[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Who is pretending to be hiring?
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Ask HN: Who is pretending to be hiring?
I'm looking for a job and like many people in this situation am
finding it unusually difficult. I've read rumors that many firms
are actually in a hiring freeze, but they keep job reqs open for
appearances. Apparently some investors use job postings as a
company health metric. From my contacts, I am personally aware of
situations where internally-recommended CVs are ignored by HR, and
other cases had open job postings and passed people successfully
through the interview process, and then the hiring manager still
didn't pull the trigger. I have no way of knowing how widespread
this is, but it is happening at some places. Is your company like
this? If you have real info and not just suspicions, let's name
some names.
Author : neilk
Score : 182 points
Date : 2024-10-01 21:54 UTC (1 hours ago)
| gwbas1c wrote:
| When I worked at VMware in 2008, I remember interviewing a
| candidate. Priorities changed, we weren't crazy about the
| candidate, and they didn't get hired. No one was ever hired for
| the opening, and ~1 year later the project was canceled.
|
| > but they keep job reqs open for appearances
|
| People hire for appearances. If you're a manager you need people
| to manage. It makes you feel important. That job that I had at
| VMware... The more I think about it, that job was making someone
| feel important, and feel like they were checking a box. My prior
| job was about making someone feel important, too. (My boss was
| promoted to manager so he hired me.)
|
| So I wouldn't go and say that a company is _pretending_ to be
| hiring. It 's more that priorities change, or sometimes the bar
| for a position is high, ect, ect.
| heraldgeezer wrote:
| >People hire for appearances. If you're a manager you need
| people to manage. It makes you feel important.
|
| This eventually leads to layoffs. At my old company, when
| someone in a team moved teams or quit, they reflexively hired a
| replacement or consultant even if it was not needed. Then they
| had to be laid off due to budget (me included)
|
| So yes, managers just want a bigger team to look good. It
| worked when money was free...
| xyst wrote:
| There's a few rumors out there that promotion for managers at
| Amazon require a minimum head count. Fortune 500 companies are
| a disaster.
|
| It's all a game of smoke and mirrors. Pump the stock at all
| costs
| marcus0x62 wrote:
| > If you're a manager you need people to manage. It makes you
| feel important.
|
| When you're a manager, you need a bench of candidates for areas
| where you think your team will grow, and for people from your
| team who might leave.
|
| When I was a manager, I always had a list of potential hires,
| but it was a spreadsheet I kept, and when I'd talk to people
| informally I'd let them know - either I have no possible
| opening for them now, but I'd like to keep them in mind for the
| future _if they were also interested in working for me_ or, I
| 'd let them know I'd _probably_ have an opening n months in the
| future. But, I 'd never post job listings just to get a
| candidate list. Or interview random people just for the hell of
| it. For one, at most (bigger than tiny startup) companies,
| there's at least some bureaucracy in getting job listings
| approved - why would you do that work if you don't need to?
| Also, why would you want to lead people on who you want on your
| team?
|
| At the line manager level, this theory makes no sense. I'm not
| saying it doesn't happen, just that it is as stupid for the
| manager as it is wasteful for the job applicant.
| calpaterson wrote:
| Haha, bold thread. I can understand the frustration as probably
| we all know this monkey business is too common - but I suspect
| that an open invitation to "name some names" is not probably not
| going to be a productive and useful as you might hope :)
| Madmallard wrote:
| My ultra qualified friend who is a lead at a fortune 500 company
| has only had 2 leads in 11 despite being probably in the top 3
| best available candidates for all 11 applications. So yeah, I
| don't think many tech companies are actually hiring.
| gip wrote:
| It is anecdotical, but I'm consulting with a startup in the Bay
| Area. We have 9 job openings listed on the website (and for some
| reason only 4 on LinkedIn). But in reality one position (senior
| dev) is really open, and the bar is sky high. By that I mean that
| the founders would hire the right person. But the other 8
| positions are just there for signaling and nobody looks at the
| applications we get (and for one of these positions we got 1k+
| applications last time I checked). For when I'm asked, the CEO
| told me to say that we are prioritizing finding the senior dev
| first (and the position has been open for 6 months).
|
| I think the founders feel that it is the right posture to signal
| that the company is growing (external messaging) and that we are
| doing well (internal messaging).
| taurath wrote:
| It should be illegal. Given how many regulations there are
| around hiring, there should also be some around job postings.
