
All You Zombies - douche
http://thedailywtf.com/articles/all-you-zombies
======
exelius
HR at most companies is filled with people who are too terrible at anything
else, so they get shoved into HR. This situation above (at a telecom turned
business service provider) is a very common problem -- especially at companies
with a large consumer-facing presence.

Because these companies need to hire large volumes of low-skilled workers,
they implement rigid HR policies and procedures to streamline the process.
Those workers make up probably 95% of their hiring volume -- turnover is high
and there are tons of positions available.

These companies fall flat on their fucking face when they try to hire skilled
workers. The same processes that make them efficient and streamlined at hiring
call center reps make them _fucking terrible_ at skilled labor hiring. They
use low-skilled HR reps with zero domain knowledge to filter stuff, then HR
always has to be involved in the process "because policy". End result is it
takes 4 months to get a resume, interview and extend an offer to someone -- in
which time, the best candidates already have started other jobs.

Meanwhile, the engineering groups need to get things done. So when Accenture
comes in and says "We can get you a whole team of 50 people in India. And they
can start next week." it's hard to say no. And most of the full-time people
working at the company are ex-consultants themselves (because that's the only
way to actually work at a lot of these companies).

Consultants are basically "shadow HR" at a lot of companies. They wouldn't be
so prevalent if these companies were competent at hiring people with relevant
skill.

~~~
LordKano
I have a difficult time understanding how Accenture is still in business but
your scenario makes sense.

Having worked a large (billion dollar scale) project with Accenture, I have
seen what a mixed bag they can be.

They brought on some absolute rock-star developers and some who probably did
more harm to the project than good but none of them had skills that weren't
available with domestic talent. I suppose the shackles of H1B visas helped to
keep labor costs down.

~~~
polotics
Yep. This is my experience also with Wipro: one very highly skilled consultant
covering for five to ten let's say much more tepid bodies. This racket works
well as long as no-one is looking close also middle-managers like to show off
roomfulls of people under their notional command.

~~~
exelius
In the business we call this "leverage". The whole business is a pyramid of
lower skilled workers billing high rates while the "talent" works at a loss
and does all of the actual work.

You drum out the ones who can't hack it after a year or two and replace them
with fresh grads, and you promote and pay the good ones to keep up the
charade.

And you're spot on about the middle manager thing. That way they can say "I
was over 4 teams with 75 heads so I'm ready to be a VP!" when really all they
did was approve expense reports and head-nod to everything I told them. Of
course, making sure that middle manager gets promoted is _also_ part of the
job -- when he gets promoted, he gets a bigger budget. :)

------
LeonM
We've all been there, recruiters calling you because you are the perfect
applicant because of your skill with framework XYZ (even though you've never
worked with it, nor claimed you have experience with it). And also because of
your experience in Java (even though you are a javascript dev). They have the
perfect job 'opportunity' for you! As long as you have at least 15 years
experience in React and Angular and SCRUM and agile you should be fine. Oh,
and you have to lower your hourly rate so the recruiter can make $20+ per hour
of of your work.

Seriously, when does it stop?

~~~
ryandrake
I don't know, maybe I have been lucky, but I don't get that so much. I get
_very_ infrequent recruiter contact, but when they do contact me, they seem to
have at least done a little homework. Usually they have the
domain/technologies right, and they have made an effort to match skills with
the role. My biggest complaint is that once in a while they get the job level
way wrong. I've got nearly 20 years under my belt, and I still get approached
for individual contributor "seventh engineer from the left" type roles. But
that's not a huge deal, just politely decline. I also get a lot of "I see you
are doing $ROLE at $COMPANY_1. How would you like to do the exact same $ROLE
at $COMPANY_2?" which are not interesting to me but how are they supposed to
know that?

I've never been called or harassed by a recruiter, and I try to get back to
every one, if only for politeness sake. No reason to burn bridges. If they got
the match a little wrong, no big deal--they're not wizards and mind readers.

~~~
sleepychu
Do you have LinkedIn? I'm considering ditching it because I'm so sick of
recruiter spam and that seems to be their main avenue of contact.

~~~
rglullis
I did it when Microsoft bought them. Not because of it, it was just the moment
when I realized that nothing good ever came out via LinkedIn.

Github and Stackoverflow supplied me with all of my decent leads and
networking necessary in the past years. For the only two exceptions of people
that expected me to have an account there, I told them I could send an up-to-
date CV with references, if needed.

------
tempodox
> "We don't _want_ to train someone," the interveiwer said

That attitude is pervasive, yet seldom expressed so clearly.

~~~
a3n
And yet, the _someone_ will likely end up training them, if they would only
make the hire.

------
tgb
Still trying to figure out the connection to
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Zombies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_You_Zombies)
You'd need a time machine to have the skills they want?

~~~
mirimir
Yes, loops through time would be necessary to have ten years experience with a
language that's five years old.

And FWIW: [http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-
content/uploads/Robert-A.-Hei...](http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-
content/uploads/Robert-A.-Heinlein-All-You-Zombies.pdf)

------
andrewclunn
Watching some managers fail just feels like karma sometimes. I can't imagine
the company in question will be around for too long.

~~~
douche
> a firm that started out as a telco but morphed into a business service
> provider

I was thinking this might be AT&T - I've run into a bunch of businesses that
have outsourced their IT to AT&T's global services division. Although AT&T is
still very much a telco.

------
ralfd
> How would you compare three sets of numbers to see if any number was common
> to all three?

Ahm ... I would probably just naively brute force loop over the sets, because
modern CPUs are insanely fast and I am filthy lazy. And if there is a
performance problem I super lazily look up the filtering methods of the
language-library.

What would the correct answer here be? Make a hash or something for constant
lookup cost?

~~~
TN1ck
If it's already a set in the language, use intersect. If the numbers are in a
array or sth. similiar, make a set and use intersect.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersection_(set_theory)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersection_\(set_theory\))

~~~
WorldMaker
We here at Company X believe that math is not useful unless it is bespoke,
hand-made, artisanal. Please pretend that set theory does not yet exist in
this universe, and describe to us the smell of the algorithm you might write
to solve this problem.

------
anocendi
I was waiting for the part where Teddy has to f __* his /her past self.

------
pavel_lishin
For those unaware, "All You Zombies..." is a _fantastic_ short story by Robert
Heinlein about time travel that was adapted into the 2014 film Predestination
(fairly well, too, considering the source material.)

~~~
eric_the_read
It'd be nice to see a decent Heinlein movie adaptation for a change. Sorry I
missed it when it came out.

~~~
norea-armozel
Yep, the Spierig Brothers are awesome at these kinds of films. I loved their
work with Daybreakers.

