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Comment by borplk | Hacker News Reader

The ethics of this is very clear cut, it's unethical.

It's unethical for a company to interview candidates if they don't have the intention of offering anyone a job.

And likewise it's unethical for a candidate to attend an interview if they have no intention of considering a potential offer.

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  And likewise it's unethical for a candidate to attend an interview if they have no intention of considering a potential offer.

This resonates with me and I'm also conflicted about it the same time.

I'm currently happy at my job, and don't think I'd like to consider another job any time soon. However, historically, in previous jobs, I usually don't notice that I want to move on, until it's too late, and I'm too burnt out to do well in interviews. It's been recommended to me, by multiple people to interview frequently, even if not interested in changing jobs, to get some practice in. But doing that feels unethical. I frequently consider it, but have never done it because it feels dishonest and unfair.

But then by the time I want to change jobs I'll be burnt out, and and out of practice interviewing, creating a very depressive loop of failing at job interviews, depressing me further.

I don't think it's unethical to interview for jobs. You don't have to lie to progress through interview rounds; just say you're keen to hear more about the role and what the possibilities are.

(I also struggle with staying too long in jobs.)

I don't see this as unethical because there is still the possibility that they will give you an offer that you would consider. It's just that they'd probably have to offer quite a bit in terms of compensation and opportunity to actually make you budge if you're happy with your current job.

Although, I have never done it either. I've always been too busy at work, and I view the dishonest aspect as the potential lie I have to make up to take off a day from my current job to go interview.

Why do you need to give a reason? Can't you just say that you want to have a day off?

danluu talked tangentially about this in a recent twitt. He said that people are interviewing without intention to accept the offer, but roughly half of them end up switching jobs.

It seems that usually companies pay their long term employees below the market, and they only notice when/if they go job hunting.

I used to do this as well and I still advise others to do this. It's worth reframing it. From: I love my current work and there's no way I would leave... To: What would be so awesome I would have to leave?

With this reframe I was always very up front to the hiring company. "I'm happy where I am but I'm open to interviewing and hearing what you have to offer." It puts you in a pretty powerful negotiating position (assuming you pass the interviews). Then if you like the company remind them that you are happy at your current job and ask for an amount (or hours, PTO, etc) that you would have no hesitation leaving your current job for. No ethical dilemma (in my opinion) and I've definitely accepted some of those offers.

Also it's fun to interview with no pressure to actually land a job. Not a totally fair comparison but my interview success rate at these is way higher than when I was actually looking for a job.

One funny downside is that if you do enough startups you end up with a few that do really well later on and then you're kicking yourself for not joining. I have to remind myself of all the others that I interviewed at that didn't make it.

What you're describing is ethical and different. You may be unlikely to accept the offer but you will still consider it.

Also, it sounds like the recruitment consultants might be in on it? If so, it’s also unethical for them to take commission on what they know is a fake candidate.

Not just unethical, isn’t that just plain old fraud at this point?

If a company agrees to pay a consultant just for fielding candidates for interview that's their problem.

The standard practice is for recruiters to be paid only in case of successful placement (and often only in case of successful probation period).

Yeah that was kinda confusing, did that use to be standard practice?

It's not their problem that they were defrauded. But yes it would be stupid.

They could be paying a fee for candidates that get an offer.

Of course that incentivizes recruiters to get a single candidate multiple offers. On the face of it this is good for the candidate, but it makes me wonder about some of my previous experiences.

They get comission when the job is filled by a candidate they supplied, not just for sending someone to an interview.

The article says otherwise, and that they gave a cut of their commission to the company supplying the fake candidate.

It may have been the case for some segment of the market one time, it is not the case now and I have never know it to be. So I'm not saying they were lying to him but given their ethics this is entirely possible.

> And likewise it's unethical for a candidate to attend an interview if they have no intention of considering a potential offer.

If FAANG recruiters keep contacting me without my applying to them, I think it's fair game to expect that you'll get a number of people who interview "for fun".

If you're going to use sales tactics to get future hires, you have to accept a certain level of waste.

Even if you interview "for fun", there's still a chance that you'll be so enticed by what they offer that you'd accept. There's nothing unethical about interviewing for a company that you don't think you'd want to work for -- it's their job to make the case that you should work there.

But this isn't the case if you're paid by another company to go to the interview and you are forbidden from accepting an offer.

I agree.

But I’d point out that tech companies farm interviewees for ideas on how to approach problems all the time and don’t hire the vast majority of qualified candidates.

It’s unpaid labor.

It’s a bit of karmic justice to hear of people turning the table and using this as a way to inject ideas into a target company.

The second trade show I went to (as an exhibitor), someone warned me that a lot of wannabe investors walk the floor trying to get a gestalt of the tech industry. Those people are not going to buy our product so don't let them wind you up on a topic.

Very much explained some experiences I'd had at the previous trade show.

