That's what you generally get with
| any big-name consulting firm.
|
| This is not necessarily bad! The senior in this case is more
| like the "brand" of the operation.
|
| And - sorry about going now into stereotypes - Good Eastern
| europeans are really good coders. Would not hesitate a second
| outsourcing any development to ukraine or romania if the
| contractors are vetted and proven to deliver value.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _Good Eastern europeans are really good coders. Would not
| hesitate a second outsourcing any development to ukraine or
| romania if the contractors are vetted and proven to deliver
| value._
|
| The problem is not that America has a monopoly on good coders
| but that the good coders in any country will not work for the
| Ed-Edd-n'-Eddy type foreign contracting firms.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| "Ed-Edd-n'-Eddy type"
|
| This is now in my lexicon. I loved the show as a kid and
| this so perfectly captures how I feel about some shops.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| "aw man, Plank is sending us PRs now"
| SamBam wrote:
| Suppose you were looking for good quality foreign
| contractors. How would you go about finding them?
| paxys wrote:
| I have seen this happen so often. A large company will want
| to outsource some of their development to India, hire some
| shady agency to facilitate this, pay half of the going rate
| for good talent, then come away with the conclusion "Indian
| developers are terrible".
| ta1234567890 wrote:
| Not just consulting, also law firms. Same thing, you might
| get a partner when they are selling you, then the juniors do
| the actual work (and unless you are a big company that they
| actually care about, you'll probably also get subpar work).
| soco wrote:
| Benn there, done that, got a t-shirt. Two t-shirts actually.
| The first year was great, the second year with new developers
| was okay, the third meh, the fourth was a huge drag. We
| switched to another eastern-european outsourcer and the story
| reset: first year great, second year new team and meh, then I
| left but I doubt it went anywhere but downwards. Moral of the
| story? Longer term contracts are dangerous for you.
| DantesKite wrote:
| Your last sentence made me wonder if there's a company that
| vets programmers.
| belter wrote:
| Are we mixing consulting and contracting here? I worked as a
| consultant for more than 10 years.
|
| Every single time customers want to :
|
| - Review the Consultant CV
|
| - Interview the Consultant
|
| - Accept no switch unless for the obvious reasons of sickness
| or holidays.
|
| - And the team that starts is very much the team that
| finishes the project.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I recently accepted a job at a consulting/contracting firm
| for a specific contract as a data scientist. I had three
| separate interviews with the company I'd be working
| indirectly for, and I wasn't the only one they'd been
| interviewing. There'll be no switching me out for a junior.
| alisonkisk wrote:
| It's not exactly "consulting vs contracting", its "hiring a
| single person vs hiring out a project". Many "consulting"
| shops do what you call "contracting", because "consulting"
| is a more "elite" word.
|
| But a single person can be a "contractor" too.
|
| (At big companies and non-IT fields, a contractor is often
| used for temporary professional employee-type labor for
| flexibly scaling the labor force that includes employees
| doing the same job, but a consultant is someone who
| provides a skill you don't have in house at all.)
| amcoastal wrote:
| Lots of parallels here as well between research/academia and
| consulting -- the senior PI is the name on the proposals to
| get funded but everyone knows the work is done by grad
| students at exploitative wages to keep research cheap.
| buran77 wrote:
| _Every_ company brings the A-team to win the bid for a
| contract. Later they 'll gradually switch them out with the
| much cheaper juniors they hire for that particular project.
| With IT consulting or MSPs this tends to be a far more
| extensive practice than in other fields from my experience.
|
| Whether the last hop of the outsourcing is in India, Poland,
| or Spain is not that important if you still get what you
| expect. The problem is when you get a fraction of what you
| expected or pay for.
|
| Interviews have been used as opportunities for
| evangelization, attempts to get technical assistance, or
| extract information about the competition or potential
| customers since forever. I haven't seen one which was overtly
| illegal but they're all certainly as shady as they get.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Ha. I work for an engineering consultancy and I pointed out
| that we actually do the opposite: bid on a project using a
| senior engineer rate, then when the project starts, realize
| that all our senior engineers are booked and only the
| Principal engineers (who cost about 30% more) are
| available.
|
| I honestly wonder how this place makes money some days!
| [deleted]
| lostapathy wrote:
| I used to work in state government. There was no "gradually
| switch them out" - we got the D-team as soon as the sale
| closed and the project started.
