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Seagate To Pay Former Worker $1.9M For Phantom Job
Lucas123 writes "The jury in a Minnesota-based wrongful employment case delivered a verdict ordering disk-drive manufacturer Seagate to pay $1.9 million to a former employee who uprooted his family and career at Texas Instruments in Dallas to move to Minnesota for a job that did not exist. The man was supposed to be developing solid state drive technology for Seagate but was laid off months later. 'The reason that was given is that he was hired to be a yield engineer but the project never came to fruition,' the former employee's attorney said. 'They didn't care what effect it had on his career.'"
So you're saying Seagate's HR department doesn't have good TRIM support?
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
I love how the tech industry somehow thinks they can get away with this kind of BS. Ridiculous.
Neato. I'm curious to what extent they're liable though. Naturally if he just moves and is canned, there should be some liability, although rarely honoured, rough deal...
but.. 3 months, 6? a year?
If you move and work at a company two years, and they make you redundant... can you get some sort of pro-rated settlement on the 20 year career you were planning on having there?
Sent from my PDP-11
Just shows how far HR is from people doing the real work.
And that's why you see stuff like need 5 years for low level jobs as well as the need B.S / PHD for lot's of tech jobs that don't need one.
While I do agree that this really sucks I'm not sure it's worth almost 2 Million dollars. He might have done a bit more research on the new job or perhaps worked for a few months BEFORE uprooting his entire family (which is most likely what I would have done in a similar situation). I think that 6 or maybe even 12 months severance should suffice in this situation. The guy actually got paid for 9 months to do his job so it sounds to me like there was a job, it just didn't last as long as the guy had hoped it would.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law - Aleister Crowley
The inference was that SeaGate bought Vaidyanathan on as a little corporate theatrics, manipulating appearances while they looked for a partner organization.
He was able to sue under a Minnesota law that makes it illegal for
There is no loyalty between employers and employees, and that's been the case for a few decades now. It's everyone-watch-yo-own-ass, like the Wall St. mercenaries.
Time to consider employment contracts like they do for investment bankers.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Minnesota is a "At Will" employment state, which is a misnomer. Basically it means they can fire you at any time, for (almost) any reason, without any warning or compensation, unless otherwise covered by federal laws (for example, mass layoffs). Most states have laws similar to this. In this case, they caught Seagate on a technicality -- the jury believed that Seagate willfully misrepresented the job to him, and thus was in violation of a state law.
Without knowing the case specifics, I can't say with authority how likely this is to be overturned, but if Seagate can demonstrate that the project fell apart for business reasons that could not be reasonably anticipated, it'll die on appeal. And it is very likely that it will.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Liability was based off of a contract term called reliance or promissory estoppel. Because he relied on a promise of a job, and it cost him a bunch of money, he is given damage for what he went through. I am not a lawyer but that is the basic premise of the term. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promissory_estoppel
I got laid off last week after only working for 3 weeks. Who does hiring when they are about to re-org?
"Where is my mind?"
Says a bit as to why SSD technology is taking so god damn long to progress.
Boredom is bliss.
The article draws almost exclusively on the guy's lawyer for it's material: you know, the same lawyer who gets probably half a million out of this 'guilty' verdict? I can't imagine a worse primary source than that for informing any attempt at a factual, semi-serious debate on the case.
Furthermore, while I agree that hiring someone for a patently fabricated project and career track is unethical, I'm not convinced that Seagate did that here. Hiring a highly skilled individual long before urgently needing them isn't unethical; it's thinking ahead. Again, if they hired him exclusively to bullshit possible business partners and simultaneously could have foreseen wanting to get rid of him if or when this particular project died, then of course it's wrong, but the article doesn't go even halfway to convincing me of this supposition.
As an aside, I'm a little confused about how the lost time and the litigation process "ended" his career as a yield engineer. Have other people refused to hire him? Does the field change so fast that he truly doesn't know anything useful anymore and may as well have switched jobs? That whole thing smells of drumming up sympathy and inflating the measurable economic loss to seek a larger judgment, or perhaps getting those benefits to the case out of convenience after deciding voluntarily to give up the profession for the entrepreneurial endeavor the plaintiff is engaged in now.
She was a VP of human resources. She was offered a position that paid up to 180k a year. She sold her home and looked forward to the new position. It turns out they only planned to keep her for a 3 month project and laid her off. The job details made it appear that it was permanent and no mention of temp to hire appeared in job description.
She lost her home, savings, and moved back in with her parents. She is 55 and is too old to be rehired and lost everything. I hope she can quote this case as an example. Something has to give in this country. The rest of the 1st world does not have any of this nonsense and has much more support services. She is about ready to work at McDonalds and beg. Sometimes I hope these people and companies ROT.
http://saveie6.com/
They can require this because they can with today's labor market. SOmeone with 5 years knows more and is more productive than a fresh grad out of ITT or someone who can't hold onto a job for more than 6 months.
http://saveie6.com/
The list goes on with the only thing missing being actual experience with PCs, printers, and Office suites, which is what the job description is all about.
Sometimes I think the BS B.S. requirements are just to thin the applicant pool a little. You might miss out on some quality people, but it gives you an early short list. It's not feasible to interview every single person, especially for some low-level job. There's always some arbitrary line in the sand used to cull the pack. Why should a non-necessary degree requirement be any different than tossing any resume that has some minor grammatical error?
If you or anyone else has a better system, I'd love to hear it. After seeing the results of the current hiring policy, anything would be better.
Hell yeah!
Plenty of times it's not even HR. My 'former' employer's head of IT put together a job posting once that *required* a CCIE for a normal grade network admin job and then offered to pay like $70k (top end), which in my locale is respectable money, but definately not for a CCIE . Anybody that would have fit either end of that spectrum would have been scared off by the other.
*disclaimer - everyone 'in' IT knew that the upper managers were in the good ol' boys club with the owner, and couldn't IT their way out of a wet paper bag, they were just in it for the ego. Just illustrating the "hr isn't the only bastion of suck" point.
----- - The beatings will continue until morale improves
the BS B.S. requirements are just to thin the applicant pool a little.
Careful though, if the job requirements are too bullshit what you are doing is excluding the people who don't bullshit (and actually bother to read the job requirements)
Yeah. Just the other day I saw a job advertised where experience with Windows Vista was required to get the job, but nothing was said about being expected to work with Vista.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I thought they would just buy it in?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/02/seagate_ssd_delayed/
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I was really hard up for a job and took one out of town. I ended up moving from Sandusky, OH to Columbus, OH for the job.