| Making people waste a bunch of time updating their resume and
| writing cover letters for a company thats not actually looking
| to fill a role is awful. Its creating shitty dynamics for both
| job seekers and job posters - seekers have to spreadfire apply
| to as many places as possible with quantity over any quality,
| get their inboxes obliterated with rejections that make very
| little sense. Job posters get 1000 applicants for every
| position because there's barely any reason to read the
| description anymore.
|
| Not to mention all the economic reporting that is completely
| messed up by this. Job openings are something that is tracked,
| and policy can't adapt if literally every company is saying
| they're hiring like gangbusters but nobody can get a job.
| RangerScience wrote:
| Heh :) Enforcement would potentially look a lot like
| unemployment, but in reverse: you have to show you've been
| interviewing people, just like unemployment requires you to
| show you've been looking
| mckn1ght wrote:
| Not even that would be good enough because a lot of sham
| reqs still interview and then reject later.
| catchcatchcatch wrote:
| Get an attorney and have a conversation about filing a
| lawsuit in civil court. There's objective economic harm for
| not at least calling everyone that applies, in my opinion
| (I'm not an attorney) to Unfortunately there's taxes for
| people not understanding computer science and wanting to be
| in "management." Especially if people stare at the software
| newspaper all day. Entry level manager positions aren't
| supposed to be glamorous....
| catchcatchcatch wrote:
| I know software managers and recruiters that don't want to
| do fairly filter through 1000 applicants. When it's a very
| large company that has over 100,000 global employees it's a
| bit unfortunate.
| INTPenis wrote:
| Funny you should say that because I've been suspecting the same
| thing here in Sweden.
| jedberg wrote:
| VCs are absolutely using job listings as a health metric, and it
| is leading to companies listing a bunch of jobs. They aren't
| exactly fake jobs -- they will hire someone if some unicorn walks
| in. But they are nice to have jobs, not necessary jobs.
|
| Also some companies keep up generic listings like "Senior
| engineer" not because they are hiring but because they would be
| willing to make an opportunistic hire for the right person, and
| want to collect the names of interested people for when they are
| hiring.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I'm out of my depth here, but doesn't this feel a bit short-
| sighted on the part of start-ups?
|
| If talented folks are applying to ghost jobs and never hearing
| back, aren't they less likely to apply later when real
| vacancies open?
|
| I know it's an employers market atm since firms don't have the
| cash flow to scale, but interest rates are coming down and it
| won't always be this way.
|
| Again, I'm out of my depth, recruiting is not my expertise,
| etc...
| jedberg wrote:
| Well, it's a game theory thing. Probably a few people will
| ignore their outreach after they remember the company never
| got back to them. But in most cases they will probably assume
| the application was just lost. Or if it's a hot startup that
| just got a round of funding and has an interesting problem,
| they won't care.
|
| On balance it probably helps more than hurts.
| xyst wrote:
| Why do VCs always ruin everything?
|
| From housing, jobs, healthcare, petcare, appliances. Everywhere
| I look these fucking vultures ruin everything they come into
| contact with.
| gcr wrote:
| It's rough out there, folks.
|
| Anecdote: a while back, I did an internship at a YC "darling"
| company that you've definitely heard of. They apparently liked me
| so much that a couple years ago, the lead of intern recruiting
| emailed me encouraging me to re-apply if I was ever on the job
| market.
|
| Well it's fall 2024, and they automatically rejected my resume
| without review.
|
| Apparently not even internships are good enough as a hiring
| signal anymore.
| digging wrote:
| Nope :( I applied earlier this year to a smaller company I
| interned at a while back. Lots of former colleagues were
| excited I was applying, the hiring manager used to work
| directly with me and was happy to have me in the process... I
| didn't get an offer. I didn't expect to be the strongest
| candidate, even though the pay was a _downgrade_ for me (at
| mid-level!), but whoever they hired I have to assume was really
| overqualified, because I _already knew the product_ and written
| some high quality features in it already. It 's rough out here
| indeed.
| golly_ned wrote:
| My last company, OctoAI, would leave postings up even through
| layoffs. They'd go unfulfilled; exceptional candidates would
| still join the company on occasion, but not through the front
| door.