| gopher_space wrote:
| And were constantly wrestling with integration because
| neither side really understands or even cares about the
| other's domain.
| dwater wrote:
| Many federal contracts require naming key personnel
| during the bidding phase to try to minimize this. Resumes
| for the key personnel become part of the proposal.
| rebuilder wrote:
| Aha! That explains an odd case where my company was
| subcontracting with another company to work on their
| project that was ultimately state-funded. This was
| essentially a museum installation, VFX work for a
| projection thing, and they wanted the names of the people
| who were going to be involved.
|
| This was very odd to us, since our names wouldn't mean a
| thing to anyone on the client's end, but we chalked it up
| to red tape. Your explanation finally makes sense of it.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| How does that work in practice? Say the personnel in
| question leave the company.
| svachalek wrote:
| That would depend on the government to notice and take
| action. I imagine if one person left and the company put
| a suitable replacement in, it may not be noticed and
| wouldn't likely draw any lawsuit. But swapping in a "D
| team" as described would likely provoke a response.
| buran77 wrote:
| In those cases the customer has to approve the
| replacement (within reason). Comes with a price premium
| though.
| salawat wrote:
| Oooookay. That explains... Some of the weirdness of
| applying for a Federal Government project. The number of
| wild gesticulations they asked me to do with my resume
| really turned me off from trying to take the job.
|
| I asked why they were doing it, but no one gave me a
| straight answer. I mean, I get for them it was Tuesday,
| but when a major contractor starts asking you to brush
| right up against the line of equivocating, I can't
| justify moving forward without some serious explanations
| and levels of frankness I don't think many recruiters are
| comfortable with..
| darreld wrote:
| Which is probably going to be followed by a no-cost
| contract modification to switch out the name of personnel
| who couldn't possibly wait for a job as long as it takes
| the contract to get to approval/award. Just in my
| experience.
| akamia wrote:
| That was my experience when I worked at Boeing in IT. As
| soon as the contract was signed we got the most mediocre
| people.
|
| Occasionally we'd get someone good but as soon as the
| consulting company figured out that they were good,
| they'd get rotated off our project and replaced with
| someone mediocre. They also never gave us any warning
| when they were going to switch someone.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| But how much does Boeing pays for the service?
|
| Because what I've seen happen is a large company uses its
| size to negotiate really the cheapest prices, and the
| only way the consulting company can make profit is by
| hiring the cheapest people, and even with that, the
| margins are thin at best. So obviously, they don't
| exactly get the best.
|
| The worst part is that all these D-tier, fresh out of
| school guys gain experience and some may even get good at
| their job. Unsurprisingly, these people start asking for
| raises and promotions, and the consulting companies tries
| to charge their customer more, I mean, we are talking
| quality now.
|
| But the big company financial department doesn't like it,
| so they make a new call for cheap contracts, get a new
| round of incompetents, etc...
|
| In the end, everyone loses. The consulting company makes
| little profit, sometimes even losses and the big company
| always get shit service, which usually costs them more
| than what they save. As for the employees, the work
| conditions are often terrible and they usually quit at
| the first occasion. But the financial department is
| happy, they have a lower number in the "expense" column.
| ghshephard wrote:
| I've worked for an organization that had a mixed
| hardware/software/services components. These were $50mm -
| $100mm+ contracts running for 5+ years, and the Service
| Component was just charged out at person years - flat
| fee, so - a project manager might go for $600k/year, an
| application engineer for $500k/year, a field-engineer for
| $300k/year and so on. Each project would then have so
| many person years at each stage of the project - project
| manager would be pretty flat at 1 project/manager/year,
| but in the initial years, it would be 3 application-
| engineers, 2 field engineers, etc...
|
| Once the contract was won, we'd sub-contract to a local
| (to the region) contracting agency, who would in turn
| essentially do the equivalent of a craigslist search for
| a body, that we would interview to ensure that they could
| be taught, and then we'd take 30-60 days to teach them
| our product - depending on the initiative and experience
| of the candidate, the customer (who remember, was paying
| us $500k/year for an application engineer) - might get a
| recent-high school graduate that was making $30k/year and
| had never even heard of our technology a week prior.