Corporate laid everyone off in that office within 3 months of me starting. I found out after the fact that after I had been offered the job by the local HR folks and signed a lease on an apartment, corporate was going to renege on the deal because they knew at that time they would be laying everyone off. Apparently that was legally questionable, so they hired me anyway.
Luckily I had a better job lined up by my last day. The rest is history.
Aren't a lot of the bullshit requirements intended to justify H-1B visas?
I thought in order to qualify for H-1B, you had to first advertise in the local area and if you can't find people then you can apply for H-1B's (which you can then change the requirements).
whats better 2 year degree + 1-2+ years real world work or 4 year degree with little real world work?
SWEET!
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
My favorite:
* Requires 10 years of C# experience
(The .NET Framework was created in 2002.)
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Sounds like they already have the perfect candidate in mind from India on an H1B. They simply take his resume and adjust the requirements to match it so that no-one else will be able to qualify.
McDonalds may say she's overqualified and not even hire her.
As for tech jobs they don't want to give people with 10 years in field 1 level 1 job even you got layed off and just want anything even if it means going back to a lower level job and or pay.
Actually, no.. it was *released* in 2002. There were 2 years of very public previews and betas (that most people ignored because MS was so intent on marketing web services).
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
"The amount of time Vaidyanathan was away from his chosen profession, both at Seagate and during the litigation, ended his career as a yield engineer."
Was there some reason he couldn't work while he was suing Seagate? Is that a full time job?
Yeah. Just the other day I saw a job advertised where experience with Windows Vista was required to get the job, but nothing was said about being expected to work with Vista.
That's just a check to make sure the applicant is a glutton for punishment...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
How exactly do you get experience on a product that hasn't been finalized or put into production, dumbass?
We may laugh, but when I first graduated in 2003 there was a plethora of job advertisements in my area asking for 5 or more years experience with .NET
Indeed, but it's a problem because everybody thinks that they're entitled to that sort of requirement and it's been going on for years. If it weren't all the companies deliberately misadvertising the positions it wouldn't be a problem, but how exactly is somebody supposed to know that 4 years on paper means 1 year or so?
In my view they need to also be careful that it doesn't have the effect of discriminating. The last thing that the HR department ought to be doing is going back to the days when certain folk weren't considered good enough even if they could do the job.
And I'm not really exaggerating that much, in order to get work experience you have to have a job, but in order to get a job they're expecting to have several years of experience for even a basic job. Maybe they don't really mean it, but they could still end up in court explaining why it is that they're not advertising the positions accurately.
I was recently contacted by a hiring agency. I am currently working an entry-level IT position as a Technical Analyst at a major bank in Canada. I'm currently in college and am doing this as a co-op 4-month term. I posted my resume online because I wanted to start my career and not bother with school (if I were given a proper and well-paid position).
I was called and had a phone interview. The interviewer was so pleased with me that we basically agreed on the salary over the phone and said he would send along the papers to be signed by me so I can start my new job in the next 2-3 weeks.
I decided to wait until I sign to hand in my resignation at my current employer. After waiting 4 days I got impatient and called back, he simply said "Oh, uhmm.. ugh, sorry - the position was taken by someone else, I'm sure something else will come up".
If I hadn't such a poor expectation of competency's from the general populace, I would have QUIT my co-op job (a big no-no), forfeited my co-op credit at college, having to repeat the course, and possibly never worked with this employer again, and god knows what else.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
was his name Jar Jar?
That's nothing. I once saw a web developer job that listed in its requirements "10 years of HTML experience".
...and this was in 1999.
And that's why people can't get jobs and then they end up with gaps in there resume.
If the same kind of people went to both, the former might be better for some jobs. On the other hand, smart and capable students typically tend to favour 4yr programs which means you are more likely to find better talent coming out of a 4yr program.
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
Time machine
you really don't know?
rewriting history since 2109
hell better with 5 years real world work and no degree. i have no fancy degree and im running ibm 37 blades atm. was a local start-up hear and the guy that hired me couldn't find any admins with that kind of paper. i simply said i used to own a sun workstation for personal use years back and i got the job. now im running ibm blades. so i went with little exp and some networking skills. but with ibms gui and stuff any monkey with some pc skill can Handel em.
4 years on paper = 0 real work exp. they come in knowing whats on paper and no clue on anything else.
By using it, R-tard.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
the entire market is messed up for getting jobs. they want a ged just to move boxes around or drive a forklift. and yes they adding these things to pretty much all jobs in a time where dropouts are high but unemployment is massive. i rember my company posted some low end job with no formal degree. are app server got so overloaded with people filing apps we had to shut it down. so yes there doing it to thing the herd due to there being plenty of people needing work.if unemployment ever goes back down to like 1% then jobs will relax the reqs being they will be desperate to find anyone with a pulse.
sometimes companies write a job ad so that only one person can fill it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML#Origins
Obviously, they wanted Tim!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Hogwash.
So many people confuse education with intelligence. Education will *amplify* intelligence no doubt. But having done 4 years of pushing paper only means your good at pushing paper. It does *not* promise talent. in fact, most talent is driven from individuals during college. The corporate workplace wants and needs drones.
End Rant.
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Depends on what you're looking for. A 2 year tech degree teaches you what to do whereas a 4 year one teaches you why you're doing it. That's not to say that people with a 2 year degree can't learn why or that people with a 4 year degree are always capable of learning what, but that's the general difference.
Obviously doing a proper interview is the only real way to determine what someone is actually capable of, but if you're going to go off education alone, someone with a recent 2 year degree will hit the ground running fairly quickly but may not pick up changes in technology very quickly whereas someone with a recent 4 year degree but little experience will probably take a little while to get started but should, at least in theory be able to pick up technology changes a little quicker.
A 2 year degree from more than 5 years ago however is worth absolutely nothing and may as well be ignored.
I saw a request for 5 years .NET experience in Q2 2003 when I first graduated. About the only people who might have met that wrote the damned thing.
This is pretty amazing. This is what people risk every time they work for an "at will" employer in a state which permits this sort of behavior. I have only ever worked in such states and I've never known any recourse for such shenanigans existed. He couldn't sue in Texas, I'm reasonably sure of that. Bizarre that Seagate was stupid enough to pull this in a state where it isn't permitted. So good for this guy.