I interview all the time for jobs I have no interest in. But I’m wrong about a lot and willing to hear someone else’s pitch.

It’s the interviewers job to convince me I should work there.

Plus I get interviewing practice and maybe get to meet interesting people.

Yet you could get convinced, which in my eyes makes what you do honest.

You and a few others have said the same, but I don’t see the honesty angle. Window-shopping is not the same as entering a grocery store to buy milk. The intent is different in both cases regardless of the outcome.

I condone the behaviour nor think it’s unethical. Talent should be able to shop the market, just as companies shop the market for talent.

Edit: Whoops! Grammar

Yes - there are plenty of reasons to interview for a job you may not take. It’s crucial to have multiple offers when negotiating, practice interviewing, understanding the range of cultures, etc.

I think it’s quite reasonable to interview somewhere if there’s a 10% chance or greater that you’d work there, which is hard to know before they’ve convinced you throughout the process.

There's a big difference between interviewing for a job you're not interested in, but with an open mind, versus interviewing for a job where under no circumstances will you accept the role.

I mean, he could always quit Fronk and take the job at the marketing target.

I don't think the difference is as big as you seem to think. Everyone has a price. :)

I struggle with this distinction. Almost any role I'd be willing to take for enough money. If you're upfront about those expectations I believe it's fine to take _any_ interview.

Something not mentioned in the article is how willing 'Fronk' was to match and exceed every interviewer's offer. Get offers from FAANG enough times and Fronk would be paying quite nicely to stay competitive. It's not only unethical but stupid to commit to turning down a better offer than the one you currently have.

Honestly, I really don't know if I want to work for a company after meeting a few people there.

I guess I should say that I prefer to work for small < 20 person companies. Usually in the interview process I meet enough to get a good idea.

It is also unethical to abide by a NDA if the company is doing something unethical. It might or might not also be legal to talk though, ask a lawyer. Of course NDAs might not even be legal in the first place. If the company is doing something illegal, then the NDA doesn't have any meaning for sure.

There's no indication that company was doing anything illegal though.

ethics and legality are different things of course. You need to figure out how to handle things when they are opposed. There are no easy answers.

There is an easy answer. If you feel that there are circumstances under which you cannot abide by the terms of the NDA, then don't sign the NDA.

The problem is most NDAs are for things I can abide by, and I won't know until after signing that this is an exception.

In fact in this case I wouldn't have expected the things the NDA is stopping me from talking about were even things.

How would that work? Normally you don't get to hear much until after you sign the NDA.

Perhaps not illegal, but by definition, unethical, otherwise the NDA on the actual intended role would not be needed.

You've confused ethics and morals. The ethical action (which is about professional standards rather than your conscience) is usually to follow the legal agreement you've signed (barring something that supersedes the NDA like being legally required to report something to regulators).

So no, it isn't unethical for the author to abide by his NDA, arguably the exact opposite is true, though exposing these shenanigans at a personal risk could be argued to be the better moral decision.

It is you who is confused - ethics and morals are basically the same thing, and both are about processes to figure what is ethical and what isn't according to some set of ideas; neither is about prescribing anything, and there certainly isn't anything like The Set of Ethical Things and The Set of Unethical Things. "X is ethical" is always a short-hand for "within the framework I and/or my surroundings or audience subscribes to X can be argued to be ethical".

"Is this a moral situation or an ethical situation?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBgM_Kw6PSM&t=93s

Has he confused them? The only code of professional ethics in this industry I've ever been asked to consider is the ACM one. https://www.acm.org/code-of-ethics

By my reading of it, I'd feel obligated to publicly address this, and I don't consider it a breach of any sort of ethics I'd believe in, besides.

From the code you linked:

> Computing professionals should protect confidentiality except in cases where it is evidence of the violation of law, of organizational regulations, or of the Code. In these cases, the nature or contents of that information should not be disclosed except to appropriate authorities.

This code of ethics, like all others, has limitations. Here, it has failed to consider all cases, namely the case where the entity whose confidentiality is being protected doesn't exist anymore. That doesn't necessarily mean your quote isn't relevant, just that it shouldn't be given the final say until we've balanced it out with the rest of the document and looked at the tradeoffs involved.

Not breaking the NDA is an issue w/r/t:

  - 1.2 "Well-intended actions, including those that accomplish assigned duties, may lead to harm. When that harm is unintended, those responsible are obliged to undo or mitigate the harm as much as possible."

  - 2.2 Maintain high standards of professional competence, conduct, and ethical practice.

  - 2.7 "As appropriate to the context and one's abilities, computing professionals should share technical knowledge with the public"

  - 2.7 again "a computing professional should respectfully address inaccurate or misleading information related to computing."

Lastly, since the company's actions were clearly in violation of the Code and potentially causing harm, I could simply argue that the public is the ultimate appropriate authority (since none seem to be more appropriate in this case) and that not breaking the NDA would have been unethical by the very passage you chose to quote.