| akamia wrote:
| It's been several years since I worked there but if I
| remember correctly it was a little more complicated
| because these were basically subcontracts under one
| larger contract. The company had a huge contract agreeing
| to purchase some volume of services from the consulting
| company. For each project a smaller contract would be
| created to define the terms of the project and the
| resources would be drawn from the parent contract's pool
| of purchased resources.
|
| This created a lot of internal pressure to use contract
| resources as much as possible.
| bluetwo wrote:
| Is that how we ended up with the MCAS debacle?
| paavohtl wrote:
| Not _every_ company does this - the consultancy I work at
| does not. We never outsource to third parties without the
| customer being involved, we do not hire [juniors or anyone
| else] for specific projects.
| buran77 wrote:
| I imagine you also send your best not worst engineers for
| a bid or demo. For the rest, as I said it's just far more
| extensive in IT than in other fields. There will be
| exceptions.
|
| And being able to scale on demand is a big part of
| providing a service. Otherwise you can't absorb any
| unexpected spikes in demand from already existing
| projects, or have to pass on lucrative opportunities, or
| you pay to keep a buffer of people on payroll.
| paavohtl wrote:
| We send the team that would be working on the project, to
| the extent it's known at that time.
|
| But yes, bigger consultancies absolutely do this.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| > Every company brings the A-team to win the bid for a
| contract. Later they'll gradually switch them out with the
| much cheaper juniors they hire for that particular project.
|
| Generally, you need the A-team at the start because there's
| a lot of very critical work that needs doing. After a
| while, it's mostly maintenance, so it's silly to keep your
| top people there... you can still call them in when they're
| needed.
|
| This is just resource efficiency.
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| And yet the client cost generally doesn't come down...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Presumably you'd pay a lot more to always have the
| A-team.
| rapind wrote:
| I would do this as a "Sales Engineer". Not interviews but
| as sales support to handle any technical questions and win
| over our client's internal devs. We didn't outsource, but
| it's really just sales.
|
| I actually think it's essential in medium+ size companies.
| The authenticity of having a highly technical person in
| sales works wonders.
| [deleted]
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Hiring contractors to work on your house tends to end up
| the same too. So much of what the early people say just
| magically disappears when the actual work gets done by a
| completely different set of people.
|
| As an example, when we had our bathroom done, the guy they
| sent to finish things up couldn't even center and level the
| towel racks.
| Helloitzkenny wrote:
| I saw this first hand while working for a high-end
| landscaping company. The first team sent out to a job
| site would be the A-Team and they would do about 50% of
| the work, whether they were done for the day or off to do
| another job. The next day (most jobs took 2 days ATL,
| some took more) another crew of less experienced workers
| would work the site until finished, then the owner would
| come inspect. The owner was on the "A-Team" and his work
| was amazing; I was on the "B-Team" and though I always
| put 110% into my work when I physically could, I
| _constantly_ worked with slackers and corner-cutters who
| also came and went. It made sense the way it was
| explained to me, which was that the people working odd
| jobs who don 't really care will get bummed out by the
| B-Team labour and pay, and if they don't they're added to
| the A-Team after a few months of good work and some more
| training.
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| absolutely; with house builders. Next time around, I'm
| inclined to manage the build myself.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Talk to someone you trust who did the same thing.
| Managing anything related to construction can ruin
| marriages, and lives, the whole ordeal could last for
| years.
| spfzero wrote:
| A different flavor of this (in home re-modeling,
| hardscape etc.), is that the people who come to do the
| estimate are different than the people who come do the
| job. They are typically younger and pretty much clueless
| as to how the work would have to be done. So you can't
| ask them any detailed questions. All they can do is run
| the spreadsheet on their laptop and show you pictures of
| other work their company has done. They were trained on
| how to make a sale, that's it.
|
| Had to go with someone who I had a little trouble
| communicating with, but at least I could verify he knew
| what they were doing and understood my concerns about how
| the work got done.
| andi999 wrote:
| And it is OK. You do not want to hire who doesn't have an A
| team (so to speak) which cannot pull off the project if
| there is trouble.
| zo1 wrote:
| As long as the job can be delivered to a mutually-
| satisfactory state, then it shouldn't matter if it's done
| by an A/B/C or D team. A lot of times in software
| "consulting" firms, the "profit" margin diminishes or is
| negative the closer you approach the top levels of
| developer in terms of quality/seniority. So it's in their
| best interest to get the most out of less-senior
| developers, otherwise they simply don't turn a profit.