That doesn't make sense at all.
Where is the money she got from selling the house? Parties and drugs?
And if she was good enough to warrant 180k/year I'm doubtful she couldn't find a position paying at least half that. Should sound like a bargain to any company.
From 180k/year to McDonalds. Call Michael Moore, now.
I was actually working with .NET and C# while it was in beta back in late 2000. I then when on to do a few years of Java programming before I returned to doing mostly .NET C# in late 2002. So yes you can have 10 years of experience with .NET although it is unlikely.
I quote" We are looking for yield engineers for all kinds of new technologies so we can become #1 in the following technologies..." Who needs competitors if you got such PR!!
Yeah, the boundaries they are looking for in Java are always going up, its up to 15 years experience for a senior position.
I hear James Gosling is out of work, though...
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I've always been a fan of:
*Experience with Java/Javascript
(as if the two have anything at all to do with one another :p)
This is exactly what I ran into this year.
The past two jobs I worked at were both very small companies that I learned about through networking. I had little to no experience in the languages I'd be working with in each (ASP and ActionScript) yet the companies were small enough that both were willing to interview me. When they did I showed that I have a very solid theoretical foundation that lets me pick up new languages easily--we all know this; if you know the theory then the rest is just learning syntax and proving your ability to implement things.
The recession hit and I got laid off last November, and it's taken me until now to find a place that looks at more than the number of years I've worked with their favorite technologies. There's little more frustrating than knowing I'd be a great fit for the work a company is doing but can't even get an interview due to bad resume screening. The job market is such that a company can be picky, but I saw positions I applied for remain open for six months or more because no applicants had numbers that lined up with exactly what they wanted.
Your brain is not a computer.
I only started work in it in 2007, but 80-hour weeks are the norm here....
Been happening forever. Companies that think "years of experience" = good and just decide they need an arbitrary amount without any real consideration of what that means.
Something along those lines I remember was back in 1999 when my roommate was looking for jobs. I had a wide skillset and was looking for a few kinds of jobs, a Linux sysadmin being one he was interested in. There were more than a few positions, what with this being .com boom time and all that. They all wanted MCSEs. Yes that's right, they wanted a Microsoft certification for a Linux only job. Reason was, of course, MCSE = sysadmin in their mind. They didn't know what it was, what it meant, any of that, just that MCSE = sysadmin. He was actually told this at one point. He got exasperated with a recruiter and yelled at them (he wasn't getting the job anyhow) for the stupidity. They said something to the effect of "MCSE is the industry standard degree for all systems administration."
This shit will always happen.
There's some truth to what you say. However, apart for people who had to run away from abusive homes or stayed in abusive homes and were psychologically damaged as a result (unfortunately far too many), if somebody couldn't make it through high school then they probably don't have the personal discipline to do most jobs available nowadays. Somebody who drives a forklift, moves boxes, or works at a sawmill will need to show up on time and has a good chance of needing to interact with computers. For the latter they will need some basic mental flexibility and capability for learning because computer interfaces change over time. Seriously, you don't need a lot for a GED: a reasonable competency in reading and writing English, arithmetic, some capacity for memorization, and some rudimentary analysis and problem solving skills. Driving a long distance freight truck nowadays needs some computer skills to find out your itinerary from an automated dispatcher. About the only jobs that might not need that level of skill are basic resource extraction jobs and, in Western nations, those are more rare than than they were 30 years ago because techniques like open pit mining are all about using powered equipment to improve productivity of the individual worker, thus reducing the number of workers actually needed.
Really, it is something of a fair situation when you think about it since employees have the right to leave anytime they want.
This situation is about bad faith. The company making an offer they had no intention of making good on. That is a whole different situation. It is perfectly legit for a company to offer someone a job, hire them, find out they don't work for whatever reason, and let them go. Even companies with strong employee protection almost always have this. I work for a state university which implies VERY strong worker protection (it is hard to fire people) but they still do 6-months of probation. When you get hired, your manager has 6 months to decide if they want to keep you. At any time during that they can decide it isn't working out and say "See ya."
The problem here was they enticed him to leave his job and move, which is expensive and he couldn't get his old job back, for a position they knew they had no intention of hiring for. It was just a sham, a posturing game with another company.
THAT is the issue and why he won a suit.
My favorite:
* Requires 10 years of C# experience
(The .NET Framework was created in 2002.)
This isn't insightful or funny just plain inaccurate. I was working in .NET, C#, ASP.NET in late 2000 while it was still in beta.
What you know means almost nothing. What's important is how fast you learn. A solid theoretical foundation is more beneficial in that regard than a few VB6 classes you get fron the local VoTech.
But having done 4 years of pushing paper only means your good at pushing paper. It does *not* promise talent.
I agree with you here. Talent is not a guarantee with a college degree absolutely. But it does guarantee something that actually is important to employers. A college degree is a statement that you can attempt a large and difficult and often times dreary task and stick through it to the end, and actually see it through to the end. A degree says determination. Employers love determination. That's what gets projects done on time.
in fact, most talent is driven from individuals during college.
Here is where we disagree. K-12 is like that, but college certainly isn't. I loved college intensely. If I hadn't gotten married along the way I'd be a prof myself by now. Where else can you go into a building and have PhD's explain interesting things to you all day long? It's wonderful.
I loved my engineering courses. I look at the world with new eyes now. For example, I know that shape a power line makes is a catenary, and I know why it looks like that. Hell, I even liked the goofy other stuff they made me take. I still lean on my Economics class for insights into the world around me. I know why the GDP is important. And public speaking. I teach classes on our software every so often and each time I walk into a room full of strangers I think of Dr. Dial who taught me how to speak to crowds. And even a poetry appreciation class where they taught us how to pull meaning from words and dissect advertising. I can tell you how you are being manipulated by any advertisement 9 times out of 10. I mostly avoid TV and advertising now because of that class.
I positively bloomed in college, and found it to be the most enriching time of my life.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
No, the corporate workplace wants drones. What it needs is someone up top who recognizes that they don't actually need drones, they need talented people that are rewarded for loyalty.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
How about comparing an 18-year old with no work experience and no college with a 22-year-old with no work experience and a 4 year degree? Because that's really the difference in comparing career entry points.
I'll second you on this one. If they ask too much BS, they'll get someone that talks to much too.
