• WebDevGuy (unregistered) in reply to Huf Lungdung
    Huf Lungdung:
    Consistently maintaining high grades shows that you're truly dedicated to your work. Any future employer will appreciate that and it will put you ahead of everyone else.

    Not only that, but high grades often means you'll never have to take out student loans because you'll qualify for more grants and scholarships (I actually made about $2000 profit in my last year!)

    Of course, so does a job well done. This is only a factor when looking for entry-level employment.

  • (cs) in reply to WebDevGuy
    WebDevGuy:
    Huf Lungdung:
    Consistently maintaining high grades shows that you're truly dedicated to your work. Any future employer will appreciate that and it will put you ahead of everyone else.

    Not only that, but high grades often means you'll never have to take out student loans because you'll qualify for more grants and scholarships (I actually made about $2000 profit in my last year!)

    Of course, so does a job well done. This is only a factor when looking for entry-level employment.

    100% AGREED!

    I don't remember the last time a potential employer asked to see a transcript ... I think it may have happened once in my entire life, and only then for a co-op job.

    And I certainly don't ask for transcripts when interviewing people for my day job. We go based on ability, and ability to demonstrate ability,, not artificial metrics or prejudices. That, and most people in the real world recognize the artifice of academia.

  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    The real WTF is assuming that a person who is concerned about drug testing is a drug user. Some people think it's intrusive. Quaint, I know; as once President Obama implements his universal health care, we'll have mandatory blood tests and invasive exams annually on pain of imprisonment.
    One for two.
  • (cs)

    Here is my take on the case of Tattoo-Scott:

    TRWTF is that the company has an ex-con (because only ex-cons have tattoos) interviewing job applicants ....

  • Agent R (unregistered) in reply to foo
    foo:
    Yeah, I know what you mean with these stories. One time I got called into an interview, but it was over within minutes. I think I was overqualified for the job because with every question they asked me, I knew way more than they did and even offered them advice on what changes they should make in order to get better at programming.

    I feel obligated to point out that you might have come off as a "know it all" instead of a mentor. Got to be careful on that one.

    I feel obligated to point out that you've just been had by a troll. Got to be careful on that one.

  • (cs) in reply to cklam
    cklam:
    ...(because only ex-cons have tattoos)...
    Oh my goodness! My last three girlfriends have been ex-cons, and I never suspected! I feel so naive.
  • VAXcat (unregistered) in reply to cparker

    "the money is distributed where there is a need"...are you trying to say, from each according to their ability, to each according to their need?

  • WebDevGuy (unregistered) in reply to VAXcat

    Yes, the principles of welfare can and do often intersect with the tenets of communism. Because communism isn't engineered evil, this is to be expected.

  • Jason (unregistered) in reply to mathew

    The ACLU are a bunch of morons.

  • ContraCorners (unregistered) in reply to cklam
    cklam:
    Here is my take on the case of Tattoo-Scott:

    TRWTF is that the company has an ex-con (because only ex-cons have tattoos) interviewing job applicants ....

    Absolutely NOT TRUE. A good number of current convicts have tattoos.

  • Northerner (unregistered) in reply to Ozymandias

    Refusing to take a drug test does not mean you use drugs. I won't work anywhere where I'm treated like a criminal even before I sit down for an interview. If you don't trust your people to act responsibly, then they shouldn't be working for you. If someone says they don't use drugs, then that should be enough, until their performance suffers.

    Of course, rating performance is hard, reading a drug test report is easy.

    Also, alcohol is a drug, should I be fired for having a beer on the weekends? Nicotene is a drug, should I be fired for smoking a cigar on my own time? Both are 'drugs of abuse' along with the usual suspects, and can have just as serious (if not more so) repercussions on one's livelihood.

    But, if thinking that everyone who has used a substance is therefore permanently branded as a bad person helps you sleep at night, go for it.

  • (cs) in reply to Ozymandias
    Ozymandias:
    cparker:
    KR:
    Alan:
    I live in a country with free universal healthcare, and I havent seen a doctor in 12 years.