|
| The clients though, they want to pay the consulting firm
| relatively the same price they would pay for a standalone
| developer employee, per hour. The entire industry is
| broken and a lot of it has to do with broken recruiting,
| the recruiting industry, the "consulting firms" (body-
| shops) that are just resellers, and onerous employment
| regulations that make firms prefer outsourcing to shady
| outfits instead of hiring in-house developers.
| travoc wrote:
| "As long as the job can be delivered to a mutually-
| satisfactory state"
|
| When has that ever happened?
| zo1 wrote:
| I've personally been part of many, of varying size.
| buran77 wrote:
| In theory all is fine. The problem is the A-team shows
| they have the skill, not the capacity. So in practice
| you'll never see that A-team again because that's not
| their job.
| neutronicus wrote:
| You'll see one or two of them again when the project
| crashes and burns, haha
| [deleted]
| newsclues wrote:
| The A team is the sales team, not the team that fixes the
| problems from outsourced work.
| thisisnico wrote:
| Technical Sales
| ryandrake wrote:
| Some of the most successful engineers I know, got there
| by migrating over to engineering sales. I'm almost
| convinced if you are a moderately skilled software
| engineer, are very good looking, very charismatic, and
| have maybe a spoonful of general business knowledge, you
| can pretty much name your salary. They'll stick you in a
| suit, fly you around with the bizdev guys, and you only
| have to do anything if the client brings their tech guys
| to talk. You'll occasionally do some coding: write a few
| demos, maybe integrate your company's software with some
| other company's workflow, but mostly smile and talk about
| architecture, frameworks, blah blah blah. Nice work if
| you can get it. I was too much of a cynic and critic to
| make it in such a role, and I have the looks of a toad,
| so I never bothered.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Pretty much describes one of my (former) neighbors. She
| was a programmer who discovered that she could make a ton
| more money doing sales instead. Then moved up from there
| into a Sales Management position and never looked back.
| atonse wrote:
| How does one get one of these jobs? :-) It sounds lovely.
| Listen to all kinds of different business ideas and build
| proofs of concept. Talk to other nerds and hear about
| their experiences. Travel and get points (this last one,
| not so much).
| atonse wrote:
| As someone who was part of that A team used to sell
| things, I spent a year jumping between projects fixing
| the problems the D team caused. Maybe it would've been
| worth it if I got paid more but I doubt it. It was
| stressful, you never learned much, and ultimately I
| burned out.
| chippy wrote:
| > if the contractors are vetted and proven to deliver value.
|
| But how can you tell this is not just bait-and-switch itself?
| The most senior person with an impressive resume is vetted
| and proven to deliver value, but how can you know if the
| actual contractors you are getting from wherever are good?
| chaostheory wrote:
| I can vouch for Eastern Euro developers. They do quality
| work. Their code is clean. I remember even when there was the
| whole issue with Russia, our developers in Ukraine were still
| highly productive.
| slezakattack wrote:
| I've also seen the bait-and-switch with recruiters. Many
| years ago when I was young in my career, I decided to respond
| to a recruiter who worked for a recruiting firm. We had a
| good talk and there was a company he was working with that I
| expressed interest in and felt I was qualified for.
|
| Nope. He kept pedaling this small, 10-15 person startup to me
| that I clearly wasn't qualified for and honestly was not
| interested in as there were some red flags. The commission
| must've been fat cause he didn't pitch me any other company
| and kept "circling back" if I changed my mind about them.
| xeromal wrote:
| Just wanted to pipe in with my own experience, but I've seen
| it come from the clients perspective too. Initial phase of
| the project is very visible and critical to the client and is
| delivered with the A-team. Client starts to care less as the
| bottom barrel of features start being implemented and they
| want to reduce costs. Instead of losing the contract, we
| start dropping some of the more expensive devs save for 1 or
| 2 very good ones to keep the project moving and we backfill
| with more junior to increase their experience. The client
| starts wanting to reduce the expense even more and we keep
| the 1 or 2 very good devs/architect and we bring on a few
| near-shore devs. Project coasts for a year or two until
| they're done with us or they have another high priority item
| that kicks the project into overdrive again.