I don't know why HR and managers don't appreciate honesty, but rather go with someone that managed to convinced them about their own fairy tales.
An HR department that appreciates bullshit (and doesn't appreciate honesty) will gradually lead to a company full of bullshit (if it's not already such a place).
If you wouldn't want to work in such a company, it's to mutual benefit to find out early - whether they reject you or you turn them down.
Same for those companies who don't hire you just because they see some facebook photos of you.
Sounds like they already have the perfect candidate in mind from India on an H1B. They simply take his resume and adjust the requirements to match it so that no-one else will be able to qualify.
Yep. You nailed it.
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Just reply with a resume saying you have 15 years of C# experience. Chances are, you'll get hired.
Those are all HR filters. Getting a job by going through HR is always the hardest method. Especially if it's a more generic sort of job. Better to get your resume into the hands of actual people who know what the job entails. Usually that means having contacts. It's still a good idea even then to get some meaningless buzzwords into the resume, because I've seen some HR people push back even when the resume is handed to them from the hiring manager who says "I like this person, bring them in for an interview".
I had a job once that was a bit overqualified for, and a few weeks in the boss was impressed after I finished up the first assignment sooner than he expected. He said "I just assumed you had padded your resume like everyone else."
I remember the 5 years of Java requirement showing up in 1996.
Where do I apply?
I saw one a few days ago that was for an IT Support Analyst.
The usual IT support requirements along with a line that read
"you will be expected to work with the development team developing applications"
and one line ".NET"
So what are you after? IT Support or a Developer? or Both! All for less than either is worth!
And that's why you see stuff like need 5 years for low level jobs as well as the need B.S / PHD for lot's of tech jobs that don't need one.
I've seen better.... Web Programmers wanted... Requirement: 20 Years experience developing software using ASP.NET and Visual C#
You're missing 2 big facts:
1)Most 2 year degrees are from diploma mills.
2)Most 2 year degrees will mean they know how to solve a small set of problems. It doesn't mean they can solve anything they've never seen before, and in my experience they either can't or will take way too long to come up with a bad solution.
IMO, a 2 year degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on. If I got a resume from someone with a 2 year degree, I'd treat it as equivalent to no degree.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
The other way round surely, a higher level of intelligence allows you to learn new stuff quicker. i.e. Intelligence amplifies education.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
The HR department filters out all the replies from honest people who don't have 5 years of experience of .NET then when someone with a clue gets hold of the CV prior to interview, they immediately disqualify the applicant for being a liar.
Three months later the position still hasn't been filled and management are wondering where all the "highly qualified" staff are and why they're not applying.
Zero notice, no severance, 2 days of health insurance.
Their policies, methods, and management suck. Don't ever work for them.
I've been contacted by others who had similar experiences in the past.
Highly unprofessional.
That depends on whether you consider intelligence a talent or a skill. Your talent is an innate ability which gives you a natüral level and a potential, while your actual skill will depend on training. Intelligence as measured by IQ tests will improve with education, as well as other mental challenges. So I would say both effects are true, you will both learn more and get better at the process of learning. You might say that this is only experience and not intelligence, but there's really no test that could separate the two. You are always the sum of what you were born with and your life up to now.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Big deal, I have 35 years with C# and I am only 34.
You can't handle the truth.
The corporate workplace wants and needs drones.
Ok, you are working at the wrong company. The whole point of workers is that they use their brains. Drones aren't good for anything. Learning, out-of-the-box-thinking are very very important. In my company drones get kicked out immediately.
Cheers!
A year in the real world is more valuable than a 4 year degree in many cases. People do learn surprisingly fast on the job and someone who's held a job for at least a year (ideally more) has shown that they can stick at it.
An SQL query goes to a bar, walks up to a table and asks, "Mind if I join you?"
I used to experience that too, since I look younger than I actually am. Some people still think I'm in high school even though I'm 28. Eventually I learned to dress better/ more professional, and suddenly everyone started to call me "sir". At first I just bought fitted clothes off the mannequin, but I'm slowly learning how to put things together.
Now I'm not saying that you don't dress well, etc - since you don't mention anything about that. But I'm just saying, this is what worked for me :)
Good luck!
The pendulum has swung the other way with Federal IT jobs. To qualify for a position, a candidate must meet either the experience requirement or the education requirement. An entry level GS-9 end user support announcement will typically specify 1 year of experience OR a Master's Degree. A GS-11 job? 1 year experience or a P.h.D.
one of the reasons why I picked it/coding/computers as the way for me to possibly be able to get a career going was that I knew I could actually get work experience without anyone employing me. what that means that I'd have the access to tools of the trade regardless of what anyone else thought of me. it worked for scoring work.
due to unlucky circumstances I've had to change jobs twice in past 2 years, in an extremely competitive job market, on both cases I had new job in 1 day. extremely lucky I guess and maybe I'm a better job hunter when I got pressure on me - but on the other hand I know people who've been just hunting a job for these two years without success, people with papers and a LOT more courses done in the university than me. on paper they should've been better choices in every regard, but they have nothing to show. no programs they can say "i did this", it's starting to make a LOT of difference nowadays around here, to weed out users from developers - it wasn't like that 7 years ago.
I'm on extended hiatus from earning my ms.c, mostly because those courses suck and
have nothing to do with what happens in the firms 800 meters from the university(and yes! they're actually supposed to reflect whats happening, that's how they spin it when they teach).
I got no intention to finish my msc anytime soon - for many reasons, one being that life is too short to listen to theoretical musings about how things should be developed. another is that social security would net me more money than student benefits if I went unemployed now. relatives keep asking me when I'm going to finish my studies though, but they got no idea about current job market realities - there's so many educated people that the papers have lost all their meaning(also the university in the past 10 years hiked up the amount of new people admitted in each year and dropped the exam limits to get in).
actually, for the same reasons I'm not scared of unemployment even, I could just keep doing what I'm doing all day long even on social security. only then I would own my output and could maybe release something that would get me working again.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I quit a software dev job in Canada, sold everything I owned and moved to Germany for a job that I was offered in control systems engineering. Upon my arrival I was told that I would have to wait a little while to start. Four months later no word from the company. Eventually they said they had changed their mind and hired someone else. I had done this all based on a verbal agreement and so there was nothing for me to do but go looking for another job. That was pretty awesome.
