that's an assumption

its just as likely that their process is auto-rejecting candidates and nobody has looked yet

"After his HR department hadn't found a single candidate for a job, the manager submitted his own resume. It was auto-rejected."

syndicated here

https://www.yourtango.com/self/manager-proves-hr-system-auto...

and the associated reddit comment that the articles are based off here

https://www.reddit.com/r/csMajors/comments/1f8x5ma/comment/l...

this is likely the more common practice

Not commenting on the rest of their assumptions, but to be clear, auto-rejecting candidates that could reasonably fill roles in your company isn’t a defense against incompetence accusations— it supports them.

I was referring to the discrimination rant

even candidates that might fit a poorly implemented affirmative action program are likely getting auto-rejected

nobody knows if its helpful to mention their race or disability, or whether its hurtful

My "discrimination rant" is informed by my ex-girlfriend being hired for an M&S/OpenCL job as a non-programming mech-e. Why? Because all the work was already done and it would look better to the government client to have a female, black engineer sit around in a SCIF doing nothing all day. Stuff like this is absolutely rampant.

No, this is what I was told verbatim by her. Her next stop had marketing soliciting her to write BLM articles for the corporate blog! Please keep trying to gaslight me and all my fellow colleagues who have to commit fraud and claim their wives own 51% of their business entity that we're the racists though.

I don't see anyone in this thread accusing you of being racist. Please don't flamebait.

>wives own 51% of their business entity that we're the racists though.

Hush, don't tell people of our sacred text.

This is absolutely true. Government contractors have what is effectively diversity quotas. People will get hired to fill the quota regardless of what they actually do. It’s absolutely not true that diversity hires are all useless, but there are significant incentives to create diversity numbers in order to gain a government contract. Hiring 100 people to do nothing and get the lucrative contract is better than hiring based on need and not getting the contract.

Utterly shocked she’s an ex-girlfriend, really.

It’s clear you just want to be heard but that doesn’t prove that’s what happened to your application

“assumption” doesn’t imply a lack of truth, it points out your inability to know that out of all possibilities, which possibility applies

it means there is no point in doubling down on your data point of 1 in 1 niche industry when there is this other industry wide practice occurring as well

an industry wide practice that would affect minorities applying as well as existing employees alike

I’m not an HR person, but I’d be surprised if the ATS bouncer algorithms even have access to the eeo information, and making assumptions about ethnicity based on name seems unlikely to be a feature. Sure, someone could code their own solution easily enough but I really doubt that’s a common enough occurrence to warrant discrimination accusations at the auto-reject level.

It's not an assumption, Affirmative Action along with many other requirements is mandated for the contractors working with the US. You can start from here https://www.dol.gov/agencies/odep/program-areas/employers/fe...

but its implementation different per organization and at any moment in time.

it could just as easily be any other reason, like the one I identified

its an assumption to know what's being applied to you.

its obvious that the frustrated guy just wants to be heard, it is still an assumption. that doesn't mean its not happening. it means its an assumption about what exactly applied to you.

unless they specifically said that and you won an employment discrimination case then you literally dont know.

I have worked for a few defense contractors in my time. There is significantly more diversity outside of defense than inside defense.

I had a team of 14 with 2 women and 1 non-white male. I had a team of 10 with 0 women and 0 non-white male. I had a team of 20 with 1 women and 0 non-white male.

Looking at it another way, thats 40 successful white male hires, and 4 successful non-white male hires.

if only having access to 91% of jobs instead of 100% is the reason you can't get hired....

edit: To clarify, as a software developer of 10+ years both in defense and faang, I have never once had a team where there was less than 50% white men.

I haven't worked in FAANG but I recently applied to Amazon in Australia. I interviewed with 3 asians, 2 indians and 1 white guy. YMMV.

Veering off topic a bit, but I wonder what would happen if a company required that for any new hiring filter for Role X, it must pass everyone currently in Role X or above.

Does it make sense, in general, to prevent the hiring process from becoming more selective in the future? If so, why? But if not then a rule like that wouldn't make sense.

I don't think it makes sense to prevent it becoming more selective, but I do think it makes sense to avoid passing over candidates who can do the job. And your best (only?) data on who can actually do the job is who is currently doing the job.

If you really need everyone in Role X to have a PhD in Psychoergonomics, then what's up with Jane over there and her MD?

If you're hiring because you need someone? Yes?

It makes sense to sort candidates with the more niche requirement to the top of the pile, but to require it? When you need to fill this role?

There's also hiring because "wow, this candidate is great, we should find a place to fit them", and there it makes sense to become more selective going forwards... but when a company is saying "we need people and can't find them", that doesn't seem like the time to be more selective.

For some reason I fancy buying myself a new watch.

Anecdote: Amazon has a hiring bar that states that new hires have to be better than half of the current population in the role. Whether or not it’s adhered to, there’s a reasonable motive for doing so.

