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What's the Worst Job Posting You've Seen?
Kickstart70 asks: "Recently myself and a number of friends of mine who work or worked in IT jobs have been remarking on absolutely horrible job postings for low-level IT jobs paying small change. It seems the headhunters and employers are still wanting knowledge in everything, at least one degree but preferably two, and want to keep employees on minimal wages (in the job listing linked, the wage is in Canadian dollars). Is this common everywhere? What's the worst job posting you have seen?"
> WINNT is nice to have.
Don't do it! The organization is clearly run by crazies.
My favorite part:
Software List: Some or all would be preferred.
I mean, damn, $17-$19 is pretty good for Help Desk, even if it is bilingual, but anyone who is familiar with all of the items on that list should make more than God himself. Of course, the poster of this probably works for Kelly Services anyway.
The worst I've seen?
The job posting to find the person who will replace me.
I count 163 things (well, wc -l counted it) on that list of things they want prospects to know. Obviously that job involves too much work and would interfere with reading
Anyone that applies is obviously beyond geekdom and is to be pitied.
Trolling is a art,
The worst ones I've seen are ones that require you to have gone back in time in order to have enough experience with the software they want you to use:
"Requirements: 5 years experience with Windows 2000..."
Fuck that job
e suthibut.a sp
http://fuckthatjob.com/index.php
E-mails of the suthibut family (doesn't seem to be updated)
http://blog.postapocalypse.com/dave/dav
I'm being nitpicky about your commment I know. But you're lack of understanding into the space time continium and the 4th dimension requires it.
"Requirements: 5 years experience with Windows 2000..."
Ok if one wanted 5 years of experience with win2k, they would need to go forward in time, to say 2005. Not backwards, because win2k was not created yet.
Again my apologies for being a nitpick.
at Fuck That Job dot com ..but you know, there are so many of these postings that it's really not that funny anymore. It just reaffirms our belief that management really is trying to squeeze everything they can out of the pee-on workers.
Gotta do something to give that CEO his bonus (studies show that executive compensation has gone up over 17% in the past year. Bah.)
That's less than US$29K. While one of the job requirements may be unique, it would be amusing to see how long a heterosexual male would last working there.
...that as much as you hate your lousy IT job, there are 10 other people who would fill it given the chance. On top of that, I'd rather have a job in IT than working in, say, a meat processing plant. I'm grateful to have a job in IT, even if it sucks.
Let's face it. IT salaries got way ahead of themselves in during the boom. Now the pendulum swings the other way
Have you looked at what a teacher makes or any other number of degree-requiring professions? CAD$40k might sound sucky to you, but I'm betting there's a lot of unemployed IT ppl out there right now who'd take it in a snap.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
...$0.37 American these days, right? You can do better than that making shoes in Thailand.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Its fairly simple - they actually want to employ a dishonest person.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Requirements: Creative, smart individual who finds delight in working with others and around others. Candidate should have an understanding of computational theory and application and be able to grasp new ideas quickly. Prospective employee should have skills in a couple programming languages as well as the ability to learn a new language or environment quickly. If you are right for this job you will be able to apply your knowledge, logic and intuition to the problems at hand. You enjoy solving problems and discovering new ways to do things. An engineering degree is preferred but not necessary. If you don't have an engineering degree you will be expected to demonstrate competency in math, logic and computer science theory. You will be paid accordingly to your abilities in the above listed requirements.
Instead we see:
Must have 10 years of programming in language A that has been around for 4 years. Most know X,Y,Z. We don't care if you can learn X,Y,Z or understand the theory behind X,Y,Z, you must know it because it is a nice buzz-word right now. Be prepared to unlearn X,Y,Z and learn G,H,J when they become the new buzzwords. We don't want you to think, we want you code!! code!! code!!
But I digress.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I saw a posting for mail room personnel at CNet that said "must have 2 years previous corporate mail room experience". And it wasn't for managing the thing, it was just a nomal clerk position.
