

The nameless "they" and the Facebook / job interview trend that isn't a trend - petdance
http://petdance.com/2012/04/the-nameless-they-and-the-facebook-job-interview-trend-that-isnt-a-trend/

======
whateverer
_Walking out may feel good, as righteous indignation so often does, but it
doesn’t help your situation. You give up any chance you had of getting the
job. Lying is easily disproven, and. worst of all, requires you to lie. The
best answer is to calmly and respectfully say “I believe it’s best for
business to keep business and personal life separate. That’s why I keep my
private life private.” You may not get the job, but at least you’ll have been
turned down while keeping a strong sense of ethics about you… which is more
than you can say for companies that would ask to snoop in your private life._

I guess this is the best course of action for most people. But us in the tech
industry are in the perfect, and perfectly privileged, position to nip this
right in the bud by walking out and explaining our rationale, if only because
we can easily get another interview at a company which won't engage in this
idiocy.

No reason to allow it to become widespread in the first place.

~~~
Casseres
Choice #3:

Offer to log in for them and let them look around. Say, "After all, you
wouldn't give me your password if I asked, would you?" You might even get
bonus points if you have "Login Approvals" enabled (the six digit code sent by
text message).

~~~
Karunamon
The point is that they have no business seeing it in the first place, not so
much that they have your password (which is just the icing on the crap cake)

------
sedev
The author's skepticism is pretty reasonable, but I feel that he misses an
important part of the story. Here's the closest he gets to it:

" _Is it plausible that this practice is widespread, and getting moreso? Sure,
it’s plausible. Our privacy erodes every day, and millions of us do it through
Facebook willingly. The story has the feel of truthiness. Doesn’t it just seem
like the thing that Big Business would do to us? We already piss in cups to
prove that we’re drug-free so that we can come in and shuffle paper._ "

I think that the reason that the Facebook issue blew up so well is that it
touches on two major fears that people have, at least one of which is entirely
reasonable. It's the fear that corporations control everything and aren't
accountable to the law. As far as I'm concerned, that's a reasonable and well-
founded fear. I grant the author's point that the issue at hand may be over-
hyped, but I think that the fact that people are so worried that it's easy to
press that particular button, should definitely tell us something about how
much inappropriate power corporations have, and how little accountability.

~~~
signalsignal
I'd say that its not a constant fear to most people, it is more of a
aggravation or annoyance. In my experience most people don't share too many
personal details online even with their closest friend network.

I do have one question, why does the author use BOLD text in the article in
such a haphazard manner?

~~~
petdance
> I do have one question, why does the author use BOLD text in the article in
> such a haphazard manner?

You could post a comment on the blog and ask. I'd have answered.

I bold the text for the key points that I want people to take away. I suspect
that most people skim articles longer than a few paragraphs anyway, so I want
to help them to the key points.

Some of the comments I'm seeing about the article only reinforce my conclusion
that many readers never read beyond the headline or first paragraph.

------
gwright
I was at a local event last night that was ostensibly a panel discusion
regarding campaign finance reform. The primary speaker was Senator Blumenthal
(CT). In his intro he made it a point to indicate that he was going to support
legislation that would make it illegal for employers to ask for access to
applicants social networking accounts.

I mention this simply to illustrate how these 'trends' can easily be picked up
by Washington politicians and turned into national issues. Blumenthal is
actually quite famous/notorious (your choice) for latching on to 'trends' and
milking them for as much publicity as he can.

~~~
r00fus
In this case, Blumenthal is latching on to the right thing.

As much as I dislike Facebook, I think it's appaling that you are required to
give up keys to employers. One step away from feudalism, where you have to
prostrate yourself before your liege.

~~~
gwright
I agree it is inappropriate. I also think that it is self defeating. People
won't want to work for these companies. There needs to be a lot more evidence
of a systemic problem before I would advocate federal legislation for this
sort of thing. Even with clear evidence of an actual problem, it sounds to me
like something that states would be capable of addressing.

The desire to address every problem at the federal level is itself a problem.