| js4ever wrote:
| True and everyone knows it at some extent. I worked for a
| large consulting firm in the past for almost a decade.
|
| I was the bait, indeed I was nearly not touching the projects
| at all except if the replacement failed it hard and then my
| employer would send me few days there to fix the mess.
|
| My working time was divided between pre-sales and fireman to
| save projects from total failure.
| drivingmenuts wrote:
| Bait and switch is not necessarily bad?
|
| You are defrauding the client by not providing the service
| and/or personnel advertised. How is this not, at a minimum, a
| criminal act?
| conductr wrote:
| Along with "land and expand". Where they use a small project
| to get over the initial hurdle, foot in the door so to speak.
| Then, they start trying to rebuild everything your company
| touches
| leetrout wrote:
| I like the term "provide and conquer" as well.
| cmpb wrote:
| Google turned up very little, please elaborate
| whoisburbansky wrote:
| As opposed to "divide and conquer." Presumably the same
| idea as "land and expand," but you conquer the client
| company by "providing" successively larger projects.
| hinkley wrote:
| IBM Global Services is particularly known for this.
|
| Their flavor involves hiring people with a very high
| tolerance for complexity, and letting them propose the most
| complex solution to any problem. Eventually your own people
| get tired of trying to keep up with even the summaries, and
| just abdicate. Now that part of the system is only
| understood by IGS, and the rot begins to spread.
| tmn007 wrote:
| 15 years ago when I was changing jobs one of the roles
| was Sun Microsystems - which I liked the company but the
| role was to suggest and be embedded in a company and
| embed Sun products into every project (and I assume
| prevent competitors). Did not take it.
| gremloni wrote:
| I disagree on Eastern Europeans being good coders as a bloc.
| I've had some pretty bad security consultants out of Ukraine
| and really good work coming out of India when I paid what the
| work was worth.
| roenxi wrote:
| That isn't really a bait-and-switch. Years of experience
| doesn't make people type faster (quite the reverse, really).
| It is good for making high level decisions that crop up about
| once a day or once every other day.
|
| It makes sense to have juniors do the work and seniors to
| oversee the work.
| hinkley wrote:
| Having senior people write all of the code shuts down your
| ability to create new senior people. If you have a bimodal
| distribution of employment longevity for your devs, this
| may be why. If nobody gets promoted for three years because
| you can't trust new developers with the code (until they've
| memorized everything) this is probably why.
|
| Nobody wants to touch the lead's code. The more of it there
| is, the slower things go. Or the more workarounds/end runs
| (duplicate functionality) you find in the code. It's best
| if the leads only stick their fingers into code that
| absolutely has to work, has a low expected rate of change,
| and relates directly to architectural or (better)
| operational concerns. Everything else they should keep an
| eye on, insist on quality, but otherwise butt out.
|
| People write code that seems obvious to them. Very, very
| few of us make a conscious effort to do much more than
| that. You can write a great deal of solid code that is
| still write-only. Too much of this, and it makes it
| difficult to improve your bus numbers, and grooming people
| for growth is a huge investment of time, energy, and social
| capital (if you can do it at all). Rather than bringing the
| whole team up, people play favorites, because that's all
| they can afford.
| acdha wrote:
| The problem is that one senior person can't oversee tons of
| unmotivated juniors on multiple projects. It's not that the
| senior people aren't typing all of the code, it's that
| you'll never see them again and your "architect", "tech
| leads", etc. will be a couple of people who have a couple
| years of excreting Java code into legacy apps for a bank.
|
| When the project falters, attempting to parachute the
| actual skilled people back in will fail because of both
| Brooks' law and simply their mandate being to stabilize
| things to the point where they can claim minimal
| satisfaction of the contract requirements, which will
| likely not include fixing the deep architectural problems.
| roenxi wrote:
| > it's that you'll never see them again ...
|
| > When the project falters, attempting to parachute the
| actual skilled people back in will fail ...
|
| The argument there seems a little inconsistent to me. The
| skilled people aren't going to be rushing from failed
| project to failed project - that is less productive than
| just getting involved to start with.
| joncrane wrote:
| Splunk Proserve ABSOLUTELY does this (they have a few
| superstars they spread thinner than a WW2 kid spreads
| butter). They get in at the beginning, hand the project
| over to less experienced people, then parachute in only
| after the project has gone so far off the rails it's
| unrecoverable to a point that's truly what the customer
| needs, but good enough to get the customer off their
| back.