Would you want to hire someone who was either a) so uncapable that working the mail room is the peak of their abilities or b) so ambition-free that they had multiple years of mailroom experience without advancing?
"worked in IT jobs have been remarking on absolutely horrible job postings for low-level IT jobs paying small change"
? except for the rediculous amount of qualifications needed for that poisition, it seems like any other job posting ive seen for helpdesk. also 19 bucks an hour is alot of money to most entry level people i know (including myself). it should be noted that the rent in edmonton for a small apartment is usually around 500 CAN/mth and with this job working 40 hours a week would make like 3k.
how is 3k a month bad? have you tried looking for work lately? im tryign to find a job doing similar things in vancouver and would be more than happy with 12 or 13 dollars an hour. that would cover rent and internet and all that.
wtf is the poster on? does he expect everyone to be making 50k+ a year?
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
It was real posting to a real job list, which I thought was very funny, but the poster got banned from the list for their sense of humor.
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
I work at a dot-com company. One you've heard of, trust me. Anyway, we survived the Internet bubble bursting, and most of us kept our jobs, but things were still tough around here for a couple of years.
After finding out that the raises one year would be much smaller than expected, a coworker of mine complained about it. I looked at him in bafflement, and told him he should be thankful to be getting a raise at all. He should be happy to have a job at all.
For that matter, I later reflected, he should be happy simply that he makes enough money to have food to eat, to provide for himself and his loved ones, and not to have to go to bed wondering where his next meal will be coming from. All of us that can say that should be thankful for it.
Yes, the job the submitter pointed to isn't spectacular pay, but it's enough to feed and clothe yourself in comfort. That's more than most people in the world can say. Try to keep a sense of perspective while you're busy complaining about things.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
if you see any truly unbelievably low pay rates, you can bet they're placing the ad just to fulfill a legal requirement before hiring a foreign worker for peanuts.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
As soon as I see 'Administer Outlook/Exchange' and 'on-call 24/7', I don't care how much it pays.
Besides, I don't have 5 years experience with 2K/XP. I don't know if they do that to weed out liars or what, but it's a big red flag to me that the employer is reality-challenged.
That's true, but I'm so used to heaping shit on the Canadian currency after *years* of it tanking that it's like a reflex now. ;)
US is still up a bit over the last 10 years tho.
Only thing about a weak dollar is it makes good German beer more expensive. Fucking Greenspan.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
It was bad enough that they wanted MSCE certification in addition, but wanting fifteen years experience with Linux?! ROFL!
I'm not even entirely sure whether they had a version of VS .NET which would compile(as in the program not stuff it created) in the spring of 1998. Ahh well, such is lunacy.
Can I complain about bad interviews to? I submitted a story about bad interviews but its been pending in the que for *6 weeks* (what does that mean?). I had an interview for qualcomm for a 1 month temp position, and the interviewer asked a bunch of jack-ass quesitons, but this one sent me over the edge "where do you see yourself in 5 years?". To this I replied, "Not working at qualcom for 4 years and 11 months!"
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
> Supposedly the companies do this so they can say they could not fill the position and off-shore it.
Mebbe. However, following the principle that one should first look to stupidity before one claims that there is conspiracy, I'd say that requirements like our example arises when a manager tells the job shop, ``I need someone with 6 years of experience with Windows. You know -- NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP." And the recruiter then decides to simplify the requirements by stating that the position requires ``6 years of experience with Windows XP."
And six months later, the recruiter can't understand why he isn't making his quota.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Those that irked me the most were the ones with explicit version requirements, like:
3 years with Java V1.31a7c
2 years Swing V2.93xL
Must have this experience on a Sun station running Solaris 5.839.
The above is an exaggeration, but only slightly.
CmdrTaco does the worst job posting...
Benefits Package: none, contract basis, terminatable at any time without severance package
Pay: $14 Canadian/hour
Wait a minute... what am I doing? Is anyone looking for a developer (or hardware engineer for that matter)?