When you list 20 to 30 different must-haves, then note the salary is entry level, what is that supposed to tell the applicants? You need 10 years of experience with SANs and fibre lines, every OS since Windows for Warehouses, long strings of certs, but the starting salary is mud-level. Translation: We want the sky, we WANT Superman or Wonder Woman, but we won't pay for them. Great. It ends up being a zero-sum game.
If any of the applicants are qualfied for the job, they won't need to settle for the peanut pay, so you won't get them. And people who would settle for peanuts won't likely have the prerequisites, or they will be damaged goods in some other way, so you won't get them.
But in the end, it is usually easier to lower standards than increase the pay.
We had someone apply here not too long ago who on paper had all the skills we could want (of which a person would only ever use 1/3rd here), seemed to really knew his stuff and would work for the pretty sad opening pay. Looked great. Turned out he was a convicted sex offender. Googling his name turns up his mugshot. Suddenly it was clear why he would work for cheap. To be fair, he never got as far as admitting he was an offender. We would have asked, naturally. It's on the HR form and would have come up in the background check. But he didn't make it that far.
No, 5 years experience for an entry level position (and pay) is so that the HR department can claim there are no suitable candidates an therefore can justify hiring the H1B worker they wanted to hire all along.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
The key word here is "jury award." Exorbitant jury awards are routinely reduced by a judge. But then, the actual amount of damages Seagate ends up paying would not make as big a headline.
IANAL but I've been on a jury. It is hard enough to get 12 people to agree on findings of law, that I think trying to determine appropriate damages is just asking too much. Juries are bad at it, and the judge's instructions on awarding damages (for us at least) were surprisingly vague.
So before any libertarians (I know you're out there) get worked up over Seagate getting screwed by the courts, please bear in mind two things:
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
a LOT more courses done in the university than me. on paper they should've been better choices in every regard, but they have nothing to show. no programs they can say "i did this"
Well if you were looking for an artist, who would you pick: ;).
a) someone who has an art degree, done lots of art courses in the uni, but has not much of a portfolio, the last work done was a university course project half a year ago.
b) someone who has done stuff in the past 3 months (even if not work related), semi-consciously without prompting doodles cool stuff on the piece of paper left on the interview table. The "art" is practically overflowing out
Rewarding for loyalty stopped the moment the magic "outsourcing" and mass-corporate-takeover scams began.
My father worked for a company for 25 years, only to get shoved out the door when a multinational bought his company up just for the patents and then shit-canned everyone. Since that time, every job he's been in has been the same way: the company exists *just long enough* to develop some patent or product. Then the company gets bought out, everyone gets shit-canned as they shut down all local offices, and "continued development" is moved overseas and ceases to be about making the product better, but instead making it out of this shittiest, crappiest components designed to break within a month of the warranty expiring.
There is no such thing as loyalty anymore - companies don't see their employees as valued, they have no loyalty towards them, so it should be no surprise that an entire generation's decided that loyalty to your employer is just a sucker's game.
As for the corporate types: the assholes at the top are all soulless shits who need to be shot, because they're the ones who got us into this mess.
It's like anything that attempts to judge someone based on standards or attempts at "objective criteria". You don't *know* these people, you don't have anyway to realistically judge which one is the better choice. So you've got a guy with a two year degree and a couple of year worth of tech support or data center grunt experience vs a guy with a 4 yr degree. You know that *on average* the guy with the four year degree had better grades in high school and is capable of "sticking it out" to make a goal.You know the other guy *on average* had worse grades and/or was less motivated, though he also has a couple years of possibly relevant (or not) experience. Beyond that you don't have much to go on. Their resumes are equally blank slates for all intents and purposes. The relative value of an couple extra years of college vs some really grunt level experience is pretty damned hard to judge. So most places make the judgment call that the guy with the degree was either smarter or more motivated or more goal focused and they go with him.
They could easily be wrong. The other guy could have just been a bit less lucky with scholarships, a bit less willing to take on debt, or just unfortunate enough that his high school didn't offer Glee Club and that was the thing that would have gotten his university application over the top... but again, all they work with is averages and standards. They don't know either of these guys. At this point they're a couple of pieces of paper with names and really short career histories written on them.
You see this with job selections, college admissions, even sports team selections and video games (you should see the way that "Gear Score" polarizes WoW players). In the absence of real objective or subjective criteria to make a choice, people turn averages and assumptions into "objective criteria". They don't really have a choice. If you have to weed through 100 resumes for an entry level systems admin job, you have to apply some kind of criteria or you'll go mad.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
If you have a gap in your resume, you are not working hard enough
1) Training (formal and informal)
2) Open Source projects
3) Volunteer work
etc
There is plenty you can do to keep you resume full while out of work.
Actually, most of those ads are written so that *no American can possibly fill them*.
They're called "PERM ads", and they are designed to do an end-run around the US's H1-B Visa system. They run completely fake, ludicrous ads that look a lot like this analysis here.
Then they lie their asses off claiming they "can't find qualified Americans" for the job, and proceed to try to hire H1-B's (who are locked in to one employer and get shit wages) instead. Meanwhile, Americans who actually DO qualify for the job are shut out of the hiring process, since when the employers go looking in India or elsewhere, the job requirements magically return to what's actually going to be needed on the job.
Truly, your mother is a sainted woman...
Is the $1.9m for lost earnings? How many years' worth?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Thinning the pool isn't always a bad thing. I advertised for a programmer and got an application that listed little post secondary education and department store cashier as work experience.
I see this idea postulated a lot, and I have not doubt that it's part of why some job descriptions are written the way they are, but it's not a universal reason. I see the same kind of inflated job requirements on DoD contracting jobs and we *have* to hire US citizens. It's mostly, so far as I can tell, a fishing expedition. You advertise ridiculous requirements in the hopes that the person you really want (who is still overqualified, but not as badly as you ask for) will apply. For example:
I was hired to be a systems analyst for a very large Fortune 50 contracting company. They paid me pretty well to do most of the systems administration for a classified lab in one of their facilities. Here's the thing 95% of the time the systems I managed were completely locked down. They couldn't be changed except with the approval of a Change Control Board, and then only according to specific procedures produced by the system's development or maintenance team. So 95% of the time my job consisted of either following a procedure like a trained monkey, or providing a root login for someone from the system's maintenance group to do something.