I couldn’t agree more. Hiring for tech workers is insanely broken. I was a hiring manager at a FAANG company. I wanted to hire my ex intern (he’d gotten stellar reviews, then gone on to finish his degree while attaining highly relevant additional skills) Since he’d already applied when I reached out I was told by my hr people that I had to wait for the process to complete. They flew him out for onsites (now mind you I’d worked with him previously and vouched for him and would have simply made an offer immediately) They sat him through the whole suite of interviews. You know the kind, panel interviews with people unrelated to the role asking stupid questions unrelated to the job. A few weeks later they rejected him. I opened up his packet (as an hiring manager I had access to ATS) and it was stellar. Every question answered perfectly. I called the guy whose name was on the rejection “why on earth did you reject? Did he say something so bad you couldn’t write it down?” “No we just feared he was so good he’d get bored and go do something else” This from a company that claims to hire the best and the brightest. I called him, apologized and asked him to be patient with us. I literally had to start the process over. Fly him out and pretend to interview him again. All the while knowing I was going to make him an offer. Shit like this is why companies and hiring managers have trouble finding candidates. Not because the talent pool is not there, it’s because your process is broken, absurd, and insane.

Defense morons should be a more common term. These guys have been given free money for generations in VA and can barely do anything other than suck cash from the government. I’m an American it’s disgraceful they are children compared to my Asian colleagues.

Maybe, when you interview, they sense your anger and that you feel as you say, they are morons, so they move onto more desirable candidates?

What a weird last sentence.

It’s just a fact it really changed my perspective. American as a people have a learned helplessness mostly because of wealth, when asked to do something they gripe about the boss making excuses and acting juvenile. Asians just do the thing.

if they're getting free money, they're not morons!

humans think we're the most intelligent because we built New York while the dolphins have just been hanging around having a good time. the dolphins think they're the most intelligent for the same reason.

I'm picturing a lot of corp execs boarding a spaceship and saying 'so long and thanks for all the tax breaks'

Have you considered that it might be your attitude costing you job opportunities? Anti-woke baby raging isn’t exactly exactly an attractive quality in a potential candidate

This idiotic positivity culture is so toxic. It seems to have crept up the 101 to Silicon Valley from Hollywood where, as Mel Gibson notes, the one rule is "you can't get mad". Silicon valley was built on getting mad enough to see something wrong with the world and want to change it.

Wow, I can't imagine why companies don't want to hire you

its perfectly acceptable to be bitter and express it sometimes when you have the perception that life has been unfair to you for half a decade.

It doesn’t necessarily speak to the parent’s attitude before becoming bitter. Hard to draw such a direct conclusion for me.

Would you hire someone who is actively being bitter toward your industry?

I work in video games, if I didn’t I would have no pool of candidates to choose from.

However if you read what I wrote:

1) Current attitude is not necessarily prior attitude

2) A histrionic tirade is not indicative of an outwardly perceptible attitude, in fact, its more common that these kinds of outburts are from a person who is not outwardly bitter enough day-to-day and is forced to be positive. (thus it boils inside them and becomes venomous)

3) Bitterness is usually the combination of a (often still) motivated person who feels let down. Your companies most negative voices are very often the ones who are passionate but sad about things. Its the “checked-outs” who you really don’t want if you’re building something you want to be good.

It's very unlikely that people just start by being bitter against an industry, but extremely likely that an industry gave people reason to become bitter in time. People tend to start their careers fresh and free of preconceptions, while industries keep carrying their "blemishes" through decades and many generations of people.

You're applying the circular reasoning of "of course I treat you like crap because you have a bad attitude (because I treat you like crap)", while ignoring the part in the bracket.

I hunted down someone who was known for their bitter critique of the industry I was in at the time (because I could tell the critique came from the frustrations of someone who was very technically skilled), convinced them to join my team and they've been one of my best hires to date.

This individual was a great contributor and long outlasted my tenure at the company (so it's not just my bias), only to eventually move on to even better roles.

Frankly, if you work in tech and haven't been bitter about some nonsense in this field, I suspect you must not be particularly engaged or passionate about the area you work in.

Becoming deeply bitter is a very normal outcome of dealing with US company hiring processes in 2024

maybe he's not as competent as he thinks he is

> maybe he's not as competent as he thinks he is

I'm not going to let industry off the hook by blaming the victim.

It's not the defense industry, but I know a very qualified person who's been having a lot of trouble being hired for what must be stupid, industry-dysfunction reasons.

Becoming deeply bitter is a very normal outcome of dealing with literally anything, in any year. It has very little to do with US company hiring processes and a lot to do with someone’s attitude and outlook on life.

Both of my dads (father and FIL) got cancer this year. My mom almost did.

You don’t have to become deeply bitter, no matter what your situation. Many people do anyway, and that is by no means a moral failing of any kind, but it has very little to do with the individual events that precipitated it.

This deserves a much more thought out and nuanced answer than I am capable to give.

I will try anyway.

Let's take something that we have more information about: burnout. Since burnout is a hot button topic, we're all somewhat aware about it.

Many people misconstrue burnout to mean "overworked" - which it's not, it's a type of depression where your emotional investment is not getting adequate emotional returns: and that's what's happening with your depiction of "bitter".