|
| Source: extensive experience on projects with Splunk
| proserve.
| acdha wrote:
| > The skilled people aren't going to be rushing from
| failed project to failed project - that is less
| productive than just getting involved to start with.
|
| You're thinking about it from the perspective of the
| customer, not the an ethically-challenged contractor
| focused on maximizing revenue. If you have an A-team
| which you use to close deals, cycling them from project
| to project to close the deals which you will then staff
| with the C-team will generate more revenue than having
| them work on just one project as long as you don't have
| many disasters where you have to eat the cost of fixing
| the project.
|
| If the client is either overly-trusting or made enough
| mistakes to plausibly share responsibility and the
| punishment for failure is more billable hours, you're
| _way_ ahead financially if you get to bill 14000 hours of
| C-team-masquerading-as-A-team instead of 2000 hours of
| actual-A-team.
| mathattack wrote:
| This is more common that you would think. I've seen situations
| where it's been hard to untangle ownership stakes in outside
| firms, and folks not disclosing family ties to new suppliers.
|
| Makes me realize why there is so much red take on new vendors
| at large firms.
| beckingz wrote:
| The red tape is important for ensuring that bad outcomes
| don't happen during the process.
|
| Bad outcomes outside of the process like it taking years to
| buy software? Not any one person's fault.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Some of the "bad outcomes during the process" can cost the
| company more in legal fees than a multi-year software
| project. Red tape tends to be concentrated in such areas.
| For example, exports control and anti-money-laundering
| regulations. After sitting through trainings on the former,
| I'm very glad I don't have to deal with traveling or
| sending physical devices around the world...
| mathattack wrote:
| Compliance is painful because it's hard to come up with
| precise NPVs on "we need to do it to avoid bad outcomes
| and because of the law." It's a shared tax that grows as
| the company grows, but the benefit is unseen. So
| compliance becomes a function of the political power of
| the leaders.
| c17r wrote:
| Had a Candidate come in from a recruiter that I had worked with
| before without incident but from the very first question the
| guy turned it a pitch for moving all our development to his
| outsourced team in India. I was so caught off guard that I let
| the guy talk for a good 5 minutes before cutting him off and
| ended things. I laughed, the recruiter was thoroughly
| embarrassed and sent someone else.
|
| Never happened before, hasn't happened since.
| ineptech wrote:
| > "there's more like me, be happy to help you out, but on a
| contract basis and as a group."
|
| Deception aside, this seems like a reasonable idea, and I've
| wondered if anyone might do this as a result of covid (as in,
| "we quit _en masse_ when our employer wouldn 't let us stay
| remote, wanna hire us?"). A mature team that's already worked
| together and gone through norming-storming-performing sounds
| like they'd be better than 5 freelancers thrown together.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > we quit en masse when our employer wouldn't let us stay
| remote
|
| I don't think "we held our previous employer to ransom" is
| the sales pitch I'd go with.
| ineptech wrote:
| What a surprising response. What's wrong with quitting your
| job because you want to work remote and they won't allow
| remote work?
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > as in, "we quit en masse when our employer wouldn't let us
| stay remote, wanna hire us?"
|
| Hiring entire teams together is risky. It can be difficult
| enough to integrate individual hires into the company's way
| of operating, especially when companies grow quickly. A team
| that has already worked together can have a lot of resistance
| to changing their ways or integrating into the rest of the
| company's way of operating.
|
| I've been at companies that tried this in the past. The teams
| that came in together wanted to isolate themselves and
| operate independently, and they had little interest in
| changing anything or adopting the same tools that everyone
| else used (one team tried to refuse to adopt git because they
| all used and liked subversion).
|
| Usually these teams were laid off together. A team that quit
| en masse because their employer wouldn't cave to their
| demands would be even worse for trying to integrate with the
| company. You don't want to bring in a group of people who
| tries to be the tail that wags the dog and will quit en masse
| again the next time the company doesn't give in to their
| demands.
| ineptech wrote:
| I meant as contractors; the attraction would be that they
| don't need to be integrated.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| Funny, I've seen this happen multiple times and by any
| measure the companies and teams both did very well.
