Are you capable of pink box testing? | Hacker News Reader

Are you capable of pink box testing?

neilbowers.wordpress.com

15 pointsalaskamiller24 comments

It's a good idea, seeding job reqs with nonsense requirements (I'd do something more believable, though). A much better idea: never using recruiters. You will get luckier on Craigslist.

I'm not sure I would apply for a job with nonsense requirements in it.

most body shops don't add value

Yet companies still insist on using them. I don't understand why. At one company, I was a contractor. I was leaving for another job, and they needed someone with my skillset. Well, I had a guy who was suitable working for me at the time, and I offered to rent out my employee at a below market rate. They refused. Well, I moved to my new gig and my side business slowed down, so when the recruiter who got me this contract gig called me asking for recommendations, I referred the guy who was working for me (I wasn't exactly paying him a fair wage, and even at the poor wages I was giving him I didn't have many hours of work for him) Anyhow, the company hired my guy through the headhunter (and liked him for more than a year) - but they paid twice as much to go through the body shop they liked rather than going through my corporation. It wasn't like the body shop was big... it was some guy running the operation out of his front room, just like my corp.

When I first read the headline I thought the article would talk about phreaking because they have a bunch "some color" boxes.

http://www.aboutphone.info/lib/phreak/boxes-2.html

I wonder if that's common of consulting agencies. That would explain the triumvirate of crappy consultants that we had at work. I guess a way to combat it would be to publicize consulting agencies that are guilty of that sort of thing.

Yes but my wife frowns upon it.

It was my major in college.

Tough to find a career in it?

The field is too competitive, and the perks are so great that they keep the wages down. At the end of the day it's all just going to be outsourced to India.

Did quite a bit of it when I was younger. It was good work if you could get it.

Can you not? Please?

I'd prefer YC's comments not go the way of Digg or Reddit.

Yeah, we wouldn't want a sense of humor creeping into this site. Might ruin it.

Note that 3 of your last 5 comments are you being the HN police. Maybe consider relaxing and enjoying life a little more, rather than attempting to impose your vision of what the site should be upon everyone else.

Congratulations... you've learned how to bias your samples! Out of my last 20 comments, 4 are me being "HN police". 20% vs your 60%.

And you're right, I don't come here for humor or jokes or any other bullshit. I come here because the name is "hacker news" and thus far, it has done a pretty good job of living up to both words in that name. The reason I come here is 80% for the comments, 20% for the actual links. I learn more from the comments than I do from most of the articles and I'd like to keep it that way. I go elsewhere for humor, and I don't want to spend my time sorting the two out here. Is that asking for too much?

I see now in the guidelines that my original comment is frowned upon. I only have a 56 karma currently so I apparently don't meet the threshold for downvoting/flagging (I'm more of a gatherer/reader than a karmawhore) so this is all I've got available as a tool to shape things. So, I retract my request and I'll go back to lurking and if/when the signal:noise ratio goes to shit I'll go looking for something else (tho, HN does seem to be the last resort for good S:N so my hopes aren't too high).

My point was that different people come here for different things, and it's kind of rude to try to force everyone to come here for the exact same stuff as you. A lot of people think that the occasional humor makes the whole world a little more palatable.

I did not mean to imply that you should never comment, just that you should lighten up a bit and let the voting system and PG's guiding hand take its course. I'd say overall it's doing a pretty great job. I didn't realize just how great until I spent a half hour on Reddit.

Speaking of the voting system, why is there no downvote on the comment that started this thread? I have down arrows for all the others, but not that one. I'm still a little hazy on how karma affects all this, so maybe it's something to do with that

Yeah. Sorry about that. I generally revise my comments if they're too confrontational, negative, or inane. That one was set up perfectly, though. I fully expected to come back to my computer to find my first net-negative comment.

FWIW, this was my second highest comment and second most replied-to comment since I joined. In both dimensions this comment lost to my first comment which 1) was a reply to PG, 2) invoked the "hi i just registered here" sympathy upmod and 3) invoked "boo reddit/digg" sentiment in this parenthetical comment:

(I'm a recent reddit lurker, and as reddit continues to become digg my clicks seem to be heading elsewhere)

So, I agree with you fundamentally, but it looks like that's not how things are going to play out, if my first lets-be-a-jackass comment scored so well.

Perhaps there's some middle ground?

Everyone has their limit, but I'm not offended by a little risque humour (obviously), and it doesn't seem inappropriate for the site so long as it's not explicit or vulgar. My primary beef with reddit is that as an "all things to all people" site the front page is filled O LOOK A LOL CAT ITS A CAT WITH FUNNY WORDS [pic], and the comment threads are filled with semi-predictable reply chain puns.

I'd love to read consensus (esp PG comments) for style guidelines for this site. I'm a geek and a trendy comp-sci field dabbler, but I'm not building a startup, despite my desire to be an entrepreneur, and I'm definitely not in Y Combinator, so I have a pretty good idea where my opinion lays in the grand scheme of things here.

All articles being about tech/hacker interest seems 100%+ sensible. If the style guidelines are "No empty humor comments, period. Startups are Serious Business." Then perhaps I haven't found the right community fit for myself (hey look a startup idea!).

Eh, don't sweat it, he just likes to play neighborhood watchman here apparently. Some people aren't content to just vote, they have to impose their will on others.

There's nothing wrong with mixing in a little humor. It's been awhile since I read PG's guidelines, but I don't remember a ban on it. I don't think your joke broke the bounds of civility. It's a little blue for sure, but not NSFW.

A joke here and there (even an off-color one) is FAR from turning this site into Reddit or Digg. I started surfing those for the first time a week or two ago just to see why everyone here complains about them, and wow is this site worlds apart (in a good way). I was actually shocked at how Reddit links are often so editorialized that I can't even guess what will be there when I click through.

HN and reddit have swapped roles on this particular story: http://www.reddit.com/comments/6w1v0/pink_box_testing_are_yo...

BTW: I recently wanted to make an inane joke on a HN article, so I found the article on reddit using the below (I have it as a bookmark):

    javascript:location.href='http://reddit.com/submit?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)+'&title='+encodeURIComponent(document.title)

and made my joke there.

body shops offer a degree of protection from contractors who later decide to sue for employee status, but I don't think that makes them worth it. I mean, your liability there is usually less than 50% of what you paid for the guy (if the government thinks you were paying an employee as a contractor, you have to pay the employer portion of SSI and unemployment insurance and other benifits, for the entire time the guy worked for you.) It's bad, but that's about what most body shops charge, and it's fairly rare for a contractor to come back and sue for employee status- but even if you had to pay those fees for every employee, I think you are still coming out ahead doing it yourself over paying the body shop.

I've not met one headhunter who was capable of distinguishing between someone who is technically good and someone who is not. Granted, it's a hard problem- but it also requires a whole lot of domain specific knowledge. Knowledge that headhunters usually don't have.

Someone should also write a post about the stupid but real requirements that get put into job postings

link is dead/site is down. just says "not site admin" or some such.

I should point out that not all contracting agencies are like that. Quite a few of them don't fabricate candidate's CV and some even have their own technical screening procedures.

I did pink box testing and, boy, it's exhausting.

http://www.pinkboxjapan.com/ [NSFW] (sorry)

NSFW - four little letters that make life a lot easier for everyone else.

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