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0 pointsmbesto7y ago0 comments

I don't blame you and I agree with you. My point is that this is not how the market works.

You argument is like asking for women to stop being so demanding about all of the qualities they want in a man. Sure you can take a stand against that and say "I'm only going to meet women who match my exact profile and seek those who have realistic set of expectations". This is just simply not how it works and anyone who has individualistically "taken a stand" ends up losing out and just goes back to market norms.

In other words - a noble effort, but discrediting human behavior in aggregate won't get you very far.

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4 comments · 2 top-level

logfromblammo7y ago· 2 in thread

What argument? This is what I actually do. I read job postings sometimes, and if a posting looks like it might involve too much bullshit to be worth the effort to apply, I forget about it forever. If the posting is crap, I don't apply. It's not my problem to contact the company and tell them why their advertisement failed to draw my interest.

This strategy works perfectly fine when I already have a decent job and wouldn't be averse to trading up, if the opportunity is right. If nothing seems good right now, I can still go to work. There will probably be more opportunities in the future.

But even when I need to find new work now, or run out of money to pay bills, I still shove the lowest estimated payout/effort prospects to the back of the queue. There is nothing any individual company could do to change my behavior. I will always pick the ripest fruit whenever I get hungry. I will always avoid wasting my own time with snipe hunts and wild goose chases.

Your dating analogy crumbles in a lot of very reasonable cases. Job hunting is only superficially like dating. Getting hired is not very much like getting married, unless you are in a cult featuring polygamy/polyandry for the leader (and maybe their top disciples), with chastity and celibacy for everyone else.

But in some sense, it is apt. If your profile says you're looking for someone who is:

  - rich
  - pretty
  - single (never married)
  - faithful
  - sane
  - attentive to my every need
  - definitely not an axe-murderer
  - also not a con artist
  - has a garish tramp-stamp tattoo featuring Yosemite Sam
  - minimum height 190cm; maximum weight 100kg

You are still going to get pinged by chat-bots and the desperately thirsty, but anyone fitting your bill has probably already overfilled their queue with prospects that are only asking for:

  - able to cook dried pasta correctly
  - not a *complete* asshole

And that's because those other people have requirements, too.

turtlecloud7y ago

Ummm you just proved his point. Most startups are like cults lol. Hiring is exactly like dating with the hiring manager as the crazy cult leader.

Like so many hiring managers have veto’d a hire due to a perceived slight / offense.

logfromblammo7y ago

It's not a bad point to be proven, but it's not "simply how it works". You can get along just fine without dating absolute nutters. And you can get hired without responding to unrealistic, overreaching job postings.

Go ahead and take that stand. The only thing you are missing out on is the very worst the world has to offer. Have reasonable standards, and uphold them. It's okay. If you can't find anyone who actually meets your standards, it's probably because their signal is currently being overwhelmed by the noise. You won't ever be able to find them if you just set a dumb filter just above the noise floor.

If a company wants five years of experience in a two-year-old technology, add them to your blacklist for a year, and just let them hire as many liars as they can find. If they're all working somewhere else, they're less likely to apply to be your co-workers. And that company certainly won't be paying 2.5x as much for 5 years experience as the market rate for 2.

And that's what's missing from the article. It focuses on the amount of overlap between candidate and job description, and completely ignores whether the posting itself is offering a reasonable compensation for the mythical candidate it wants. How many times have you seen "WANTED: full-spectrum engineer with 10 years of experience who is an expert in all levels of multiple technology stacks; 6-month contract-to-hire $60k/year, relocation required"? That isn't even hyperbole. It's cherry-picked and amalgamated from the worst postings I have ever seen, but it is not an exaggeration.

Those dating profiles with the unrealistic expectations are all about what the person wants, and nothing about what is offered in return. You're never going to get a partnership between equals from someone like that. You can certainly get to be the cult leader's consort/concubine, but you're usually better off with someone who actually values you as an individual.

AnIdiotOnTheNet7y ago

I think it is more like recognizing that all the qualities women say they demand in a man are indicative of their unrealistic expectations so they're a waste of your time.

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