Hardware, software, and blinking lights!
When I was job-searching last year, it wasn't enough to know a language or API. With all the free tools available, most of us can teach ourselves pretty much anything necessary in a matter of weeks. But most of the abusive job ads had specific requirements for years of paid experience.
I recall going through one ad, getting excited because I really did have the experience they wanted (Unix, C++, etc.). But then I came to the deal-killer, in all caps: "APPLICANT MUST HAVE THIS EXPERIENCE WORKING FOR A MEDICAL EQUIPMENT SUPPLIER."
I posted this a while back, and some people thought it was too true to be funny. Others saw the humor.
How to decode an Oracle DBA Want-Ad
Oracle and unix guy.
I remember looking for intern/co-op positions through my school's placement center.
One year, a major computer hardware company came to campus looking ONLY for Ph.D students willing to do 3 month intern positions at minimum wage. Uh.... Turns out their HR department was a bit overzealous.
Another firm was an IT contracting company. They came to campus looking for new grads with a bachelors in computer science or engineering, and 5 years IT experience... After the representative told the several people that they were wasting his time because they didn't have enough experience, he was escorted off campus and told never to return.
I also recall a major financial institution wanted to hire CS students with 3 years of programming experience for the summer to - and I'm not making this up - *STAND INSIDE THE WALLS TO MAKE SURE THE NETWORK CABLES DIDN"T COME LOOSE OR BREAK*. The job was located in New York City, paid $5/hr, no assisted living, and you were *required* to live within 10 miles of the office. Oh yes, and you were also required to wear a suit at all times (though I have no idea how you were supposed to keep it clean standing inside crawlspaces all day long...)
This company, too, was kicked off campus and told never to return.
How about dogs years?
Karma Whore :)
Plus, why all the <br> tags? And didn't your mommy teach you to use xhtml? Use <br /> instead.
Interesting that you assume as an executive I don't know much about the IT systems I oversee. Would it suprise you to learn that I have published papers, articles, and a book on the subjects of distributed and parallel computing as well as object-oriented design theory? I rose through the ranks with technical skills, not business skills. I learned my business skills on the job.
I have hired as many people since the "bubble-burst" in March 2000 in the US as in India (actually, probably a bit more in the US). Of course, that probably interfers with your world-view of my type. I have also spent no training money in India, but plenty in the US. I require my outsourcing company to provide trained people, but I hire "fresh" people and train them routinely. Of course, that probably interferes with your world-view of my type as well.
You are free to think I am overpaid, but I can point to plenty of my fellow executives (defined as Director level and above by most business-experts) that make well less that highly-skilled software engineers.
The spec error I missed was buried in hundreds of pages of specs, reviewed by teams of people. You may find this hard to believe, but I have never in my life seen a perfect spec. If you pick up great works of fine literature, you can easily find spelling and gramatical errors. The mistake that I missed was a single missing word.
But, you obviously have a view that no one can change. I feel sorry for people who are so convinced they know everything.
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
The worst job I saw was about 3 years ago.. The job required a MCSE in a pure unix shop. I called up and asked how many windows machines were in the environment, and there were none. When asked why does it require an MCSE, the statement was that they were best qualified to operate the servers. Go figure..
Here in Colorado Springs, we have a very Christian organization that claims to project values and morals through their very profitable enterprise. They run ads all the time such as director of information technology ($28,000 / yr) and web designer for even less. They never get anybody to work for them and those that do just use them as a stepping stone. If FotF was really a Christian and moral company, they'd pay moral wages.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
Hm. I can't help but notice the humor here. And by humor I mean "the fact that you are a complete and total hypocritical asshole"
Honestly, how can you smack this guy down for claiming he knows something about what other people do right after you've presumed to know all about his job and what he knows or doesn't know?
You are a tool, my friend, in every sense of the word. And your attitude completely betrays the truth of this statement... you're very bitter about your tool status. Sorry. Maybe next life!
