Hacker News Reader

Comment by nicholasjarnold | Hacker News Reader

I've been involved in hiring decisions on teams I've been part of for a long time now. Blatant plagiarism, obvious embellishments and more subtle BS is literally part of the game unfortunately. This is particularly prevalent when dealing with (almost) any consultancy, large and small.

I will not specifically call out names, but the some of the largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter of practice after they overbook themselves for projects for which they do not have staff on the bench to fill.

It's sad, but honestly the prevalence of these practices (and perhaps growth of them?) only makes the genuine among us more valuable. Those who actually posses technical talent and experience will be needed more and more by companies who get burned by the frauds. Onward and upward I guess.

View on HN

> is literally part of the game unfortunately

I strongly disagree with this framing. There is no "game". There are just the actions of the individual players. Yes, in some sense, lying is part of the "game" in that some players will do it.

But extending that to saying "it's part of the game" implies that all players must use those moves, which is absolutely false. It also implies that you are morally excused from doing so because you didn't choose to lie, you were just obliged to by the rules of the "game".

A core concept behind something being a "game" is that it exists in a morally isolated sandbox. You can't be a good or bad person based on which legal moves you make in a game of chess. The whole point is to create an environment where you are able to play freely largely unencumbered by the social consequences of your moves.

Hiring is the exact opposite of a game. Every move has significant stakes, moral implications, and long term consequences on the entire field.

I have never lied on a resume and I would massively lose respect for anyone who did. They are doing something wrong and they should feel bad for it. The fact that other people do it doesn't excuse the act any more than the existence of litterers makes it OK to throw your trash out the window.

How about this framing: It's part of a game that I've seen being played throughout my career in tech (software development).

I am in no way advocating for that type of behavior. I'm merely pointing out that it exists, it seems to be a game to some and that those who choose a more genuine path can benefit from the follies of those others, however unfortunate that might be.

It seems we are in agreement, though perhaps you interpreted my words differently than I had hoped people would.

> A core concept behind something being a "game" is that it exists in a morally isolated sandbox

This is interesting; if true, what of game theory's seat at the core of many notions of strategy as deployed for explicitly moral purposes?

Also, anecdotally, I've seen pretty good results putting some campy, tongue in cheek acknowledgement that I'm not playing games in the resume/cover letter space where these alleged "rules of the game" might otherwise dictate meaningless boilerplate should go

Some employers seem to appreciate honesty and a reluctance to bullshit

"Game" gets used to analyze human behavior a couple of unrelated ways.

Game theory as a branch of mathematics is about analyzing adversarial and potentially limited knowledge systems. It is unrelated to whether some theoretical game is embedded in any particular social or moral system. You can look at dating, the voting patterns of the United Nations, and poker all under the lens of game theory even though the former two wouldn't generally be considered "games".

Unrelated to that, over in the world of "ludology" or game studies and game development, people discuss what it means for a certain system to "be a game" or "not be a game". Likewise, they discuss what makes an activity "play" versus "not play". Why do we feel some moves are "play-like" and others aren't. What defines our notion of fair play? What is sportsmanship? What is cheating? Where is the line between the game and the metagame?

I'm using "game" in the second sense here, which I think applies. When people say something "is a game", often what they are implying is that "all legal moves are fair play". But I think that value statement is only morally justifiable in an environment that is actually game-like. And for a social system to be game-like in that way means that everyone participating has agreed to the rules of the game and accepts that all moves are fair play.

> When people say something "is a game", often what they are implying is that "all legal moves are fair play"

Good point, I guess the concept is constantly negotiated by this sort of conversation too

GP is making up definitions for concepts in ways that make no sense. denying the existence of games because you find them morally reprehensible doesn't change the fact of their existence.

of course games are executed with moral repercussions. if anything, that's really the point of games. they are simplified, yes, but not amoral.

if anything, most "amoral" or "apolitical" games are widely implemented hegemonic tools.

Yeah, games seem to circumscribe morality in a particular context, maybe in ways that allow us to explore certain moral questions, or (to your latter point) ignore others

it is a game in a game-theoretical sense.

if those other individual actors lie and massage their resume, does it increase my chance of success by being honest, or by lying a little better?

all players do use that move. whether you realize it or not.

your moral framework (one i completely agree with, fwiw) is only informing your own decisions, not other adversaries.

Feel free not to engage in this practice if it offends your moral sensibilities, but you will be at a disadvantage if you do. Experienced resume readers are aware of the amount of self-aggrandizement that goes on, and your modest and truthful claims would be subject to the same amount of skepticism as everyone else's.

> Feel free not to engage in this practice if it offends your moral sensibilities, but you will be at a disadvantage if you do.

I think one could argue that all moral sensibilities exist to place one at an individual short term disadvantage in return for potentially better longer term or community level outcomes. We don't need moral codes to get us to be immediately self-serving—our natural self interest takes care of that. It's like the old joke that if there was a shortcut that always worked, it wouldn't be called a "shortcut", it would just be The Way.

>It's sad, but honestly the prevalence of these practices (and perhaps growth of them?) only makes the genuine among us more valuable.

I wish this were the case, but I don't think it's true. On the one hand, real, proven experts do get called in to fix these phonies' messes. On the other, often these people succeed often enough that it devalues our labor as a whole. Finally, if employers cannot determine real experts from fake, then it means they won't pay real experts their full worth (eg 'full worth' of 100k, 5% chance it's a fake = pay of 95k).

These costs of lower trust show up elsewhere, but they are hard to quantify and make everyone's life worse.