>You've confused ethics and morals

Ethics and moral philosophy are synonymous. I don't think they're confused, but you can consult a dictionary if you like.

>The ethical action (which is about professional standards rather than your conscience)

No, as somebody who has studied moral philosophy academically, this is your own unique definition and not normal. Any amount of research from a credible source like plato.standord.edu or even wikipedia will support this.

The dictionary defines ethics as the field of knowledge dealing with moral principles, sure, and that's not at all what I'm talking about here. Perhaps I erred in using the word too generally and should have been specific in talking about ethics in the professional sense.

The ethical codes that are associated with a profession are different from moral principles that may usually guide us. The first example they gave when I studied this in engineering was that of a defense attorney: trying to help a guilty person get away with a serious crime violates most people's moral standards, but the code of ethics for attorneys demands that they defend guilty people anyway, because our law system is set up with that expectation.

To my original point, someone may claim a moral imperative to tell the world about the company in this article, but the fact of the matter is just about every professional ethics committee or handbook would tell you to uphold your NDA in the situation here. Wasting people's time under false pretenses may be bad, and it isn't ethical to do it yourself, but it isn't so bad that you can just drop your own obligations and blog about it.

And yes I admit some handwaving here since programming doesn't have widely adopted ethical codes yet, but I can guarantee that when they do exist, they won't tell you to violate a contract for something that won't injure anyone and doesn't break any laws.

I think the defense attorney example seems to be a bit of an exception. Even in that scenario, the law also requires a prosecutor. The partiality of each opposing side is required for the system itself to be impartial, and if the defense attorney has a sense of ethics, they will only participate if they know that someone else is arguing the prosecution's side as well (or if they're about to run out of food and have no other alternatives, but that's a different story).

Re moral imperatives and tradeoffs: even these guys had a code of ethics https://www.bullmarketgifts.com/Framed-Enron-Code-of-Ethics-... The "ethical thing to do" does not always come from a book or a committee, instead it's dictated by the moral principle most specific to the situation at hand and taking into consideration the widest breadth of weighted personal interests and needs. In any case, I'm not sure I agree with this statement "just about every professional ethics committee or handbook would tell you to uphold your NDA". Nor do I believe that I can speak for just about every committee without consulting them beforehand, so I can't know what they would come up with in this situation.

In the end, I just fail to see why ethics in the professional world should receive special treatment. Different domain, same principles and rules.

To the extent there is a difference, I'd say that "ethics" is what you say you would do, and "morals" is what you actually end up doing when placed in a specific situation.

But, it's been well over two decades I was pursuing a degree in philosophy.

That highly depends. You need to sign an NDA to do any classified work, and if you find illegal activity, you still can't just disclose classified information to uncleared individuals. If you want to be a whistleblower, you're supposed to either go the agency's ethics office, the IG, or possibly straight to whatever Senate subcommittee has oversight and clearance, but not just release to Wikileaks or Glenn Greenwald unless you want to spend the rest of your life in prison or permanent exile.

I don’t know why the ethics for this is clear cut or what priors that statement is built on. Technical interviews are a relatively new social development. People are saying x or y are unethical, but it would be nice to see some actual justification one way or the other.

It's deceptive and exploits the interviewers' time in bad faith. That is a clear justification IMO.

Similar but less clear cut whether it's unethical is when people go on 'practice' interviews where they don't have a serious interest in the position.

Because you're wasting the company's time and money, making them spend resources on interviewing someone with no intention of actually joining the company. All in order to underhandedly advertise to them without their knowledge or consent.

    Is this... what's the word... ethical?
    
    "Our investors think so!

Well, I mean, if the investors think so, it must be.

Not unethical if you make your intentions clear from the get go and recruiters/hiring managers are still not willing to take no for an answer. Every single day I'll reply to a cold call with "not interested" and the recruiter will still press on.

So because the recruiters keep wasting minutes of your time, you're going to waste hours of it in an interview? That seems like exactly the wrong answer.

It also just seems grueling. Some interviews are stressful for me, even if I'm a little skeptical going in.

It's not just the interview: It's picking the right clothes, going somewhere I've never been, getting there on time, and the general disruption to my day. I once went to an interview where it took me 90 minutes to find parking. Another time I got super-confused coming in the door because there was no receptionist and no one told me where to go in the building.

I would never take such a job, but it is probably a lot less stressful if you don't really care at all how well you do.

Oddly, you would probably also do much better, since wanting to do well at an interview is bad for one's interview performance. Desperation is a turn-off. You might end up with a lot of job offers. Until you decide to leave this company, of course, in which case you might suddenly lose your appeal...

I agree that it's blatantly unethical, but there's also a degree of "evil genius" or supervillain here.

Yup

It is basically spamming, not in email, SMS, or robo-calls, but in job interviews.

It seems there are no bounds to the areas that marketers will go to insert their message into your life, welcome or not.

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