Nothing to see here.
I have Tons of Positions(TM) open right now... we develop software to perform Radar Cross Section Analysis.
:) It's all just for fun, but still something you can do to keep your skills up and have something to put on your resume if you're between jobs. There are about half a dozen of us right now.. it isn't such a bad gig :)
Now, for those of you who clicked before reading on, the only drawback is that I have no money, so there is no pay
Someone is blowing smoke at you!
As a Sysadmin you have full rights to anything on the servers and LAN that you or your employers own. Wiretapping does not come into play unless the government does it, or the government has somone do it as their agent. The only type of recording employers can not do is voice without the notifying their employees that they are subject to monitoring and recording. (However in Penna, you have to have the consent of both parties for a voice recording.)
Email belongs to the boss, all your surfing habits belong to the boss. Hell anything you do on your home machine is subject to whatever your employer wants to do if you connect to their network and use just one piece of software supplied by them.
Tell your source to try looking at the laws on search and siezure before giving you false legal info.
There is no "Title X", Many statutes and laws have titles that exceed X (10 in Roman Numerals) but Title X of what law? what statute?
IANAL, but IAALS (I am a Law Student) and I suggest that you try reading:
ISBN 0-8493-1192-6, Cyber Crime Investigator's Field Guide by Bruce Middleton, Appendix G
or just go to US DOJ Computer Crime
The Search and Seizure manual is here: S&S Manual.pfd
HTML
Short excerpt from page 7 of the pdf:
4. Private Searches
The Fourth Amendment does not apply to searches conducted by private parties who are not acting as agents of the government.
The Fourth Amendment "is wholly inapplicable to a search or seizure, even an unreasonable one, effected by a private individual not acting as an agent of the Government or with the participation or knowledge of any governmental official." United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113 (1984) (internal quotation omitted). As a result, no violation of the Fourth Amendment occurs when a private individual acting on his own accord conducts a search and makes the results available to law enforcement. See id. For example, in United States v. Hall, 142 F.3d 988 (7th Cir. 1998), the defendant took his computer to a private computer specialist for repairs. In the course of evaluating the defendant's computer, the repairman observed that many files stored on the computer had filenames characteristic of child pornography.
The repairman accessed the files, saw that they did in fact contain child pornography, and then contacted the state police. The tip led to a warrant, the defendant's arrest, and his conviction for child pornography offenses. On appeal, the Seventh Circuit rejected the defendant's claim that the repairman's warrantless search through the computer violated the Fourth Amendment.
Because the repairman's search was conducted on his own, the court held, the Fourth Amendment did not apply to the search or his later description of the evidence to the state police. See id. at 993. See also United States v. Kennedy, 81 F. Supp. 2d 1103, 1112 (D. Kan. 2000)
(concluding that searches of defendant's computer over the Internet by an anonymous caller and employees of a private ISP did not violate Fourth Amendment because there was no evidence that the government was involved in the search).
c) Employer Searches in Private-Sector Workplaces Warrantless workplace searches by private employers rarely violate the Fourth Amendment. So long as the employer is not acting as an instrument or agent of the Government at the time of the search, the search is a private search and the Fourth Amendment does not apply. See Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Ass'n, 489 U.S. 602, 614 (1989).
Now, if you or your employer is privy to illegal activity online, you are duty bound to report it, or face the consequences as a conspirator. Whoever is giving you that "title X" line is setting you up for a fall!
We're I-bought-cheesy-puffs-on-the-interweb.com, a startup Fortune 23,500,000 company with a fantastic new idea! We're going to sell home-delivered cheese puffs over the interweb!
Project Requirements
We'd need the sun, the moon, and the stars, as well as your first born child and a hand job. All source code must be provided, and you must assign all copyrights to us. We need this project completed within the next three hours. Contractor will be required to provide lifetime support for code base, even if we let the neighbor kid muck about in the source code (Janice says that he's a web developer, so he must be qualified. Besides, he's in the 10th grade now, we're sure he knows what he's doing).
