
America’s Job Listings Have Gone Off the Deep End - jriot
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/06/looking-for-a-job-americas-listings-are-inscrutable/591616/
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mdorazio
This is probably the most important quote from the article: "Of course, to
brag about being a great employer, it helps to be one."

And that's pretty much the crux of this whole phenomenon. Rather than actually
step up with better working conditions, better pay, and more appealing work
culture, way too many employers are just trying to emulate the parts of
startups they like (laughable work-life balance and overly loyal employees)
while ignoring the parts they don't (actual perks, career advancement, equity
lottery tickets, etc.). It's a cargo cult.

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rossdavidh
Excellent article. Also a good reason to remind everyone of the Rockstar
programming language:
[https://github.com/RockstarLang/rockstar](https://github.com/RockstarLang/rockstar)

"But why?

Mainly because if we make Rockstar a real (and completely pointless)
programming language, then recruiters and hiring managers won't be able to
talk about 'rockstar developers' any more."

Now we just need to add a "Ninja" programming language, and maybe a couple
more.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
[https://ninja-build.org/](https://ninja-build.org/)

~~~
rossdavidh
Shoot, unfortunately this looks like it may actually be a real thing.

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Mountain_Skies
Bet all of these companies complain bitterly about an inability to hire enough
talent and advocate for large injections of external labor for them to sift
through.

~~~
Balgair
I'm applying in bioengineering right now, and man, what nonsense. PhD or bust,
but the base pay is still $50k here, barely more than grad school.

There's one posting that comes up every week on LI [0]: Must have PhD in
Biomedical Engineering, must be able to climb on roofs, must have PE or get
one in three months of hire, $45k.

That's an insane wage for engineers, let alone for a PhD, let alone for a PE,
let alone for a dual PhD-PE, let alone that you're looking at a _minimum_ of
four years to get from an EIT to a PE in CA per law [1], let alone that there
is no PE for bioengineers _at all_.

I even interviewed with them on the phone. The lady just complained to me
nearly the whole time about how 'millenials' are so entitled about wanting to
make 'Frisco Money'[1]. She even confused a PE with an MD more than once.
Like, my God, just bonkers.

Not all the jobs out there are that insane, but a fair number are close on the
cash issues. One that I applied for in Foster City was offering $85k with
middling health benefits. My direct boss only made $100k after I mentioned
that minimum wage for a GED (or less) auto-mechanic in the city was ~$70k. And
that the poverty line at the time was ~$110k. He said he drove in from
Antioch, about three hours one way, each day. And that's what made it work for
him.

Honestly, the employers seem to have gone crazy, it's the only thing that
makes sense.

[0]
[https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/1315831956/](https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/1315831956/)

[1]
[https://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/laws/pe_act.pdf](https://www.bpelsg.ca.gov/laws/pe_act.pdf)

[2] Having grown up in the Bay Area, anyone that calls it _Frisco_ is seen as
worse than a rabid dog and should be put down at once.

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strikelaserclaw
Everyone wants to hire like google, no one wants to pay like google.

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eledumb
I saw this nonsense start 20 years ago. Using "cool" jargon in the job
descriptions and having automated keyword matching. HR was scored on how well
the resumes matched the job description, HR needed to score above 75% so they
set the matching bar at 80%, <BOOM> problem solved HR was scoring off the
charts. It didn't matter that HR wasn't delivering any resumes to hiring
managers, but that wasn't their fault, the wrong people were applying,
according to HR.

Now finding a job is like playing a video game but every company has the same
game, except the rules are different for each company, and they aren't
published. I'm so glad I'm near the end of my career, and I'm senior enough
that my jobs are all handled by recruiters, so I have an expert at playing the
game working on my behalf.

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joker3
Peter Cappelli has written a lot about how terrible recruiting has been in the
last few years, and we'd all be better off if companies were reading his work
(and implementing his suggestions). [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-
hiring-practices-mess-pet...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/our-hiring-
practices-mess-peter-cappelli) is worth a read for a very short introduction
to what he thinks of current hiring practices.