In the first couple of months I often wondered why I had been hired, and what they were paying me for. To my certain knowledge they had rejected at least two previous candidates because it was felt they lacked sufficient Unix experience. So far as I could tell you barely needed to be conscious to do this job, much less have Unix experience. It turned out that the *other* 5% of the time, when shit was hitting the fan, and expensive simulation budgets were on the line, they needed someone who could fix stuff. Fast. It was amazing how many procedures and quality assurances rules could be bypassed or waivered when FTG-023940324309480932-b was about to go tits up because some systems couldn't get to an NFS share.
So basically they did an exhaustive search for a senior analyst to do a job that any kid fresh out of college or tech school could have done for 1/3 what I was making... mostly just so I was on hand in the event of emergency. I'd been unemployed for a few months before I got that job, so i was pretty happy to get it and have it (especially as it was during the recession), but I must admit to being pretty happy I'm not still stuck in it.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
You don't live in the USA, do you. Employers don't want people that use their brains. Employers want people that do what they're told without any complaining about 'working conditions' or 'fair pay' or 'being treated like human beings'.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Maybe if you had more education you'd know the difference between "your" and "you're"... Just sayin'...
I was once hired for a job that didn't exist. I quit on my own a year later.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
Here's a similar story, unrelated to Seagate but related to the story. Back when a major telecom firm rhyming with "Goose Lint" laid off pretty much everyone (2000), they told a co-worker of mine that he had to move to the east coast in order to keep his job. Not wanting to be laid off, he reluctantly complied. About two weeks after taking his new position there, the cocksuckers laid him off anyway, at which point he hung himself.
As it turns out, when companies fuck over people, their friends will get on Slashdot and badmouth those companies.
Yikes, judging by all the errors in your post, I'm going to guess you've been denied a job because you don't have a G.E.D.
There's always some arbitrary line in the sand used to cull the pack. Why should a non-necessary degree requirement be any different than tossing any resume that has some minor grammatical error?
I'll cut non-native English speakers a break, but if you can't put enough care into your resume to ensure it does not have typos/grammatical errors then you are sending me a signal about your attention to detail and devotion to quality, both attributes I consider important for developers.
I'll let a misspelling or punctuation error slide by, but anything more than that and you start with a red flag.
In 2004, I interviewed for a job requiring "7 years of Microsoft .NET experience". I tried to gently explain that I was pretty sure that, even if I'd been on the development team /making/ .NET, that was impossible. They then ultimately turned me away(despite the fact that I'd been doing work w/ .NET since the 1.0 framework was formally released) because they had "candidates with more experience with .NET." Which to me means: liars, since I really was about as current on that tech as I possibly could've been at the time.
Somewhere, a lot of companies have a sheet that says something like "Sr. Developer" = "7 years of experience with related technologies." And by God, they're going to find that guy, even if it's impossible.
Depends on what I'm doing. If I'm writing webapps with jquery and JSF I'd rather have someone who took a JSF and JQuery class than random guy who can pontificate about the benefits of MVC and the intricacies of garbage collection. If the job requirement changes I'll expect my (usually cheaper) guy to take another class or replace him with someone else who did.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Age discrimination is illegal.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
That's funny - I worked with a lady in 1999 that claimed to have 10 years of HTML experience on her resume. We figured she was writing code in hopes of a browser that would some day run it.
Sie ist tunbar!
Depends on the type of art I need.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
Intelligence as measured by IQ tests will improve with education...
Not a well-designed IQ test, no. Tests of childhood intelligence might give you this impression, but this is because the brain is still developing.
C//
If anything, this is a good reason to ensure that we learn how to start our own businesses and make sure the government doesn't keep trying to create a "workers' paradise", making that impossible. Being a lifetime employee is an obsolete notion.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
My first job was with a gov't agency. My manager really wanted me, but I had to go through HR first, so they sent me a list of things to include on my resume to make sure I'd get through the initial screening.
I'll rick that you were joking, but age discrimination is only illegal if you're too old, not too young.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
You just have to count overtime. A year is 40 hrs * 50 weeks = 2000 hours per year 20,000 hours spent and you have 10 years experience. If you believe that 50 to 60 productive hrs a week for 40 hrs pay for a poor review and a threat of loosing your job is OK and normal then you may want to check what is in your coolaid.
I would've limited actual damages to the DIFFERENCE between what he reasonably would have made (total compensation) had he stayed at TI for the next 10 years or until age 65 whichever comes first and what he reasonably could make over the same time period given what happened, plus other actual damages like 2 moves, lawyers fees, etc. The 10 year limit is because nobody can predict whether he would've been employed at TI or anywhere in that field a decade down the road.
Let's run some numbers:
Assume he would've been making $150K as a manager at Seagate after the first year. He was making $109K at TI. With benefits let's call those numbers $225 and $165. Let's assume he wasn't in line for a big promotion at TI.
Even with a career-ending 2-year break he can go back to school for a couple of semesters to get his skills current and he should be able to pick up a $70K/year job fairly easily given the recent boost in tech hiring for people with current skills. Assume $70K translates into total compensation of $105K.
That entitles him to:
2 years of wages for the duration of the lawsuit at 2 X $165K = $330K
1 year of wages for the duration of retraining $165K
2 semesters of education, assume a good public university non-credit-for-degree graduate-level classes at $15K.
7 years of the difference between $165K and $105K = 7 x $65K = $455K
Emotional costs for him and his family related to giving up a career, moving, etc. = $1.
Actual costs related to the impact on a spouse's career = ???
Reasonable and actual costs cost of two moves - to Minnesota and from there to his school or next job = ???
Reasonable and actual legal fees = ???
Total = $0.965001M + spouse career actual damages + moving costs + legal fees
Without punitive damages or unusually high ???-expenses there's no way this would reach $1.9M.
As a judge, if there were punitive damages I'd be inclined to levy them personally against the actual executives and possibly managers who knew what was going on and knew it was illegal rather than the company's stockholders if the law allowed me to do so. If the law doesn't allow it then it should be changed.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Read the works of Carol Dweck.
What we claim to "know" about intelligence is probably just bloody wrong.
I can't take time to elaborate much more, but in short her tests showed students doing much better when told they were "Trying hard" vs. "Smart."
When you think you did well because you were smart, and not because you put forth lots of effort, it has all sorts of weird distortions in real life. In short, students who thought they were immutably "smart" did all sorts of things to protect that smartness - including not trying harder things, doing much worse when they did try because they worried about being labeled as "stupid" when they failed etc.