Contractor Requirements
Compensation
We offer a generous compensation package that includes free soda (Wednesdays only) and all the pretzels you can eat! Yay!
We'll also give you a title! Yes, you'll be the Supervisory Director of Internet Architectural Engineering (Junior)! That's the kind if title that you can almost pay a mortgage with! Almost.
Unfortunately, we can't offer compensation in the form of pay or benefits right now. When the interweb cheese puffs delivery service takes off, though, we'll pay you really, really well. Promise!
However you missed the boat on drugs. Drugs are NOT subsidized in Canada. Nor is dental work, nor are eyeglasses. But, patent life in Canada is shorter. This means there is more competion, and medicine is cheaper. Ah well, you are right Canada does have slow health care. Charging $50.00 to the the morons that show up at the emergency ward with the sniffles (a non emergency) instead of the doctor's office would help Canada afford something better. It happens all the time. This is the one lesson from American health insurance that Canadians could well learn from. It costs about 3 or 4 times the price of a doctor's office visit to go to the emergency room... and that is just to be triaged before treatment!
However... and now a major rant against American health care: You're probably the type who never bothered to notice the clerk at a local store wince because he or she is in pain from a back injury. And you probably don't give a shit that they can't get it fixed becuase they can't afford it on the wage they make, the store they work at doesn't provide health insurance, and they make too much to get medicade. Just as long as you can get your MRI in a day, who gives a fuck about the 70,000,000 who can't get any MRI? But then again, maybe you are also one of those hypocrytical born again Christian assholes who says universal medicare is not for you because the people who can't afford health insurance should stop whining and get a real job like I hear these dickheads say all the time. Like Jesus when healing a lame begger ever stopped to say, "do you have an HMO or a PPO? What, no insurance? Sorry piss off."
It is amazing that a county that outspends by far any other country in the world per capita in health care, doesn't care to make sure everyone is covered. That is the black side of American health care. On the other hand, you may need a long time to get an MRI in Canada, but you will get it whether you are employed or not. And if it is an emergency, you will get it in minutes. Urgent, in hours. Nice to have, you have to wait. I had a shoulder operation after I was hurt... after I was laid off from a company. I wouldn't have been able to afford it here. Canada has also either the first on second healtiest population in the world according the the U.N. That is because everyone has access to basic health care. The mattress store clerk in Ballwin, MO. wouldn't have to live in chronic pain. The U.S. by the way, falls way down the list, below Canada and many of the European Union countries who all have universal health care.
So you want to knock universal health care? And people keep saying Americans are selfish. Can you imagine that? Get a clue.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
For $19.00 an hour on a 2-year contract? I'm there. I got shafted by HP, yes, Hewlett Packard, for $15.00 an hour and got hosed after busting my ass for 5 months. Just one day, "Oh, we love your work, you're great, you work hard, we're downsizing, goodbye." "Can I get my stuff from my desk?" "No, we're boxing it up for you as we speak." Thank you very fucking much. BTW, can we pass a couple more H1-B Visas, I DON'T THINK WE HAVE ENOUGH SWAMIS IN THIS NATION YET. I LIKE GOING TO BED AT NIGHT KNOWING I CAN BE FIRED AT ANY MOMENT AND THAT MY DAUGHTER WILL PROBABLY STARVE IF I CAN'T PROVIDE FOR HER FOOD.
IF WE DON'T UNIONIZE INFO-TECH, NONE OF US WILL BE LEFT TO SPEAK FOR.
UNIONIZE NOW!
-- Game Developers: Stop porting badly-textured games from crappy console systems!
i once saw, and have a screen shot of, a job ad asking for, and im not making this up "1137 A01" skills, this was for a level 1 support specialist in san diego. i stil wonder if it was a joke or not.
Everybody denies I am a genius--but nobody ever called me one!