- cross-posted to:
- programmerhumor@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- programmerhumor@lemmy.ml
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Let’s stop mincing words here.
You want me because I have a particular set of skills that you think will be helpful to you in your pursuit of profit.
I want your job because I can leverage the skills I have for money and benefits that will provide food, and shelter.
Your main concerns are profits.
My main concerns are survival.
Employment is where these things meet in the middle. Let’s not pretend that we’re here because we’re friends. We are not family. Fuck you, pay me.
Short version. My boss pays me enough so I don’t quit, and I work hard enough so he doesn’t fire me.
Unfortunately, many companies don’t care about PR anymore. In the past, some would try to appear “we are family” to retain employees. Now it is everyone for themselves.
some would try to appear “we are family” to retain employees
Nope. Rule of acquisition 111. They claim that everyone is part of a happy family because family is easiest to exploit.
What about us resonated with you?
Your offer to pay me.
HOW DARE YOU ASK FOR COMFORT IN YOUR ONLY ONE LIFE???!!
Yeah its shocking we are not incredibly grateful isnt it.
“Nobody wants to work”… :)
You can buy loyalty. Give someone a high paying 3-year contract and they’ll probably work to the end of it. But of course HR doesn’t want to hear that.
Shocked Pikachu
People will work FOR MONEY!??!
- every HR team ever.
Ours tried to explain to project leaders that employees are not mostly interested in their salary, but in praise. That went over well.
The part about asking what about the company resonates with you is a good interview question provided you hire for the long term. If you hire for a specific project what loyalty are you expecting?
BuT We’Re A FaMiLy HeRe!
My loyalty is for sale.
It’s either a business relation on both sides or it’s a personal relation on both sides.
I was in Tech in Europe through the transition from when employees were people and the company was loyal to them and expected loyalty to the company in return (the age of lifetime employment), to the world we live in now were employees are “human resources”, and for a great part of that period there was this thing were most employers expected employees to stay with the company whilst the company needed them and be dedicated to the company, whilst in return they treated employees as a business relationship with (in Tech) some manipulative “fake friendship” stuff thrown in (the ultimate examples: company paid pizza dinner when people stay working on a project till late, or the yearly company party, rather than, you know, paying people better or sizing the team to fit the work that needs to be done rather than relying on unpaid overwork) - still today we see this kind of shit very obviously and very purposefully done in places like Google.
Of course the “humour” part here is that plenty of managerial and HR people in companies still expect that employees are loyal to the company even all the while they treat them as disposable cogs who it’s fine to exploit without consideration for their feelings or welfare - or going back to the first paragraph of this post: they relate to employees as a business relationship whilst expecting the employees related to the company as a personal relationship (often a “second family”).
If I’m working late on something, I expect to be paid for that time and the company can provide a meal.
You’re not paying me? I’ll see you later then.
The amount of underpaid/unpaid overtime I’ve heard of is terrible. At this point I will always ask if someone gets paid 1.5x if they’re hourly working overtime, or if they’re classed as salary exempt from OT pay. The former is blatantly illegal yet still happens often enough, while the latter can be legal but is usually taken advantage of with no compensated days.
I actually kinda agree with both here.
It sucks working with someone who is utterly disinterested in the work, if it’s anything above rote work.
Asking the candidate what they found interesting about it is at least a basically fine idea. If they can’t answer when you ask, that actually is kinda concerning.
Big difference between asking and expecting them to volunteer the information.At the same time, if the people interviewing you can’t even pretend to show basic conversational courtesy by asking some basic “what do you do for fun” style questions or anything that shows they’re gonna be interested in the person they’re looking to work with, that’s a major concern.
I disagree because most people are applying for everything. So many people are putting in dozens of applications a day. “What resonated with you” is the fact that they’re hiring at all. You can learn to love a job and find satisfaction in the work even if the company didn’t “resonate” with you.
Right? What resonated? Well it mostly the need to not starve to death and have a roof over my head. What about you?
Sure. I wouldn’t disqualify someone for being ambivalent towards what we’re working on, but the person who seems interested is gonna be better to work with.
Likewise when looking for a place to work, if the tangibles are equivalent I’ll prefer the place with better intangibles.
I’m not in HR or management, so I don’t care about cost effectiveness or productivity beyond “not screwing me over”. From that perspective, it’s generally nicer to work with someone who finds it interesting than with someone who doesn’t.
There’s no point asking “why do you want to work here”, because the answer is obviously a combination of money and benefits, and how food and healthcare keeps you from being dead.
I can’t fault an interviewer who’s clearly trying not to ask the obvious question and instead actually ask how the candidate feels about the work instead of disqualifying them for not volunteering the right answer.It’s not unreasonable for an employer to ask a candidate how they feel about the work anymore than it’s unreasonable for the candidate to ask about the working environment.