If you're "smart" and there's nothing you can do to change that - and you're smart because you succeeded, you'll be very careful about anything that might change your label to "stupid." And failure is one thing that will label you as stupid.
And remember, it's immutable - you're either smart [by an IQ test or something else] or stupid and there's nothing you can do to change that.
So, while I'd agree *in theory,* that there's some upper limit on the raw horsepower someone has, I don't think we really know where that limit is, and in practical terms it simply doesn't appear to work that way.
Individuals who put forth lots of "effort" are likely to vastly expand their capabilities. Perhaps one might be able to detect some upper bound beyond which they can't expand their capabilities any more, but from what I've seen, we've never determined it.
Also, see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaime_Escalante
This is an example of "effort" based results vs "inherent intelligence."
-Greg
The year that .Net went productive, I saw postings asking for 5 and 10 years of .Net experience
It sometimes boggles the mind.
Age discrimination is illegal.
Is it really illegal? If it is, then most every company in America ought to have been sued out of existence already.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Additional follow-up:
Current research also shows extensive brain development far into adulthood.
I know what you have said is, or has been, accepted as "common" wisdom, but I think research is largely showing that these assumptions are simply either wholly wrong, or wrongly applied.
Brain development can occur long after a young age.
Effort [especially the right kinds of effort] can stimulate brain development.
Brain development can vastly increase your apparent ability.
So, IMO, your "IQ," as we've understood it, can be changed.
[All that said, and as I said in my prior posts, I'd probably agree there's some upper limit. I just think it is so poorly understood that it's a mostly useless theoretical point.]
-Greg
That makes a lot of sense. We should penalize companies that are struggling. That will create an incentive for companies to be profitable.
Back in the early '90s, we posted a position in the newspaper for a Fortran and C programmer. The newspaper did not spell Fortran correctly, they spelled it as Fortan or something like that. However, one of our applicants did indeed have Fortan on their resume. We didn't call them in.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Mortgages often come with an option known as "porting." If you sell your house before your mortgage commitment period is up, you can end up facing some pretty severe penalties (I think mine were about $7k, but for bigger mortgages those go up a lot more).
When you move, you often have the often to port within a few months. That means getting a new place with a mortgage that's the same a before. Then the mortgage moves to the new place, and you continue on for the rest of your term after paying a few fees for the paperwork.
So take a scenario:
* Buy house at 175k
* Move years later, sell house, keep some equity (especially if the value went up)
* Buy a new house shortly after moving, put equity into a new house possibly valued a bit higher
* Lose job, lose house, and all the equity that you had previously built
Of course if you get *screwed* in your new job, end up unemployed, that doesn't work out so well. Then you're back to the big fees for breaking the mortgage early, or not being able to sell at all and losing the house in general.
People end up with gaps in their resume when they don't know the difference between "there" and "their"...
Or you could rest, relax, and enjoy life, rather than make it more likely that you'll be hired somewhere you're expected to work 14-hour days with 8-hour pay.
The whole point of working for a living, as opposed to being an enterpreneur, is guaranteed pay and not having to worry about work at your free time. If you're doing unpaid work just on the off chance it'll help your career (as opposed to, for example, simply finding some OSS project interesting), then you're getting the worst of both worlds. Stop running the Red Queen's Race and decide: do you want to get rich, in which case you should go the enterpreneur route (and accept you might crash and burn), or do you not care, in which case stop worrying about it and slack off in your free time to your heart's content.
Either go for the win or stop running the race. Simply "staying competitive" might help the national economy and its overlords, but it won't do any good to you.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
yep
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
What you know means almost nothing. What's important is how fast you learn
Not anymore. These days they want "turn-key, silver bullet" employees who know everything walking in the door and are never puzzled by a new problem.
Looking for a bullshit artist? :)
Simple. Scenario based exam, with critical decision making and technical factors. One page response. Most people wouldn't write a one-page in the first place to respond. With technical based decisions embedded in the scenario, those that can put two and two together will rise to the top. Especially if its not a straightforward I'll-just-google-for-the-answer type of situation. Combine that with a couple critical/ethical judgments you'd probably have a good idea of the candidates actual capabilities. It would be more work for HR, but it would probably be a decent ROI.
I work on the equivalent of an H1-B in China. Honestly, I think this type of visa is good, it allows white collar professionals to travel, get broader experiences and allows companies to hire a wider range of people with different skills and mindsets. I've never worked for a company where everyone is the same nationality and I never intend to. You rag on the Indians, but I've worked with Indians before and they fill gaps in the company's culture and workflow that other nationalities are unwilling to fill.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
" in fact, most talent is driven from individuals during college."
Completely wrong. If you have talent, college is where it can shine. So many opportunities to express your talent. If you are not going out and finding people with that same talent and creating, then you probably don't have that talent, and you certainly don't have any drive.
You can find expert in the field, you can make context, you can find people from around the world with similar interests and create things you could not have other wise created. You have an enormous pool of equipment and resources.
And education does not amplifies intelligence. That's just a stupid statement. If gives more opportunity to express your intelligence, and it gives you underlying fundamentals. SO you can start on top of the shoulders of giants.
Or you can do the minimum and waste all the opportunity those resource provide.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's not true. The age discrimination laws (in the UK at least), apply to anyone under the age of 65. If you are 66, the only right you have is to ask your employer for an extension of employment beyond the age of 65. So in actual fact, It is perfectly legal to discriminate against someone who is 66, but illegal to discriminate against someone who is 18.....
Maybe you where writing software for a music program and they wanted experienced musicians?
no, probably not.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Translates to: Have you become accustomed to doing 80+ hour weeks for the last 5 years or so? Don't expect our company to be any different!
1.9 million is exactly the minimum it would take to get me to move to Minnesota.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They weren't very S.M.A.R.T. about it.
The 18 year old will be cheaper, and far more capable by 22.
There is no such thing as loyalty anymore - companies don't see their employees as valued, they have no loyalty towards them, so it should be no surprise that an entire generation's decided that loyalty to your employer is just a sucker's game.
I've worked as a consultant for some large companies, and some smaller dot-com types, and what you say may have been true there to a certain extent. But I've also been working for a small (40-50ish employees) privately-owned company since 1988 (with 5 years away from it from '97-'02), which does have a "loyalty works both ways" policy. The small company I consulted through was similar. If you can find a company like that, hold onto it...