------
drgath
I feel this same way about "brogrammers", do they even exist? I've never met
one, and I'm a pretty social guy. I'm sure there are some douchy guys who
happen to be programmers, but are there enough to even call it a trend? Or is
it just this mythical "they" who we love to poke fun at and make nonsensical
statements like "We can't serve alcohol at tech events because it will attract
brogrammers."

~~~
bartonfink
I work with several who are at a separate office from the one I work at.
They're a royal pain in the ass because, for all their questionable
engineering decisions (a system that crashes - stack-trace to the server
console - because of a single bad field in the database), they are remarkably
politically astute. Much of our leadership thinks that brogrammers are what
top-notch software developers are like, which makes their brogrammer mentality
all the more irritating.

------
tptacek
This article is calling bullshit on the trend story of interviewers asking for
Facebook creds. HN has credulously bandied this story about for the last week;
here, it seems only to have retained the last graf of the story.

So: have any of you actually been asked for Facebook creds in an interview?

~~~
dmoo
Exactly, why not out the companies who ask for this, preferably on Facebook.
Then anyone who still wants to work for these companies can be prepared, or
have a fake profile ready to go.

~~~
petdance
I tried going down the road of finding specifics that could be verified.
Here's one claim:

"There are several companies that are now revising their HR policies so that
providing your FB password on a steady basis is a requirement of your
continuing employment. You've already been employed 5-10 years? Provide it
now, or be fired tomorrow."

[http://politicartoons.livejournal.com/3026559.html?thread=70...](http://politicartoons.livejournal.com/3026559.html?thread=70934143#t70934143)

The poster rattled off some company names, but when I pressed for specifics,
like how she knew these things, she claimed that I was "in the pay of a
corporation as part of a 'hit squad'."

------
rriepe
HN discussion of this (non) story from a couple weeks ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3747699>

I'd love to see some actual data on this. But it just doesn't seem important
enough or big enough to go out and collect it.

~~~
ryguytilidie
Don't you think people might not be collecting that data because it is nearly
impossible to collect? What would people do? Look through newspaper
classifieds, see whos hiring, call each company and ask if they look at
facebook profiles and force people to give them their login? How many
companies would admit to doing this over the phone? See where I'm going with
this?

------
essayist
This is one example of statistical sloppiness in reporting, comprising: (a)
sloppiness about the quantity or proportion being asserted (e.g. "many" rather
than "at least 4000" or "10%" or "24"), and (b) sloppiness about the
confidence interval.

I'd love to see a sidebar to articles asserting trends providing both a clear
quantity estimate and the confidence interval around it. I'd even settle, in
early articles on a supposed trend, for something like "We're asserting that
this has happened more than N times." where N might be as small as 0.

I'm aware that my proposed standard could even be applied to this comment:),
so I'm simply asserting that this sloppiness exists. Here's one exemplary
takedown: [http://blogs.crikey.com.au/contentmakers/2010/03/27/did-
the-...](http://blogs.crikey.com.au/contentmakers/2010/03/27/did-the-media-
get-it-wrong-on-batts-gate/)

~~~
petdance
I think the worst slop is that when faced with lack of hard data, the writers
fall back on "more".

"More companies are asking job applicants for their social media passwords."
More than what?

------
tfb
I put my facebook account on hold awhile back; but if I decide to reactivate
it and if I'm ever job hunting again during that time, I'll probably either
just make a fake facebook account or I'll have two separate accounts: one for
inappropriate shenanigans/goofing off with friends... and another for serious
business, completely devoid of anything that could possibly be deemed
inappropriate.

Although, I kind of doubt it would ever get to that point as I prefer to be my
own boss, but I'm curious as to what those of you on HN might have to say
about this hack(;))/idea. I'm sure it isn't new.

~~~
ryguytilidie
I think the point is that people shouldn't have to do this. Making multiple
facebook accounts to fool the moronic employer who thinks they need to look at
your facebook account is just a string of fail where no one benefits at all.

~~~
tfb
Very good point. Sadly more people don't have the same outlook, so this
invasion of privacy will probably continue for as long as it's allowed. I
think talking about it like we're doing now is the best thing we can do -
bring awareness to the issue. We'll reach a point where employers no longer
snoop into our personal business (at least not so blatantly) when the vast
majority say, "Nope, sorry."

I guess as new technologies develop that allow easier access to more and more
information about our personal lives, it will take some time for the privacy
issues and standards to smooth out.

------
Duff
This sounds like a very sober analysis of "the mob" and the inane-stream media
whipping up a phony crisis.

While there is some overreaction, it has been documented that teachers and
corrections officers have been asked to provide access to their Facebook
account as a condition of employment.

No big deal, right? Well, I'd argue that it is --- I know at least a dozen
teachers and a few policemen. If those acquaintances are my "friends", the
person doing the background snooping will have access to things relating to me
that I was intending to share only with friends.