Researchable before going there
So is my resume but they don’t read it before the interview.
I’ve never understood why the HR people always see “not asking questions about the company” or “not demonstrating knowledge about the company” as such a red flag.
People are looking for a job, not a cult to join.
Researching the company used to be a thing you did when selecting a career/lifetime position.
… Since that doesn’t happen anymore, I couldn’t give any less of a shit about what your company is all about. I can do thing, you want to pay me to do thing. It’s as simple as that. All the rest of this crap, I just don’t have the time, effort or shits to give.
They want cultists though. Easier to exploit
Once I did an online interview process were they had a whole video and slideshow explaining about the company history and culture and the employees were saying about how it was a position for people who “truly believed in the mission of the company”.
And then they had a quiz about it.
They truly want a cult. Fuck em.I worked at Asus as a software developer for a while, had ti do a whole ass course on the history of the company. With unskippable videos and a questionnaire after as well. Pretty sure that took the better part of a day.
I only worked on the internal systems that really don’t have anything to do with the actual products Asus makes.
ASUS does seem to care more about their name than the quality of…
of anything they output
I mean, the whole “this is your second family” or “you should be proud of were you work” thing isn’t bad if they’re similarly dedicated to their employees welfare, for example “no questions asked sick days off” or maybe even more relevant in Tech, sizing the team to the work that need to be done in a project rather than expecting constant unpaid overwork from employees (rather than just once in a while).
The problem, as emphasized by the OP, is that they expect employees to invest themselves in the company without the company investing in employees.
There apparently are some companies out there which are almost like a second family, you know, the kind of place were they hear that your grandmother died and give you a week paid leave no questions asked to “deal with your loss”, but most aren’t at all like that - they treat employees as disposable cogs whilst expecting that the employees respond back by being dedicated to the company.
You would understand if you understood the mindset of HR employees. To them, you are joining a life mission, not just a job. And they have a plan for your life so it fits the company objectives. Super great. Except no.
Not to mention, they could already be familiar with the company.
Yeah… I’m not gonna be asking the stuff I already found answers to via an internet search.
Comfort hunter is a very snobbish and entitled way to refer to someone offering their time and effort to you.
And wait, was the 2nd post ‘liked’ by the first poster?
Let us not forget that there is not a single employer on the planet who would willingly hire and pay someone more for their time than that person’s time is worth. Each employee of a company is making that company money. They deserve comfort because they are the company.
I have a client who helps their personal out way more than they should. Even paying them extra so they can pay their tax debt. Not that some of his employees deserve it, heck the one he paid the tax debt for is even leaving the company after this all happened.
Corporate bosses suck, small company bosses can be pretty decent depending on the type of company and how much money is being made. These are the companies that generally don’t have a HR deparment or a C level employee.
Heck they can also drive to you in a Volve stationwagen with the child like sun protectors on the windows that’s a clear sign they have kids as well.
That means that the HR account thinks what the employee account wrote is bad, too. Both posts are bad extremes.
As an employee, if i find a prospective colleague who doesn’t ask about what they’re supposed to be doing at all, I’d be wary of them, too.
To many people nowadays, the actual job itself doesn’t matter, it’s the fact that it’s a job and it pays.
Not even a new thing either. Barely any jobs are done because people want to do specific types of work, and those jobs tend to be severely underpaid (teaching, social services).
People didn’t flock to factories in the 60s and 70s because they wanted to work in a factory, they wanted the pay and benefits. Same for office work today.
IMHO, in Software Development it’s a good idea for a candidate to ask about the project, if only because any good professional would want to know if they’re a good fit or not.
Mind you, that makes sense in the Technical interview rather than with HR - no point in asking about what are the practical professional details of the work you will be doing from a person who doesn’t really have a clue (the HR person) when you know you will be facing an actual professional peer in a technical interview who knows the work that needs to be done in your terms and with the level of detail and understanding only domain professionals have.
In my experience doing the Technical Interview side of things (and most of my career I was a Contractor - so a Freelancer - which is hardly a “company man” with a rosy view of my relationship to them or somebody who thinks people work for fun), people who don’t ask about the project during the Technical Interview tend to as the interview proceeds end up get revealed as technically weak: an experienced “Engineer” would want to make sure they’re well matched to the kind of work they’re be doing (as well as, in my experience from the other side of the interviewing table, spot the messy fucked up situations before you take the contract so that if you can avoid ending in such disfunctional environments).
Me c:
Seriously though. I wouldn’t hire someone with that attitude.
Then you would only hire people who are lying to you. Congrats on being so shrewd.
The employees are there because they want the compensation. If it wasn’t about the compensation, and they really just enjoyed performing some given task as a hobby or interest, then they don’t need your business to do it. They can do it at home.
Yeah ok people.
It’s not possible to flourish in my line of work without genuine engagement, and a tenacity beyond curiosity to solve certain problems. A jobsworth will not do.