    Health care is free where you are? So tell me, do the doctors in your country enjoy being unpaid slaves?

    Who said the doctors were volunteers? Free universal healthcare is paid for with taxes, and the money is distributed where there is a need.

    Having trouble with the definition of 'free', are we?

    Is that an admission? I take it you live in a totalitarian society and are not a free citizen.

    A publicly funded health care system would be free for everyone at the point of use. Nobody's saying there's no money involved.

  • (cs) in reply to Doesn't matter
    Doesn't matter:
    Joe:
    Here's my take on the guy escorted out who may have been a drug user.

    There are plenty of competent people out there for the company to hire. Given 2 equal candidates, why hire the one who uses drugs. Whether he can "handle" them or not doesn't matter. They have more of a potential of becoming a problem than anything else. Why risk it? Even if he could still function, why not hire someone else with the same skills but who does NOT use drugs (or at least, not that they're aware of)?

    Here's my take on the girl escorted out who may have been pregnant.

    There are plenty of competent women out there for the company to hire. Given 2 equal candidates, why hire the one who is pregnant. Whether she can "handle" it or not doesn't matter. They have more of a potential of becoming a problem than anything else. Why risk it? Even if she could still function, why not hire someone else with the same skills but who is NOT pregnant(or at least, not that they're aware of)?

    In fact, pregnant women run into this form of discrimination all the time. It's technically illegal in the USA to fire an employee or refuse to hire a woman because she is pregnant... but the onus of proof is on the pregnant woman to prove the discrimination. The company can usually get around it simply by saying "She wasn't a good fit [because she was pregnant and another candidate wasn't]" or "She wasn't performing her job adequately [because we don't expect our employees to actually use their sick time]".

  • All-Beef Patty (unregistered) in reply to Alan
    Alan:

    I live in a country with free universal healthcare, and I havent seen a doctor in 12 years.

    I've heard all kinds of bad stuff about how long you have to wait, but I had no idea it was THAT bad.

  • Nutmeg Programmer (unregistered)

    As I understand it, in the US, all questions about marriage and children are off limits until an offer of employment has been made.

  • (cs) in reply to Huf Lungdung
    Huf Lungdung:
    Consistently maintaining high grades shows that you're truly dedicated to your work. Any future employer will appreciate that and it will put you ahead of everyone else.

    Not only that, but high grades often means you'll never have to take out student loans because you'll qualify for more grants and scholarships (I actually made about $2000 profit in my last year!)

    Both of which are irrelevant when the student is a senior in his final semester looking for a job. He's hoping to get the offer before he graduates so his final grades won't be known yet (as long as he does well enough to graduate), and it's too late to be getting any more scholarships.

  • T604 (unregistered) in reply to Cheese
    Cheese:
    Sql Slave:
    -- I had an Indian coworker a few years back who, when he meant to use the term "workaround" said "reacharound." Genius points to whomever managed to plant that in his head. On the plus side for him, all his reacharounds got a lot of attention in meetings.

    I had an Indian coworker a few years ago who, when trying to say "I made a mistake on [system] and my boss chewed me out" actually said "I made a mistake on [system] and my boss ate me out". We all held in our laughter pretty well but the 20-something young lady programmer in the group turned an incredible shade of red.

    I hope you guys explained to him/her what they said and what it means. I worked with a young woman from India and during a conversation about food she asked our boss (who is also female) if she liked cock. I just slowly turned my chair around to face a different direction. I excused myself from the room while my boss explained the double meaning of the word.

  • G (unregistered)

    You c*nt understand engrish?!