You had objectively worse situations happening to you, yes! However- the conditions in which they happened were:

* Not artificial. There was no concerted effort by the universe to conspire to give your fathers cancer.

* You were given sympathy

* You were given the opportunity to actually air grievances about it before it boiled up- likely you were told that it's healthy to feel bad or to express yourself.

Likewise, bitterness is the culmination of being treated in a way you perceive as unfair, and it starts small. It gets worse when not treated. Treatment is as easy as letting people be a little angry sometimes or to let them talk about their issues and be met with something other than condescension.

You had a worse situation, yes, but you're talking about people getting moody as a moral failing.

It would be like me telling a woman not to be moody on her period because some men have their arms blown off on oil rigs. They're not comparable at all.

You misunderstood me. I very explicitly do not think it is a moral failing at all. I do not have any problem with someone being moody. Problems aren’t a competition. I mentioned mine not to imply that mine were worse, but just that they were different, and to show that I wasn’t speaking from a position of “having no problems” or being oblivious to them.

It is completely reasonable to be bitter. But long-term, it is still a choice.

I don’t disagree that being bitter, at the onset, is not a choice. And often requires treatment.

Burnout is a great example because I agree with everything you said about it. Becoming bitter when burnt out isn’t a choice. Staying bitter is.

For short periods, it is almost always even necessary; treatment requires feeling.

But too many people get stuck in it, do not seek treatment (or are afraid to / taught not to, even amongst friends), and do not move forward. Even that is still not a moral failing; but it does make me sad.

> Becoming deeply bitter is a very normal outcome of dealing with literally anything, in any year.

No it isn't. Most people only become bitter when they feel they have been treated unfairly and badly for a very long period of time.

Citation needed. People get bitter over good things sometimes too; because they see others as having gotten more, or perceive unfairness when there wasn’t any, and so on.

I am not implying bitterness is bad. But you can absolutely be bitter for almost any reason.

I have rarely encountered someone as wrong about anything as you are about this.

Would you care to make an argument? Or just insult and leave?

If you genuinely didn't become at all bitter from multiple family members getting cancer, you should probably see about getting a psychiatric evaluation.

I felt plenty of emotions. Sadness, fear, and so on. Bitter was not one of them, and I definitely don’t feel bitter now. It helps that both are in remission, but that wasn’t the obvious (or even expected) outcome in either case.

And thanks, but I am quite aware of my mental faculties, and have seen psychiatrists and therapists plenty; I have ADHD, after all, and recurring depressive episodes (though not true clinical depression).

Perhaps don’t assume that people who are different from you are… mentally ill? Seems a bit of an arrogant stretch. :/

Why would anyone be bitter about family members getting cancer? If some big company polluted the water in their town with hexavalent chromium and that caused the cancer in all the family members, I could definitely understand bitterness, but this doesn't seem to be a case like this at all. Most of the time, cancer just happens unfortunately, and isn't directly caused by some evil person or corporation (at least as far as we can tell in most cases). Why would someone be bitter about it? Angry at god or something? Sad, sure, but not bitter.

People have all sorts of emotions about stuff that "just happens". Sure, those emotions aren't logical, but emotions aren't logical.

A rant on the internet has nothing to do with how someone acts as a (prospective) employee.

They want top tier talent to work on crappy quality products/code

Meaning people who can unravel all the crap they have to maintain but with no agency to enact any sort of long term fix.

Plenty of this kind of work going around, the older the codebase is the less willing people are to work on it. Soon good engineers don't want to anymore and mid engineers are not good enough to even tweak it. Leaving the only lever these companies can pull being salary and they can't compete with FAANG on that.

Reminds me of those anecdotes you hear from Oracle and ASML engineers. The difference there is that they can still use the salary lever.

This. "You can't pay me enough to work on something where I have almost no agency to do anything without constantly raising my hand, asking if I can improve something, then having to wait and wait and wait for approval to consistently be told 'No.'". Unless I'm allowed to be free to do other things while waiting or allowed to work remote/asynchronously (not tethered/shackled to a desk/keyboard), then I might be open to doing it, but still for a lot of money to deal with the redtape/bs.

The last sentence is key. A quality dev can do all the work required to make par with 5-10 hours of work a week. They can be happy if the salary is good enough and they approach it from a "don't care, getting paid" mindset. However, if they're forced to be in an office instead of remote, where they can do as they please with an extra 25-30 hours a week vs. a standard job, they will be miserable.

I think I understand what you're trying to say but as I read what you wrote it's a bit confusing. Please correct me if I got it wrong.

What I think you're saying is, if a developer is forced to be in an office/at a desk when/where no "real work" can be accomplished (that's to management gates/bottlenecks) then they will be miserable. Is that correct?

I've found that people who reach for DEI or affirmative action to explain their lack of success are generally just not very good.

All of these hundreds of rejections were due to affirmative action huh? In Huntsville? Ok.

Defense industry has lower standards and higher salaries for tech jobs, because they're restricted to nationals only. Not sure about AA

How exactly does affirmative action lead to a company being unable to fill a position at all?