You bring up a good point...the overall pull downward that the phonies bring to our field. Businesses trust (software) engineering teams less. Perhaps overall industry pay rates are brought down, too, though I don't have personal experience or knowledge about that.

However, that point you make about the 'proven experts' getting called in is where my original (and perhaps overly broad) comment came from. If you can align yourself with the industry as one of those fixers, and then actually deliver on that promise, there is immense value to capture. If you can carefully build a small team of people that can do this regularly, there is even more value to capture and share with people who actually deserve it.

If they succeed then aren't they an acceptable fit for the role? If it devalues the role then that means the job isn't as demanding as the title makes it seem.

Yeah that would be great is success meant "sound engineering that meets the requirements and is delivered on time without generating friction with stakeholders or adding unneeded complexity". Unfortunately on some companies that don't actually ship much of what gets engineered success means "we got to the next financing round" or "our skills got noted by upper management so we are still allowed to hang around". Bad engineers survive in the last two environments and at the same time stockpile credentials about how many years they were senior at Google or Lyft or whatever, but they really can't actually engineer anything most of the time.

The definition of 'success' varies. If you mean 'completed the project on time with decent quality' -> then no, that doesn't happen as often as with tried and true experts.

When I said 'success' I meant: 'achieved a basic level of competency after bungling one or several projects, often with unknown or unquantifiable bugs and then move onto the next company / role with few consequences'.

More succinctly: caused harm to others/ project and still got a paycheck.

some of the largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter of practice after they overbook themselves for projects for which they do not have staff on the bench to fill

Been my experience your regular software org does something very similar. Who among us hasn’t had to drop an entire epic’s worth of work to go spin up some MVP (that eventually becomes a bug-riddled production shitstorm) of a component because a claim got made on a sales call that “we’ve been working on it for weeks” and a promise got made that “we could have a demo ready to go just for you by the end of the quarter”? Because you’re “the senior”.

Not saying it’s the norm.

Just that it happens probably more than it should.

My response is. You lied not me, and I know how many recruiters emailed me this week and you don't. Please don't play those games, I am here because I want to be. Lies make me not want to be.

Yeah I'm replaceable, but the pain of that replacement is usually more than the pain of making a sales guy eat some crow.

I’ll call Infosys out. I’ve worked with people from there who literally did not know how to program. They were moved off quickly. There are some solid people there but hard to find in my experience.

Akvelon consultants have been consistently better than some FTEs in my experience.

The dirty secret in the industry is that there is a gigantic shortage of devs that can do something or anything. And the clients just don't want to pay the rates that help make that shortage go away. They all want it on the cheap and are spoiled by fancy "SAAS" salesmen that "magically" solve all their problems for "$30-$500" a month, because their SAAS is always the answer.

Literally sitting with a client right now that has gone through at least 5 different CRM systems, each time paying a 3rd party boutique marketing agency to "set it up and migrate it" for them (along with some new ad-campaign software). 3 different attempts at a data warehouse (because they have a gazillion disparate white label and SAAS products in their company with no access to any of the data) and someone told them they need a "Data Warehouse Cluster", when they barely have 20k users. I could rant for hours because the industry is broken.

Oh, and they literally blank stare you in the face as you explain things genuinely with detail and care, and then turn around saying they'll just "consult with their marketing agency" to get their advice. But hey, let's all blame "consulting" companies because they try make something useful using the bottom of the barrel devs. *Not defending Infosys or Accenture and their like, though, fully agreed there.

I don't understand how Infosys still exists. Perhaps this is just my bubble showing, but it seems pretty well-known that they're a scam factory.

It is not just them and it is a game everyone plays, including their clients. I had several engagements with them on various projects, we had to use them because the internal headcount was limited, while for external suppliers there was no limit, so we had up to 5 external people for every of ours. Most of these kind of companies behave the same, we had small specialized suppliers that provided good quality and value for the work, but the companies on a comment below are all in the same bucket of garbage.

Because it's not only Infosys, there is a whole industry of selling underskilled labour for the cheap.

I haven't worked with Infosys, but I have with other four companies providing similar services, and they all do the same.

It's extremely frustrating, because the budget folks only look at the bottom line and would sign contracts with any of these firms, leaving hiring managers with the responsibility of taking subpar consultants in.

Infosys, Cognizant, Gap Gemini, TCS, ATT Global Services, Accenture, HCL, Kyndryl, and on, and on, and on goes the list.

> I will not specifically call out names, but the some of the largest and most well known consultancies do this as a matter of practice after they overbook themselves for projects for which they do not have staff on the bench to fill.

Infosys, TCS & Accenture comes up immediately to my mind.

There are hardworking people in these companies no doubt. Many times it gives an opportunity to the less fortunate as well. In general, however their workforces are poorly trained & business practices borderline unethical (The good ones quickly leave). These companies pay peanuts to their employees, and most of the latter are sticking for the promise of an onsite deployment. There are horrid tales of client having to lock horns with the TCS/Infosys service manager to get the contracted job done.

Case in point: managers at a Japanese giant are shaking their head in frustration since they are locked-in to a Infosys contract. No way they can shake them off due to poor project documentation & shaky installations which require heavy service & maintenance. Choosing an alternative would bring in a tidal wave of expenses, so keeping the status quo. It is deeply unfortunate that they bill their clients higher for the same shoddy work culture as the number of years roll-by. I assume this will continue as long as the cost of renegotiated contracts are lesser than switching to a different firm, or the tech stack is rewritten for a newer project.

It amazes me that simple honesty and integrity wind up being such a huge value add.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com