  • (cs) in reply to WebDevGuy
    WebDevGuy:
    brazzy:
    WebDevGuy:
    real_aardvark:
    WebDevGuy:
    I only program in Python when I'm high...which is one of the main reasons I love Python, actually: It's intuitive. Nothing worse than working on a PHP project after smoking: 50% or more of your bugs are for missing semicolons, missing $ before variables, etc. etc.
    Tabs???
    Auto-indentation! Vim, TextMate, Emacs, they all do it.
    I kinda doubt that they're able to write your programs for you. Which they'd basically have to be able to do in order to generate or fix mistakes in syntactically significant Python whitespace.
    Not sure as to what you're getting at here. Python's one nit-picky thing is whitespace which is very easy to grok under most any circumstance. PHP has many features that are unintuitive and take a sharp, alert mind to overcome. But I'm still a big PHP fan for its usability, ubiquity, and speed, but it's very prickly when you're under the influence of anything.
    I'm getting at the fact that no editor in the world can get Python whitespace right for you when you can't do it yourself. I'll take your word that it's easier to get right yourself than $ variables and line ending semicolons while you're high, though I (as well as real_aardvark apparently) would have thought otherwise.
  • (cs) in reply to Northerner
    Northerner:
    Also, alcohol is a drug, should I be fired for having a beer on the weekends? Nicotene is a drug, should I be fired for smoking a cigar on my own time? Both are 'drugs of abuse' along with the usual suspects, and can have just as serious (if not more so) repercussions on one's livelihood.
    To be "fair", some companies are starting to fire employees if they smoke. Hell, I just saw an article that spent a little time talking about a company that will fire employees if their *spouse* smokes. (Oh, and checks through random blood tests. Sounds like an awesome place to work.)

    Of course, I would argue that they are fixing the inequity in the wrong direction, but that's just me..

  • (cs) in reply to KR
    KR:
    Alan:
    I live in a country with free universal healthcare, and I havent seen a doctor in 12 years.

    Health care is free where you are? So tell me, do the doctors in your country enjoy being unpaid slaves?

    Oh they tend to be very happy: you see the flogging continues until morale improves.

  • (cs) in reply to savar
    savar:
    The real difference between the US and other countries is how far we are willing to go to take care of those who can't take care of themselves. Most euro countries are very supportive of others -- to the point that they pay a lot of taxes in order to allow the government to redistribute wealth heavily. In the US the prevailing opinion is "fuck them, let them get a job"... I personally am somewhere in the middle. I think preventative care should be available whether you can pay for it or not, but at the same time we shouldn't be paying $200,000 in tax payer funds to support some guy who burned his kidneys out with heroin and meth.

    I disagree (with your characterization of the US, not necessarily your post as a whole). I think the prevailing opinion of those Americans who oppose government health care is "It's not the government's job, find someone else to help you". Americans are willing to go pretty far to take care of those who can't help themselves, but many (myself included) would prefer this be done through charitable organizations, religious institutions, or individual generosity rather than the government. The whole "let them get a job" spiel is mostly a straw man.

  • WebDevGuy (unregistered) in reply to brazzy

    Further, it's much easier to unindent when ending a block than it is to deal with braces. Your mind's often already onto the next idea, and when the only language "cruft" is indentation and a colon after control statements, it's uncommon to make dumb mistakes as you code. In PHP, you have braces, semicolons, inconsistent naming conventions, and $ prepending variables, amongst other conventions. And as many Python people say, a good developer indents code anyway, and I'm very precise with indentation in languages for which it doesn't matter beyond readability.

  • Shakespeare (unregistered)

    I work with a ESL guy (Indian) who pronounces GUID "Jew ID". It brings to mind concentration camps. I can't figure out if I should tell him or not...

  • Jeff Bell (unregistered)

    If you follow the French pronunciation rules, he was saying facade instead of façade.

  • LEGO (unregistered) in reply to cparker
    cparker:
    Ozymandias:
    cparker:
    KR:
    Alan:
    I live in a country with free universal healthcare, and I havent seen a doctor in 12 years.

    Health care is free where you are? So tell me, do the doctors in your country enjoy being unpaid slaves?

    Who said the doctors were volunteers? Free universal healthcare is paid for with taxes, and the money is distributed where there is a need.