Neither, on the other hand, will a soulless boss or employer, manage to engage.
So keep up with the downvotes and good luck.
Look mate, I’ve been in Software Development for almost 3 decades, mainly in the Technical careed path (did some Project Management but, frankly, it’s not my thing) and all the way to Technical Architect, in 3 different countries and most of it as a contractor, so I worked in quite a number of companies and work environment.
(I’m not trying to pull rank here, just showing that I’ve seen a lot)
In my experience, things like Enthusiasm are what bright eyed naive junior developers have: they’re like me as a teen in the swiming pool having learnt to swim by myself and never having had lessons - intense strokes trowing water all over the place but moving very little for all that effort, or in other words lots of effort with little in the way of results.
Worse, Enthusiasm doesn’t last forever and, further, most of the work than needs to be done is not exactly stimulating (if it was fun, people wouldn’t have to pay money to others for doing it).
People who get at least some enjoyment of their work are good to have (and I’m lucky that after all these years I still get those moments of great enjoyment when at the end of doing something insanelly complex it all works), but in the real world most work that needs to be done is needed but boring so fun in that kind of task by itself won’t be enough, plus such people are actually uncommon beyond the bright eyed young things, so if you want somebody who will actually deliver you results (rather than work a lot to achieve little) and you’re not a prestigious company (say, like Google, which leverages their brand recognition to pull in such bright young things by the bucket load and drip them out drained of on the other side) and can’t pay well above average, you’re highly unlikely to get those kinds of people.
What you really want is people who have things like professional pride: they want to do a good job because they see themselves as professionals and feel a professional responsability to deliver good results in an efficient way that doesn’t hinder the work of others.
I’ve seen over the years people with your perspective heading Startups or teams within small companies, and invariably they end up with unproductive teams filled with inexperienced people making all the mistakes in the book (and inventing new ones), enthusiastically. Maybe the people seeking such workers should’ve asked themselves what their real objective is in that: is it deliver the results needed by the company so that it prospers and grows or is it the pleasure of being surrounded by people having fun.
I’m lucky that after all these years still get those moments of great enjoyment when at the end of doing something insanelly complex it all works
I just think it’s worth pointing out that that is an example of the work being engaging.
No one is so naive as to think that you work a job for anything other than money. The original post doesn’t even seem to convey that it’s bad to ask about the pay and benefits. It’s saying that if, when directly asked, the candidate has no answer to what seems interesting about the job they might not be a good fit.
You seem to be an experienced software developer. You’re easily qualified to do basic manual data entry. Same working environment, same basic activity. Would you be interested in changing roles to do data entry for $1 more salary?
I’m also a software developer, and I can entirely honestly say I would not, even though it would be less responsibility and significantly easier work.
Even the boring parts of my work are vaguely interesting and require some mental engagement.It seems there’s this false dichotomy that either you’re a cold mercenary working 9 to 5 and refusing to acknowledge your coworkers during your entitled lunch break, or you’re a starry eyed child working for candy and corporate swag. You can ask for fair money, do only the work you’re paid for, have a cordial relationship with coworkers, and also find your work some manner of engaging.
It’s not unreasonable for an employer to ask how you feel about the work, just like it’s not unreasonable for a candidate to ask about the details of the work.
“You can’t flourish as a corporate lapdog without a genuine passion for being a corporate lapdog. I should know, im a very successful corporate lapdog. My manager tells me im a good boy almost every week. The managers can tell if your heart isnt in it when you lick their face and their boots, if you dont have tenacity and a go getter attitude you’ll never be able to be a successful corporate lapdog like me. Its not easy making money for other people.”
Wow. What’s happened to you to make you so cynical?
So keep up with the downvotes and good luck.
Baby’s bottom soft.
😘
I’m curious.
What’s your line of work, if you don’t mind?
R&D, software and embedded systems. Small team, hugely collaborative by its nature and sometimes find ourselves faced with problems / puzzles with no apparent solution or precedent. Hugely rewarding when we can crack them.
I do genuinely feel for other respondents who seem to be bitter or cynical - despite the banter.
The thing is that that kind of information is usually in the offer. I’d be polite and and for confirmation and clarification but not everyone has that kind of tact and not hiring someone because they didn’t ask you to repeat what it’s written on the offer is kinda harsh tbh.
Very possible the first post was sarcastic
Jesus Christ, yes, I am a comfort hunter. You think I get up at the ass crack of dawn every day for fun? You think I want to push buttons on a computer all day because I’m just weirdly into it?
No! I do this shit because I have to!
Fucking hell. I’ve already accepted that I have to make your company money if I want to live in a house. For the love of all that is good in this world, PLEASE do not make me pretend to like it. I’m already weirded out that you’re so into it.
Making you pretend to like it is HR’s kink.
