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Admin
Article: "wrinkle number two: they weren't all here for the same job. Several were business majors, others had only a high school diploma, while others were mathematicians and liberal arts majors."
It does not follow from their diverse backgrounds that they were there for different jobs. Case in point: EDS, as it was in the late 80s, where they hired new grads with whatever major to do development, and sent everyone on a six-month training course in Dallas (IIRC) before they could do actual work. (I eventually turned them down having found something more local.)
Admin
Ah, a repost: http://thedailywtf.com/articles/Its-Just-a-Truck
Admin
Reminds me of when I was fresh out of college and had an "interview" with some department of the Navy. SPAWAR, I think. It was the same kind of thing: they brought in a bunch of people, put us up in a hotel overnight, gave us a tour of the facility in the morning and then sent everyone back to the hotel for a rotating panel of interviews in the afternoon. Except the schedule ran late and the interviews ran even longer, so after all that I think I wound up interviewing with one person, and it was for some position that didn't even remotely match my qualifications.
But, hey, I got a free weekend in Charleston courtesy of Uncle Sam, so it wasn't a total loss.
Admin
You mean a repost of a repost?
Admin
Reminds me a bit of one interview I had in college. There was an on-campus recruiting event where I gave my resume to a lot of companies. One, a major New York auditing firm, called me back for an interview. Upon arrival, I found that it was a mass-interview with a dozen other people. They talked a lot about how they want consultants who will be flown out to customer sites, to be available 24/7 for a 6 month assignment, then come home for a month vacation, and then start the process over with a new customer. For a starting salary of about $80K (this was when normal jobs for new grads were paying $35K).
The next day, when I got back from class, there was a message on my answering machine saying that they were offering the job to me and four other people, and the first one to call back gets it.
I didn't even consider returning that call.
Admin
Fresh out of Uni I had an Interview via Skype. Which was nice, because it saved me the trouble to travel all the way to their site. The only question I was asked was "How do SQL statements normally start" which I answered with "Uhhh, SELECT?" The rest of the interview was just them going on and on about how great their company was and what they are doing.
During the interview I said I cannot move to a different city to take the job. Which seemed to be okay with them, since they also had a branch office in my hometown.
I got a job offer, but only for their "head quarter" city, which is about 280 miles away from where I live.
Admin
TRWTF is that TDWTF is running out of material?
Admin
TRWTF is interviews.
Just out of college was when I seemed to get this type of interview. Day-long interviews, group interviews, trivia contests, bait-and-switch "wrong" position, etc. Now they're much more boring because all I get to do is sit in a chair and listen to lies for an hour. We want a self-starter (no you don't), proficiency in C# (no you don't), problem-solving skills (no you don't), several years of experience (no you don't), etc.
Admin
Was that your riposte to a repost?
Admin
Sounds like one of the interviews I had at an industrial place. I had a job I was happy with, but the hour-long drive and increase in rent not so much. I wasted a whole day on a "tour" of the place after an hour-long safety training and several non-disclosure agreements. Half of the tour was huge sheets hung over areas of the warehouse-turned-production floor and proclamations of custom machines and methods that would "revolutionize" the industry in other areas of vast empty spaces. It was mainly, "This is going to go here. That machine will go there. Soon, we'll have several million units going out every week. So, we'll need someone to service all of the controllers." At the end of the tour, they said in a "by the way" manner that there was a misprint in the want ad and that instead of starting in 6 weeks, it would be 6 months. I politely turned it down as I needed something more immediate.
A few years later, the company I worked for was servicing one of that company's machines. One of the workers recognized me from the interview and showed the "special" equipment to me. It was an off-the-shelf machine with a very small modification--they changed one of the screws on the mounting block.
Admin
TRWTF is the candidate's gender. Normally "Dima" is shorthand for "Dmitri" and that should be a "he".
But along the article I find lots of confusion between "he" and "she" when talking about Dima
Admin
Check out http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=dima, Dima in the U.S. is a girl's name. But it is not unusual for names in the US to have changed gender as they crossed the Atlantic. Leslie was a male's name in England but is female here. Same with Shirley.
Now to prove, not my gender but my humanity to out robot overlords so this can post.
