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Comment by VoodooJuJu | Hacker News Reader

I have a conspiracy theory that collusion is exactly what's going on here, and not just with the "back to the office" push, but also with how kafkaesque the hiring process has gotten.

With remote work, an employee can work multiple jobs simultaneously, and they're unbeholden to any one employer, what with how easy it is to apply and switch to a new one. So how do companies combat this? They introduce friction at the very start of the pipeline - hiring. Multiple rounds of oral exams, take-home exams, leetcode questions that can only be answered with weeks or months of deliberate studying (something an already-employed person has little time for) - flaming hoops galore. They'll still compete with one another, sure, but they've found it's in their best interests if they all agree to hire in this kind of fraudulent manner.

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Or, it could jsut be that middle managers are extroverted and extremely desperate for social engagement, like in meetings because they have no life outside of work. Harsh, I know. but, several friends i have that are managers admitted to me that they felt the covid lock downs were hard on them because they couldn't see or interact with anyone in person.

Is this true? That's insane! And who benefits from all this?

Agree, plenty of people across different companies told me that. It's not even a secret, they admit it in meetings.

Oh and the amount of meetings skyrocketed.

Dumped my last client because it turned into basically 8hrs of meetings

It is plausible, but at least the medium and small fish in the pond seem to be doing it out of typical human stupidity rather than a conscious effort. Or worse, they try to imitate the big fish.

I’m all for hiring employees without interviews. Most of them will quit their job, work for me one day, then stress out because they didn’t match.

So, out of respect, I do perform tests.

But some employees who seem perfectly good during tests come into the company with plenty of grammar mistakes, then I notice that they only master the surface of everything and they get fired.

I should charge employees for passing my exams, since it lowers the risk of misadventures. I’m so tired of this “Employers are evil” trope often suffixed with “because going to a coding interview is like working for free.”

I should do lengthy tests just to filter out stingy employees. (and I talk as someone who gave a 78% raise to one employee who’s been here 10 months, and 30% to the other).

Doing deliberately lengthy tests doesn't filter out stingy employees, it filters out employees with self-respect.

I fear that's exactly what an employer wants. They get more hours for less money out of an employee like that.

They also get substandard solutions. IME, confident people are just better.

A subjugated worker doesn't make a very good problem solver. They're really good at following procedure, though.

Wow feels like we just witnessed a microcosm of the wider market forces.

Or you could very well hire them for a few days (on holidays at their ob or on unpaid leave for contractors), see how it goes and take it from there.

I don't think employers are evil, they don't get value out of the interview process. I would say both employer and prospect employee gets a similar value out of it (the chance of hiring / being hired).

I think employers (or better, their middle managers in charge or recruitment) are mostly stupid and inefficient.

Working together for a bit is the only way of actually checking if someone will be fine doing the job or not.

Demonstrating some random knowledge is not a good predictor of success. I worked with people who passed leetcoding and were trash and people who didn't who were amazing.

I found out about their qualities only after a few weeks of work (not even full time, even just on and off).

I'm assuming you're pretending to be some caricature for comedic purposes, but it would be a lot more clear if you clarified that somehow.

As someone who does hiring, I can say that (at least my organization) has not conspired with any other company. I suspect what you're seeing is the result of what I'm seeing: it is extremely challenging to assess a candidate remotely.

I'm not saying all of the things you mentioned are a good solution to that problem, but I do believe they are how some organizations are (poorly) attempting to solve it.

We have now hired 3 (that we know of) people who turned out to be different from the person we interviewed. I suspect one other, and one of my colleagues suspects a fifth. The is a problem for several reasons.

We have talked about many of the ideas that you mentioned, and tried some, but ultimately decided that they are too burdensome. So, now we only hire remote people in cities where a long term employee already works and they can attend the interview in person to verify the person being interviewed in not cheating or getting assistance in any way. Our solution isn't perfect, but it's what we're doing until we can find a better solution.

There's a whole subreddit for people working multiple jobs remotely: https://www.reddit.com/r/overemployed/

I tried to check the overlap with /r/churning but it looks like overemployed isn't in the database.

https://subredditstats.com/subreddit-user-overlaps/overemplo...

edit: the concept has made appearances on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29666867

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29633083

would you ever do that?

I don't, but I wouldn't judge someone for it unless they were violating a legally enforceable contract. People work multiple in-person jobs all the time to survive. Nothing in my mind is different just because some people do it with remote jobs.

> people work multiple in-person jobs all the time to survive.

but the difference here is the concurrency. In-person jobs require the person, so you cannot do two at the same time.

But a remote job, where the employer assumes you have their job at full attention, might be short-changed if you were to work two remote jobs at the same time. That is, of course, unless you work remote for two employers, in two different time zones (so basically the same as the two in-person jobs).

I don't see the issue as long as they get the work done right. If they don't and aren't fired, the company has bigger issues than people working multiple jobs. If they do the work well, then practicing arbitrage between the employer's expectations and the realistic time requirements with automation is just doing what the employer does from the other direction. I'm sure the employer has used technology and outsourcing to get rid of at least as many jobs as multi-jobbing employees take using the same technology.

Not everyone just accepts the promise of automation to free us from tedium is lost to ever-growing corporate balance sheets.

I have done the concurrent remote job thing for 15 years now. I'm open about it and nobody seems to really care. I expect they would prefer my full attention, but they also know I have another job right there, so they're pressured to work with my needs so long as they want to benefit from the value I provide in kind.

If you could do it all over again but today, how would you do it? I may just act on it

I do think like you, but working in many places at the same time would not be possible in many countries, just because of tax declaration.

But yes, I think it cannot be coincidence all those articles pushing the back to the office, when (at least what I have seen) the productivity has undoubtedly raised.

> because of tax declaration.

Can you expand upon this?

A company could see you are working at multiple places, but the tax authorities could say you can't work multiple full time jobs maybe? In the us I bet you could just do it. You'd have opt out of those horrible places where companies want to share your salary info. I really can't believe that is actually legal still, even though I know it is since my own salary history was mostly there. Little companies like startups I have worked in didn't do that.

Tax authorities never prevent you from doing it. You might have to file some more forms though.

In Australia employees provide a form to their employer which is basically "set aside tax from my pay as though this is my only source of income" vs "tax me at a higher rate".

IIRC the wording on the form is simplified to make it seem like the question is "do you have another source of income?"

That makes sense. In the USA, we can just specify additional withholding without any justification. This can be the result of other income (stocks included), but also due to people having a working spouse.

what's the best reaction to outsmart their strategy?

I wish I knew, I think about this problem all the time and have yet to come up with a feasible path. “It’s a big club, and you ain’t in it”

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