You clearly are not a “team player”. HR already has a plan for your life, all you have to do is follow their instructions and things are smooth.
Feeling unhappy? Deal with that outside of work, and make sure it dont affect your work.
If its one topic i really feel passionate about, its the entire anti-work thing. Because we are human beings. All of us work because we have to. And thats it.
Once I started burning companies the way they’ve burned me for years, employment got a lot better.
Fuck me? Nah, fuck you.
you won’t get a good referral!
bitch, they won’t call you anyway. I gave them my boss’s personal cell number(my cousin).
I’ve been asked for a referral twice in my life. Both times the person the referral was for still worked for me, so I got them to write it and just sent it on.
If somebody wants more money than we pay I won’t stand in their way. I also don’t care if you get a good employee or not. Shit, I’d write a complete dumb-ass a glowing referral if you’re a rival company.
You’re married to your cousin? (/sarcasm, mostly)
Your cousin is Art Vandaly?
I care about what work I do. I tend to ask about the project at the end of the technical round.
The HR is not going to hear about that.I am not interested in the company’s history, their mission/vision and other propaganda.
All I need to know about the company is, if they will actually pay me on time for the work I have done and that they are not going-under and defaulting on payments.
And since I do care about the work that I do, it matters to me, what will become of the project after the company gets the worth out of it.
And that is where all big-names fail miserably.You are selling a smartphone/ laptop/ a cloud connected camera/ any product that uses multiple components with their own use?
At the end of support period, you are to openly distribute the documentation for all components.
That way, a camera out of an old smartphone/laptop won’t require reverse engineering to be reused with a Pi or sth.
A monitor screen out of a laptop can be used as another monitor, without having to buy another controller from a shady site (yeah, I call AliExpress, a shady site) and the existing eDP controller can be reused, without requiring an Oscilloscope.
When your web-service goes down, the user can make their own interfacer and use the camera on their personal cloud.Regarding the payment info is why we need to have companies be more transparent all over the world. In NL it is already mandatory for companies to post some form of an annual report (sometimes very basic) and you can buy them for like 8 euro’s or something. That way you can check those and see if how the company is doing in broad lines. If you notice that on their last annual report there iare red flags you can ask about that in your interview or just straith up deny working there since there is a risk they will miss payments.
In NL it is already mandatory for companies to post some form of an annual report (sometimes very basic) and you can buy them for like 8 euro’s or something
Same in IN, except that the “purchase” seems to be free over here.
Yeah idk why you need to purchase them, but whatever
Yeah I’m not asking questions about the technical stuff I’m actually interested in to an HR drone
The answer to “What about us resonated with you?” would be:
“The job description you put up.”
I couldn’t give less of a fuck about any company or their “projects”, selling a product is not a mission to empower users and help the world or some bullshit like that.
real nObOdY wAnTs To WoRk vibes…
also, if a candidate is having to ask what you’re bringing to the table as an employer at their own job interview because you couldn’t be up-front enough about it to post it on the hiring page, then that’s already enough of a red flag that i already closed the tab
There are more things you could ask about even if the job description is good, though.
As a software engineer I like to ask questions about the team dynamic. I’m not interested in working with a bunch of bros, so having some diversity in the team is good.
Very true. Good coworkers can make work a lot more bearable.
Looking a bit into the company’s business can help, too. If they do something vaguely interesting that can be a bonus. I ignored that once in favor of perks and that got me into the complete disaster area that is fintech. Don’t make the same mistake.
I dont know. Maybe ive been unlucky but “diversity” has meant a lot of people with very different personalities, which has meant that people dont become friends. Has it meant something different to you? Maybe for you its the other way, and you dont have anything incommon with the typical worker (whatever bro means in this context, maybe males and you are female?) , so you welcome more people like yourself.
Doesnt everyone actually want collegues that are as close to yourself in personality as possible so you feel you have common ground?
I’m a straight white dude who goes to work to do work, not to find someone to party with. The common ground is having the same job.
My current team has the following composition:
- Two straight white guys in their 40s, one of whom is an immigrant
- One gay white guy in his 30s
- One straight Indian guy in his 50s
- One straight Indian woman in her 20s
- One straight black guy in his 20s
We all get along just fine. Sometimes I learn something new about a different culture or lifestyle.
Not all aspects of diversity are equally important. I’ve been in teams before where everyone else was Argentinian. I’ve had teams where everyone else was Indian. I’ve had teams where we were all straight white dudes. They were all fine.
The most important part of diversity for me is a nice spread in experience level, which usually means a spread in age. I like training people who are more junior than me, but I also like someone more senior to learn from. Having someone more senior than me also prevents me from gliding into a role where I only train people or review their work, which I’m not personally interested in.
Asking questions about the team and the work is how one detects and avoid shitty environments.
Those all are questions about the company???