| eitally wrote:
| I work in cloud consulting and we definitely do not act like
| this. We currently maintain almost 0 bench for one of the
| hyperscalers and recruiting is proving to be very difficult for
| senior technical consultants (both infra & data domains). I have
| two roles listed via LinkedIn right now and I can't tell you how
| many low quality applications I've received. Lots of people are
| using the "easy apply" to try their luck, even if they're not
| remotely qualified.
|
| This is sort of the flip side of what others have described about
| having a post listed just in case a unicorn walks in. I don't
| need unicorns. I just need solid cloud consultants with a few
| years of client facing experience.
| water-data-dude wrote:
| The title made me think you were looking for folks to make up a
| company and pretend they're hiring folks :(
|
| Well, if anyone wants to pretend to apply to my imaginary tech
| startup, we have an exciting product that combines intrusive
| cameras all over the customer's house with cutting edge AI to
| blast a bloodcurdling scream through their smart speakers
| whenever they bite into a piece of fruit.
| 0x000xca0xfe wrote:
| The tiny German startup I worked at last year was posting 4 dev
| positions. After some financial problems hit they announced
| (internally but in an official manner) that they were not going
| to hire anybody.
|
| Couple weeks later I pointed out to the person responsible for
| hiring that the postings were still up. They explicitly responded
| that they will keep them up. I didn't get an actual reason but I
| think it was for job market "research" and to keep a steady
| stream of applicants to threaten existing employees with
| replacement.
| edferda wrote:
| Honest question, not trying to be confrontational, just curious
| every time I see these kind of posts/anecdotes.
|
| It seems to me that finding a job in tech is easier than finding
| a job in any other professional field (e.g. chemical
| engineering). I am an electrical engineer myself and it was
| easier to get a job that paid better doing programming than in
| EE. Specially for the effort you have to put in.
|
| How is it that HN complains so much about the whole process? Are
| people only applying to big tech companies or hot startups hoping
| to get the compensation they have been getting for the past n
| years?
|
| There must be plenty of tech jobs in non tech industries doing
| normal, "boring" work like dba or maintaining legacy systems.
|
| I mean, those kind of jobs still pay enough to live a normal,
| decent life. They might not be exciting but work is work.
| Although that is my take, coming from a 3rd world country and
| all.
|
| Or am I just delusional and the "boring" jobs(that pay less but
| still enough) are nonexistent?
|
| I am not from the US so I really don't know how the market looks
| outside of the FAAANG/startup bubble. Heck, last time I checked
| even the US government needed tech folks. It feels that there are
| jobs out there but the jobs don't match people's expectation. But
| I could be really wrong.
| dserban wrote:
| > Is your company like this? If you have real info and not just
| suspicions, let's name some names.
|
| A certain company (the name starts with "A") is widely known for
| doing this, you might guess which company I refer to by deep-
| diving into my comments history.
|
| It looks exactly like in this YT short:
| https://www.youtube.com/shorts/V5VAN6ldS9o
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| My other favorite is sometimes there are posts here where the
| company is apparently looking to hire every single position
| required to make a company.
|
| Well, in that case sure, I too am a multinational firm servicing
| the ___ industry just looking to fill a few roles: senior back
| end engineer, senior front end engineer, senior sales manager,
| senior accountant, founding product concept... that's all.
| diego_moita wrote:
| We, job seekers, should react against it.
|
| I've been actively flagging job posts on HN that keep these open
| positions forever on the "Who's hiring" thread. I also replied to
| them, explaining why the job post was fake.
|
| Fortunately, HN has been more proactive about it. On the last
| Who's Hiring thread the usual suspects that flagged weren't
| posting anymore.
|
| Also, I've been cancelling newsletters from sites full of this
| shit. No more Otta.com, Dice.com, etc.
| neilv wrote:
| I've heard startup founders pretending to hire, like it's a
| common best-practice.
|
| Personally, I don't think it's very honest, and I'm going to
| wonder what other honesty they have flexibility about.
|
| I wonder whether any of the third-party job-posting sites has
| figured out ways to say you're _not_ much hiring -- or only
| hiring /promoting internally, or only filling a funnel for
| possible future openings, or only hiring if a rare unicorn comes
| along -- _without_ that looking negative to people who only want
| simpleton metrics.
|
| Maybe the cooling of "growth" theatre startups will make it OK to
| sound like you're not "growing" right now.
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(page generated 2024-10-01 23:01 UTC)