    Having trouble with the definition of 'free', are we?

    Is that an admission? I take it you live in a totalitarian society and are not a free citizen.

    A publicly funded health care system would be free for everyone at the point of use. Nobody's saying there's no money involved.

    Don't be a F-A-C-A-D-E. In this context Free has nothing to do with the ultimate cost of the service or who pays. Free means freely available, as in unfettered by f*ckhead beancounting HMO trolls who override the best judgement of doctors as to who will receive treatment and who won't.

    Socialized medicine is also not without its faults but there are far fewer people who are bankrupted by the cost of their healthcare or die because treatment was not approved by some corporate troll.

    -Lego

  • (cs) in reply to Jeff Bell
    Jeff Bell:
    If you follow the French pronunciation rules, he was saying facade instead of façade.
    Surely you mean "Freedom pronunciation rules?" Why do you hate America?
  • BobB (unregistered)

    Not sure if this is on topic but a friend of mine who occasionally smokes pot was interviewing for a position as a secretary at a car insurance (not sayin who) office in town. She was worried about a drug test even though she hadn't smoked in a while and was wondering if the offices tested but didn't want to ask outright "Do you test for drugs?"

    What I suggested is after her final interview she simply ask, "I'm not sure if I've asked prior but is there anything else I must submit to your offices to begin employment?" And usually there is a week to two week window after beginning employment (at least in Oklahoma) that you have of when a piss test must be taken.

  • Maciej (unregistered) in reply to Gerhard
    Gerhard:

    for just one example: I once worked with a sysadmin/programmer who turned out to be an alcoholic. He had a excellent technical skills but just couldn't plan for anything. He ended up working himself into a corner server wise and took short term fixes to work around the problem. The result? Reformatting the servers ended up being less work than trying to work around his undersized partitions followed by symlink hell.

    Perhaps the guy was just bad at planning? Alcoholism isn't a prerequisite for that.

  • dmh2000 (unregistered) in reply to mtu
    mtu:
    The European Court of Justice and the Federal Labor Court of Germany have ruled it unlawful in a job interview to ask the question of wether or not a woman is planning to get pregnant in the future or is pregnant at the time the interview takes place, or to later challenge the employment contract on the grounds of these facts.... I feel lucky to live here.

    its the same in the US for health issues including pregnancy. Just not for criminal activities.

  • WebDevGuy (unregistered)
  • SomeCoder (unregistered) in reply to Joe
    Joe:
    Here's my take on the guy escorted out who may have been a drug user.

    There are plenty of competent people out there for the company to hire. Given 2 equal candidates, why hire the one who uses drugs. Whether he can "handle" them or not doesn't matter. They have more of a potential of becoming a problem than anything else. Why risk it? Even if he could still function, why not hire someone else with the same skills but who does NOT use drugs (or at least, not that they're aware of)?

    This is absolutely true. Given two candidates that are identical, why take the one that could be arrested for drugs? Whether you think that drugs are good or bad is not relevant - they are still illegal in the United States. I'd rather not deal with that.

    As for drugs making you more "creative", I've seen tons of people who are just as creative and not on drugs.

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Sql Slave

    School graduation dates are given as a year and optionally a > month; you do not list the dates of attendance

    You do if you haven't graduated yet.

  • AT (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    Everyone knows that "Big Tobacco" pays the government to keep marijuana illegal

    Evidence for this? It doesn't even make sense since American tobacco companies are probably best-positioned of any companies in the world to make and sell joints to the mass-market. It would be a nice expansion opportunity for them, so why would they fight to keep it illegal?

  • Alex (unregistered) in reply to Doesn't matter

    Actually, some companies are starting to invade potential employee's privacy. Many companies do credit checks and full background checks on potential employees. but, as long as it is not illegal and you need a job what are you going to do, say no?

  • C (unregistered)

    There might be 3 WTFs in that one middle story:

    Going to a 4 year school, only having one class that covered resistors.