~~~
petdance
> the inane-stream media whipping up a phony crisis.

But it's our own fault. There was one little AP story, and it got pushed
everywhere, and what did we do? We clicked the link, and then we said "OMG
LOOK AT THIS I HAVE TO POST THIS TO FACEBOOK" and the people with the websites
said "ooh, look at those clicks."

The only reason this was whipped into a crisis is that we allowed it to be.

It's 2012, and we are the media.

------
ryguytilidie
His entire point is that this "doesn't happen". The VERY first commenter
points out many instances where it does happen and the author makes up reasons
for why those aren't relevant.

This feels like someone wanted to make an argument and instead of collecting
supporting evidence, just made some stuff up and then got sour when someone
proved them wrong. He also used "mute point" instead of "moot point", which,
while I never wanna be the grammar nazi, is pretty lol. Why do articles like
this get upvotes?

~~~
petdance
Corrections & police undergo more severe scrutiny, and therefore are not
relevant data points. This is in the original article, and was not "made up".

The mute/moot mistake was made by a poster, not the author.

------
zobzu
If only this was only about FB interviews. This is global. Even for whatever
tech thing. Today it's trendy to trash, say, Firefox. Or to use XX library. Or
to talk about feat. XX in SSH (the one that's been there for 10 years in the
man page and isn't new, sensational or obscure at all, y'a know?).

It makes juicy headlines. And you know what? People fall for it. Smart
engineers? Many, most? they fall for it too.

My take is that it's collateral damage from the Internet. The way people
become information addict and can get so much of it. They like the juicy
titles. They don't like to think. They enjoy the easiness of just following
what remotely make sense (even if it actually makes no sense to the critical
reader!).

They, you say? The "they" I'm using here is different from the burger story.
By "they" I actually mean nearly everyone, me included. It's something
difficult to fight against.

------
j_baker
Perhaps I'm missing something here, but I find it necessary to point something
out: lack of evidence doesn't necessarily mean that something isn't a trend.
For all we know, asking for a Facebook password could be the hottest trend
that everyone is doing, but we'd probably never know about it because no one
is collecting any data on the subject. The opposite argument could be made as
well.

In other words, if someone is making an argument without any evidence, they're
basically saying they know something when they really don't. On the other
hand, you have to be careful not to fall into the opposite trap: claiming that
they're _wrong_ , when you have no more evidence to prove that than they do.

------
jonny_eh
Spot on. Would it be accurate to refer to this as a case of mass hysteria or
moral panic?

~~~
grepherder
What's the harm? Even if it's a mass hysteria (a bit of a hyperbole), it's
certainly not one of those destructive ones (TSA et al.). At worst people
wrote some overly dramatic stuff on social media and wasted a small amount of
our time here, at best it raised the alarms pre-emptively and (hopefully)
prevented any company having such thoughts from doing so by raising social
awareness.

~~~
petdance
Same harm as any other spewing of unlikely but plausible stories.

Same harm as repeating the story about not flashing your brights at another
car lest they come kill you. Just wasted time and overly dramatic.

Same harm in telling about how Rod Stewart had to have his stomach pumped
because there was a gallon of semen in it. Just wasted time and overly
dramatic.

Same harm in parroting a story you heard about some virus that will make your
computer blow up. Just wasted time and overly dramatic.

There's no direct harm, but we're gullible enough as a society already. Living
in a Headline Nation is teaching us that we don't need to think for ourselves.
When the only facts we have about a story is that "they" are doing something
bad, then we'll believe most anything.

------
aklemm
Interviewer: O.K., now we need your Facebook password so we can verify you're
a good fit for this position.

Interviewee: I'm uncomfortable with that. How about you all give me your
Facebook passwords first?

~~~
petdance
The problem with that approach is that its combative, which does you no good.
That's why I suggest the following, from the article:

> The best answer is to calmly and respectfully say “I believe it’s best for
> business to keep business and personal life separate. That’s why I keep my
> private life private.”

------
mjwalshe
Well given the way that many US companies seem to have got drug testing for
jobs that do not in a million years need it by stealth - maybe kicking up a
fuss early makes sense.

------
duxup
Whatever this article says I'm pretty sure it proves whatever it is I already
think.

~~~
ktizo
Don't be silly, you can never fit that many giraffes into a Buick.