I saw something similar that was like "5 years of Vista experience" when Vista had just come out maybe a year earlier.
People do learn surprisingly fast on the job
I think you have been working with above average people for too long.
As an example, there are "programmers" and there are "code monkeys". Programmers understand programming, and having to learn a new programming language in a couple of weeks is no big deal. Code monkeys, on the other hand, generally will know one programming language and be able to take very detailed specs and turn them into code.
In the same way, there are people who will spend weeks learning the basics of some new thing (computer program, camera, etc.) while others can be a the same level of functionality in hours (or less).
It's my observation that the slow learners by far outweigh the fast ones in most companies.
I thought GP was referring to things like "must have 5+ years experience with ASP.NET 4.0" when even 3.0 isn't that old.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Laws like that makes employers want to outsource your jobs to another location that does NOT have laws like that.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
PERM ads are for *Green card*, not H1-B's. Which means the applicant *would not* be limited to one employer after he gets it, and so if HP or anybody else would really want cheap hitech slave labor, it would make zero sense for them to do it. The reason they do it is because they need more people than US-only market can provide them, and they are ready to go through considerable expense that PERM/GC process involves because they have no other way to get enough people that they need. They would not be cheaper or in any way linked to the employer once they have the GC - the only way to keep them would be to pay them the same as US citizens. And since hiring them involves additional expense there's absolutely no monetary or otherwise reason to prefer them to qualified US citizens - if those were available.
The reason why they do it is very simple - they already have a person that they know fits the job and they want to keep her on the job. The government, however, doesn't let them to do just that - they require to post fake job ads, even though there's no real intent to hire - because nobody wants to replace known trained good worker with unknown newbie. This farce is a direct consequence of government meddling, as most bureaucratic farces in US are.
It is sad that the post which gets basic facts wrong gets moderated as "Insightful"...
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I have seen employers ask about credit scores, speeding tickets, and even *must be employed* in order to filter out applicants.
What a sad day. So if you missed one payment back in 2008 or even got a ticket speeding back in 2009 that means you can not work in an office. I can see if one job was for an accountant and the other was a truck driver but this is insane!
What is sadder is not that HR is doing this but rather there are so many more people desperate than you that they have to filter out everyone. That brings me down in the job market more than an insane HR. I would probably be doing the same thing too if I received 150 applicants for every job that half are qualified to do.
http://saveie6.com/
Which is why you and not HR should make the requirements. Mention to HR this is the level of experience for this payscale. Too often HR wants a SR level coder for a JR level position hoping it is the best of the best for that price. What they do not see is any .NET programmer with his salt with 8 years experience with .NET will abandon ship when the economy improves. Infact many are and then you have to rehire all over again.
http://saveie6.com/
Flip side is they do this to fresh graduate students all the time. Hire them and they get started on OPT and then when they start in June Oh sorry we missed the deadline for H1B and we will try to do something about it. The guy works like crazy for a year but at the end of the year he just goes back to his country as he is out of status as his OPT training period is over.
**Life is too short to be serious**
22 year olds are more mature generally. The school work experience is useful; its not direct but then experience with a spreadsheet and experience with Excel are not the same thing either... Many jobs are easier than college.
I remember seeing an ad from a large company for a "webmaster" circa 1997. One of the requirements was 5+ years of experience with Java. I seriously doubt whether Gosling *himself* had "5+ years of experience with Java" back then, let alone anyone likely to apply for a job offering less than $30k/year in the early years of the dotcom boom...
What's better, a 2 year degree and 12 years of experience or a 4 year degree with 10 years of experience or no degree with 14 years of experience?
Learn to love Alaska
But having done 4 years of pushing paper only means your good at pushing paper. It does *not* promise talent. in fact, most talent is driven from individuals during college. The corporate workplace wants and needs drones.
So your argument is that for the most effective workers, you *do* want those with 4 years. You know they are more likely to be obedient and submit to silly paperwork requirements without question.
Learn to love Alaska
University is a resource, if you are there for 4 years and all you get is a degree then I question if you exploited that resource fully. If you worked on some interesting projects, wrote some insightful papers or had a great internship experience, then I would take that person over someone with a 2 year degree and a tiny bit of experience(2 years is a tiny bit).
Rewarding for loyalty stopped the moment the magic "outsourcing" and mass-corporate-takeover scams began.
Once the term 'Human Resources' came into wide spread use the worker was doomed
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
I worked with Vista for six months and aged six years does that count?
The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
Had a variation on that happen to me once. Same city, no moving involved, but a big-name company offered me an IT Security contract which turned out to mean "manually sorting pieces of paper into alphabetical order for six months while constantly claiming the 'real job' would start any day now".
I'm getting the impression that this describes a somewhat extreme case of the general pattern in IT jobs: most of the work is routinized and dull, but you occasionally need people who actually know the technology in some depth. So, you hire someone overqualified to do 90% of what they do, because it doesn't make sense to hire two people, and have the more qualified person sit there doing nothing.
In fact, I believe that's a general pattern in many fields of work, not just IT.
Even then you're not immune from silly ads going out there. I think the best I ever saw was a charity looking for an IT manager.
The headline of their advert was "We need some help with our IT". The application instructions were "Please email two copies of your CV to ...@..."
Impossible job specifications like this, whether drafted foolishly or intentionally, are all too common, andf I've seen them both from employers and agencies and from applicants. How many legal secretaries could claim the required ten years' experience on WordPerfect 5.1 , the year of that one which I forget but shortly after that came out, or ever? Suspecting that an agency didn't know what they were doing, I submitted that same ad and they actually sent me someone claiming that they had all the required expeience. I worked on a case whee they had advertised for and insisted they had hired someone with years of experience with 12" seamless vanadium stainless steel pipe for nuclear missile silos, and insisted that they had properly filled both that job and the contract, on which hteAEC had signed off, when, in reality, they had used significanlty non-conforming pipe because nobody on earth was equipped to make such seamless 12" pipe then,
In Europe they use these methods to ensure that they can hire their own first. Guess they never got the memo that the way upwards meant treading over your fellow Westerner. Silly long-term vision they have...
There's no such thing as "innate abilities". There is however a difference in how much training you get, from a very very early age.
I believe this was brought up in the popular book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, although the research behind it is much older.
it's in my head