    Only having one class that covered resistors, and applying for a job where (I'm assuming) knowledge of resistors was important.

    Not discussing the fact that you are grossly unqualified for the job with the potential employer before traveling to see them for a face to face interview and wasting their time and money.

  • (cs) in reply to distineo
    distineo:
    Seems like the drug testing issue is generating the most comments. What a lot of people fail to realize is that companies drug test for a reason. Liability.

    Let's say you are a functional drug user. By which I mean that most people wouldn't be able to tell if you were using or not. If it comes to pass that while performing your job duties you make a mistake that caused harm to yourself or others, or damage to property, that makes the company extremely vulnerable to lawsuits. Possibly even to criminal liability depending on the extent of damage caused.

    IANAL, but bullshit. Yes, your employer is liable for your actions as an employee, including any harm you may cause. But whether or not you had any detectable drugs in your system one day in the past has no bearing on that liability.

  • (cs) in reply to Alan
    Alan:
    operagost:
    Quaint, I know; as once President Obama implements his universal health care, we'll have mandatory blood tests and invasive exams annually on pain of imprisonment.

    I live in a country with free universal healthcare, and I havent seen a doctor in 12 years.

    1. Unless you're broke, it isn't "free"
    2. In the USA, people have been conditioned to accept invasive tests for employment and insurance.
  • (cs) in reply to cparker
    cparker:
    Ozymandias:
    cparker:
    KR:
    Alan:
    I live in a country with free universal healthcare, and I havent seen a doctor in 12 years.

    Health care is free where you are? So tell me, do the doctors in your country enjoy being unpaid slaves?

    Who said the doctors were volunteers? Free universal healthcare is paid for with taxes, and the money is distributed where there is a need.

    Having trouble with the definition of 'free', are we?

    Is that an admission? I take it you live in a totalitarian society and are not a free citizen.

    A publicly funded health care system would be free for everyone at the point of use. Nobody's saying there's no money involved.

    Saying universal healthcare is "free" is like saying internet access is free. After all, you don't have to keep feeding dollar bills into the cable modem while you're using it.

  • Rboy (unregistered) in reply to Stang
    Stang:
    rboy:
    Everyone knows that "Big Tobacco" pays the government to keep marijuana illegal
    Do They?
    Of course they don't. It's the alcohol industry (Anheiser-Busch, I'm looking at you) that pays to keep marajuana illegal.

    I thought it was the travel agencies, so they can keep booking trips to places that were much more 'cool'.

    CAPTCHA = similis

  • JackBlack (unregistered) in reply to James
    James:
    Given that the drug test guy was probably interviewing in America, maybe they're trying to make sure that their employees aren't going to take tens of thousands of dollars of training and experience to prison with them. I mean, if there was a way of testing if somebody goes out and steals cars on the weekend, I'm sure they'd do that too.

    Bottom line: if the dude is breaking the law and not getting caught (yet), the potential employer has a business interest in that information. Whether the employer thinks the activity in question should be legal or not doesn't really factor into it.

    You're an idiot James.

    Health & Safety: Drug testing should only be performed for roles in which someone's impairment would significantly increase the risk of accident or injury to themselves or others.

    e.g. if you drive busses, forklifts, work with big body mangling machines in a factory, then yes, it's probably a good idea to be sober. On the balance of invasion of privacy versus public safety, drug testing tips the scale, but only barely.

    So retards, please tell me how code monkeys or sysadmins need drug testing. You have code reviews and testing right? Oh forgot .. you're a god and can code production on the fly. Let me bow to your greatness James.

    People, and Americans in particular, allow themselves to be subjected to all sorts of crap. Freedom my ass. Silly me I forgot that America throws people in jail for small possession (well only of you're black).

    With respect to businesses, they only need to know if you're qualified for the role they are hiring you for. Whatever you do in your own time is your own business. Protect their investment??. They train you so you can do a better job for them, and to retain you (it's a bonus). They don't own you. You're not a chattel. You do work. They pay you. Show up for work pissed or stoned then they have a right to fire your ass because you're in breach of contract.