|
| If you're spinning up a new project/org/whatever hiring all
| the expertise in a single shot is so much more efficient
| than one-by-one. If they have agency, it's often a recipe
| for success.
| secondcoming wrote:
| This is Accenture
| CalChris wrote:
| This is like rainmakers in law firms with associates doing the
| work.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I have issues with the lack of ethics on display, but as
| someone very senior and aging out, I'd much rather work with a
| group like this for a few years than simply retire now-ish
| which is my current plan.
|
| I wish there was a way to discover/join groups like this. My
| specialty at this point is SW project rehab by just being a
| realistic, experienced adult. Modernization but avoiding the
| blog-oriented design plague. It would just be very nice to work
| in a mission-specific context with a very senior team.
| mcguire wrote:
| Same here. I've talked to friends a few times about doing
| this, minus the sub-contracting and sales-by-interview, but
| nobody wants to do the admin/actual sales work.
|
| I ended up retiring, and 3 years later got re-hired on a very
| part time, hourly contract basis.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I've had similar discussions with friends. The thing is
| we're all spread out all over from a timeline perspective.
| I'm ready now, many of them won't be for several years.
|
| Ah well.
| allknowingfrog wrote:
| In defense of Ukrainian dudes, I have experience outsourcing to
| some of them, and they've always been pretty awesome. However,
| I don't pretend that I'm doing the work myself. That's
| definitely fishy.
| huhtenberg wrote:
| Same here. Had experience working with an Ukrainian shop that
| did fantastic job prototyping some very niche kernel stuff.
| Very knowledgeable, felt like they knew Windows better than
| Microsoft. Made you wonder though how they managed that ;)
| runjake wrote:
| We had this happen in an interview as well, except it was
| outsourced to low-end "programmers" in India.
|
| We took the bait and the code product was as bad as you would
| expect.
| dcuthbertson wrote:
| This kind of thing has been going on for a long time. In the
| late 80s I worked for an engineering consulting firm that
| contracted out engineers to the US armed forces. I was between
| tasks, and my boss pulled me into a contract w/Air Force
| Logistics Command for a database to track parts failures in the
| field.
|
| They'd had the contract for months, but it wasn't until a rep
| from AFLC was going to visit and write a progress report that
| they cared. I coded up a demo in 2 weeks, and showed that it
| had all the basic functionality called for in the contract
| (though it had a few bugs). My boss told the rep I was their
| chief engineered just hired for the project (I was actually
| pretty junior, but happened to know a few things about
| databases).
|
| I actually thought it was a fun project. I wanted to finish it,
| but after the rep left they put it aside and moved me to
| another project.
| jermaustin1 wrote:
| I got bait-and-switched as a candidate thinking I was going in
| for a sales pitch to find out it was an interview. I thought it
| was my company they were hiring (which I guess they were, but
| with me being butt-in-chair at their office).
|
| I got weirded out when they asked for a resume mid-pitch, and I
| said, I don't normally hand anything like that out, and I could
| give them our portfolio. I kept using the words "we" and "our"
| they kept using the word "you" and eventually it all clicked. I
| had been recruited for a job not a sales meeting. I handed them
| a 5 year old resume that was kind of crumpled up, gave them my
| spiel and our rates, still using "our" and "we" then left
| feeling like I just wasted half an afternoon on nothing.
|
| Less than an hour after I left, I was offered the gig at a 5%
| discount from my rate but with a guaranteed 30 hours a week. I
| never thought I would hear from them again. They are actually
| still one of my "best" clients.
|
| A second anecdote - Half a year later, I was asked my opinion
| on converting a HUGE legacy project to a different web
| framework in a rewrite attempt to modernize it. To which I
| discussed another clients project and how easy it was to get
| off the ground quickly using the new framework, but said I
| wouldn't recommend it for such a large legacy conversion. And
| the Manager asked, "wait, you have another job... you are
| supposed to work for me." - Apparently he was unaware of the
| fact that they hired a company to consult them, not a
| developer.
| andrew_ wrote:
| This happened to me with Google in 2002. Back in the heyday
| of the desktop widget craze, Google approached me several
| times via email wanting to discuss acquisition of my widget
| application. Bear in mind, this was when Google was just
| buying stuff up wholesale, rather than absorbing the team
| behind an acquired product. I eventually responded, and the
| rep and I set up a phone call - solely to discuss the sale of
| my code to them. I was pretty surprised when the person I
| spoke to jumped into a full-blown tech screen. I humored it
| initially, and was then subjected to meeting-reschedule-
| pinball. Super weird bait and switch by the googs.
