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0 pointsedanm1y ago0 comments

> It should be illegal.

Not everything we don't like should be illegal.

This sounds like the kind of thing that is incredibly unenforceable anyway. How do you differentiate between "we're not actually hiring" and "we simply have a very high bar"? How do you do it in a way that doesn't impact the economy too much (like forcing employers to do stupid things like auto-write everyone back and waste even more of their time in order to appear to actually be hiring)?

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6 comments · 4 top-level

skeaker1y ago· 2 in thread

Easy, you offer a hotline where people can report it when they see it and then sue/fine the company for defrauding their investors by faking growth. If the case is legitimate, you reward the person that called in to the hotline with a bounty. Everybody wins except the fraudulent company, as it should be.

edanmOP1y ago

So now every company does a technical screen that weeds out a large percentage of people, then randomly chooses to waste some more people's time by dragging them through an interview. Everyone wastes more time but they can say they interviewed a lot of people.

I'm not saying this behavior isn't bad, to the extent that it actually really exists. I'm just not sure making it illegal is the right move. Why not let the market take care of it? You can usually see if a company is growing or not. If this becomes such a common phenomenon that that's a problem, you can usually explicitly ask, or there will be industry sources that can tell you if a company is growing or not.

skeaker1y ago

As if people's time isn't already wasted by fake job listings?

The market isn't actually very good at fixing issues like these, and in fact caused the issue in this case (defrauding investors makes number go up which makes market happy but people sad), which is why you would regulate it.

consteval1y ago

> Not everything we don't like should be illegal

From a "fraud" angle I could argue that it should still be illegal. You're signaling to your investors that you're growing but you're really not.

Fake numbers are a real thing. 9 openings and only 1 real opening? So you're inflating your employment growth by a factor of 9? How is this different than Wells Fargo opening 9 phony, automatic accounts per customer to inflate their growth?

amerkhalid1y ago

If company has 10 positions open for X months but their headcount is still same, then you can argue these are fake postings. We have big enough population that high bar, unless unrealistic, should not be problem.

polski-g1y ago

They want to turn the US into the EU: a dying, poor, over-regulated museum of decline.

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