  • (cs) in reply to WebDevGuy
    WebDevGuy:
    real_aardvark:
    WebDevGuy:
    I only program in Python when I'm high...which is one of the main reasons I love Python, actually: It's intuitive. Nothing worse than working on a PHP project after smoking: 50% or more of your bugs are for missing semicolons, missing $ before variables, etc. etc.
    Tabs???
    Auto-indentation! Vim, TextMate, Emacs, they all do it.
    Do they do auto-outdentation, too? With my coding style, I find that auto-indentation is wrong close to half the time.
  • Schnapple (unregistered) in reply to Northerner
    Northerner:
    Nicotene is a drug, should I be fired for smoking a cigar on my own time? Both are 'drugs of abuse' along with the usual suspects, and can have just as serious (if not more so) repercussions on one's livelihood.

    At least in Texas you sure can - my wife's first job out of college was at this place that did computer systems for car dealerships and they had a zero smoking policy. You couldn't smoke, at all. Not even on your own time. If your boss saw you in public smoking you were fired first thing the next day. All completely legal - there are no safeguards against smoking.

    The theory was that they could get cheaper health insurance rates by refusing to hire smokers. Also smokers need fewer work breaks than non-smokers. The company was located near a college so they always had fresh recruits as soon as they needed them every year. Of course they did employ some number of ninja smokers who could hide it well. They also hired almost no black people so my personal theory was that they liked how this was a nice legal way to discriminate.

  • (cs) in reply to SomeCoder
    SomeCoder:
    As for drugs making you more "creative", I've seen tons of people who are just as creative and not on drugs.
    I got these little things here I take Get me playin' licks I never thought I ever knew! - Super Sideman, Kenny Price
  • cian (unregistered) in reply to Contact Buzz
    I'm surprised no-one has mentioned all the smoke floating around the clubs this guy DJs. It's at least conceivable that he doesn't do drugs himself but that he was exposed to so much smoke at clubs that he thought he'd fail a drug test.

    The drugs, or more specifically, drug a DJ would be likely to be using isn't smoked...

  • Paul (unregistered)

    Good question asked by the interviewee in the first one. Great way to determine whether a potential employer is uncool (clearly, yes) and/or has no respect for privacy (clearly, yes). I must remember to ask the same question in my future interviews. I won't ask in the same way, but it's a sensible question to ask.

  • cian (unregistered)

    Actually, as goes the DJing thing, I think I've mentioned the fact that I do (which carries an automatic assumption of "ahh, pillhead" in Ireland, despite that not being the case) in every job interview I've ever done.

    And I've been offered every job I've ever interviewed for, all IT but in a range of employer sectors. Drug testing just isn't done here, and nobodies even seemed concerned about the possibility that I could be dropping more MDMA than most of Holland every weekend... wouldn't prevent me being able to do my job, whereas alcohol consumption would.

  • (cs) in reply to JackBlack
    JackBlack:
    You're an idiot James. *snip* So retards, please tell me how code monkeys or sysadmins need drug testing.
    Therac-25 Medical Accelerator
  • Paul (unregistered) in reply to Bob from Toronto

    Nonsense. I call bullsh*t. There is not one iota of evidence to support your assertion. You must first prove cause and effect, which is extremely difficult. In fact, no-one has proven it.

    People who perpetuate this kind of rubbish should get a clue.

  • Doesn't matter (unregistered) in reply to FredSaw
    FredSaw:
    JackBlack:
    You're an idiot James. *snip* So retards, please tell me how code monkeys or sysadmins need drug testing.
    Therac-25 Medical Accelerator

    No, that particular fiasco was caused by a rushed development schedule, poor communication, woefully inadequate testing, and when it was discovered internally, criminal corporate negligence as they attempted to cover it up.

    Then again, I might be mistaken, and it might have all been caused by a software developer they failed to drug test.

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