| wooque wrote:
| That's how most outsourcing/consultancy companies work, lure
| you with a seniors and then replace them with a juniors/mediors
| werber wrote:
| Now I'm worried I've done that job with Fronk and was not paid.
| There's a handful of companies, with Algolia coming to mind
| first, that I've evangalized in interviews because the product
| did fix a huge problem.
| tlholaday wrote:
| Randall Munroe "Suspicion": https://xkcd.com/632/
| neilv wrote:
| Early on in dotcoms, what was called "buzz marketing" seemed to
| be a thing. (Going way beyond traditional "advertorials", etc.)
|
| I saw startups in the business of doing that. They were either
| executing it directly, or rewarding third-party operatives for
| doing it (in what later might be called "gig economy").
|
| I haven't heard as much about it lately, but I'm not tracking
| startups as much. Maybe they're going strong, maybe they became
| more discreet about it, or maybe the money is in relatively
| conspicuous advertising (obvious ads on screens backed by modern
| intel/analytics, influencers, etc.).
|
| Interestingly, around the time some startups were figuring out
| the most society-destroying ways of exploiting people (e.g.,
| "Let's _change the world_ by paying people to manipulate their
| friends, and see what happens "), Google was doing things like
| being very clear in distinguishing sponsored placements from
| objective search hits. (Which had analogous precedent in
| respectable print publishing, but wasn't obvious that you had to
| do it in the dotcom gold rush new media, unless you were
| thoughtfully Don't Be Evil.)
| throwaway2939 wrote:
| Reminds me of when I worked at the early stages of a (now large)
| startup (I'm sure most of you have heard of the company), the CEO
| used to go to industry conferences and sit on panels with other
| competitors, intentionally giving terrible advice to throw others
| astray. He'd come back to the office and brag about the shitty
| advice he gave that everyone was eating up. This is why I don't
| go to conferences anymore.
| adverbly wrote:
| What about if a company used their own employees for this? Having
| them apply to their customers, and also let the employees accept
| a job offer if they didn't want to match it.
|
| More/Less ethical?
|
| Sounds slightly more ethical to me. Perhaps less effective, but
| I've heard crazier growth hacking ideas...
| pgroverman wrote:
| Corporate Espionage is real.
| ackbar03 wrote:
| This doesn't sound like a bad business model. Not sure if its the
| sort of thing to be VC backed but sounds like it should work
| bobthechef wrote:
| Except that little bit about lying. You're going to an
| interview under false pretenses (no intention of accepting an
| offer, thus lying through your actions), lying about using the
| product you're promoting and how great it is in your
| experience, lying that you accepted a competing offer elsewhere
| and so on.
| peytn wrote:
| Yeah actually maybe offer a little equity on top of flat fee
| per interview...
|
| Edit: not that it's something I'd personally feel comfortable
| with ethically
| numpad0 wrote:
| This doesn't sound like legal though
| avensec wrote:
| Similar but different. I recently closed out a Quality
| Engineering/CoE position and conducted two awkward phone screens
| where the "candidates" were running sales pitches for their side-
| gigs.
|
| The discussions started normally, but quickly became transparent.
| When I mentioned a challenge, they explained how they used some
| product/company to help with the solution. I thought it sounded
| familiar but couldn't figure out from where. After the candidate
| answered a second question similarly, I searched and found the
| site.
|
| The product is one of these consultancy projects is a thin
| wrapper on top of some other popular product. It finally hit me-
| Why the product sounded familiar is because I saw it on this
| candidate's LinkedIn page, listed as a founder. The other
| candidate, same situation, only he was a "board member."
| altdataseller wrote:
| Fun story: I actually did something like this but on the opposite
| end of the spectrum. I would interview candidates, not intending
| to hire them but tell them about my product and offered them a
| free trial at the end of the interview. Didn't work as well
| obviously since most didn't work for another company at the time
| and it was a B2B product
| mberning wrote:
| Reminds me of the guy that created a bunch of fake dating
| profiles in a small-ish town and essentially did a denial of
| service attack against other potential suitors.
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