Admin
No, Lesley is female, Leslie male. But some unfortunate kids these days are named by parents who don't know that. It's a bit like being a boy called Denise and pronouncing it Dennis.
Admin
I've shirley never hear Shirley as a boy's name, UK or elsewhere. It was that damn Bronte though that popularized it as a girl's name
Admin
Shirley I get to say "LUDDITE Shirleys don't APP APPS!"
Admin
Yep, they had a program that would train any college graduate in assembler, COBOL and JCL. They had to sign a contract for 2 or 3 years (can't recall the exact amount) so they couldn't leave the company (with all that 'valuable' knowledge) until the contract period was over.
Admin
I noticed it too -- I'd just happened to read that article randomly yesterday, so I went straight from that version to this one. Ellis writes it better though.
Addendum 2017-03-21 16:18: Jane, not Ellis.
Admin
See Shirley Crabbtree
Admin
That must mean that there are no more bad coders/employers/developers out there any more?
Admin
A boy namen Sue?
Admin
Yup, that's the one. I turned them down for a job (relatively) locally where I was the employee for a while. And I got to visit exciting places like Mendota, CA, home of a small (20MW or so) power plant burning "biomass" - wood chips, rice husks, that kind of thing. (OK, yeah, there were other things in Mendota, but not much.)
Admin
Same with my real first name. It's male where I live, but in the US it would be considered a female first name.
Admin
Likely was waiting for her to chime in with some real discussion about power supplies, they probably hired someone who engaged intelligently without being prompted.
Admin
Not sure 'bout that. When we interview candidates, we typically ask questions. Droning ones ears off makes the company come across as one huge bucket of jerks.
Admin
Really depends what sort of employee you're looking for. They are designing complex defence systems, they probably want Genius's, who's talent is immediately apparent.
Admin
And don't call me Shirley.
Admin
And both Dima and North Bus are very lucky, too, as this whole thing could just be a WTF that is a lot simpler and yet far more sinister: an Advance Fee scam.
Use a warehouse and empty locked floors and idle talk to weed out those people who are really interested/desperate for a job (flying them out using cheap airfare maintains an image of legitimacy while costing little), then call those people back, say they got the job, but "we need to process your Security Clearance and Passports in a hurry, so we need you to send us $400 via Western Union before you can start working here." Sounds familiar, doesn't it? All the while waiting for you to bite the hook, they're already cheaply flying another 20 'candidates' out and starting the whole scam all over again.
If they fly out 20 candidates using $75 discount airfare apiece and 10 people get baited and pay $400 for their 'Security Clearance', they're still making a $2500 profit per group of 20 off of the interest/desperation of fresh job seekers in this way.
Admin
My weirdest interview was when a recruiter booked me 3 interviews in a single day. They we all within a few miles of each other so it wasn't too bad - spend a couple of hours on each and it was manageable.
I pitched up at my 9:00 am slot nice and early and made myself comfortable. I was swiftly ushered into a broom cupboard with a desk and told to sit a test which (and I quote) shouldn't take longer than 8 to 10 hours.
I promptly refused to sit the test and went home, almost getting into a fight with the hiring manager upset at my decision (literally grabbing my shirt and telling me I was going to sit the test or else). I dug my heels in, threatened to call the police and made sure the recruiter and the company director knew my feelings on this...
6 months later the company was bankrupt. Can't think why...
Admin
It's not only Lesley/Leslie, and not only in the US. In one of the Saint novels from the 1930's, author Leslie Charteris included a young woman named Tristan (that's the smelly sword-swinging title role in Tristan and Isolde), just so he could insert a rant about girls stealing boys' names, including his own. I guess it sounds like a girls' name somehow...
There is a historical precedent for "A Boy Named Sue": Anne, Duc de Montmorency, who was named after his mother. He became officially the toughest knight in France in an era when France was the preeminent military power in western Europe. (I know the English will dispute that, citing the battles of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, but face it: the French lost those battles only because they were so overconfident that once a generation the English could lay a trap and the French would see the trap, discuss it, and deliberately charge right into it instead of waiting for the English to run out of water or taking a day to go around and hit them from the rear. The French attitude was clearly, "The English are outnumbered, on foot, and armed with peasant weapons, so we don't need strategy and tactics.")