Right, because the person for whom the goal is to get a great job / promotion, will leap through the hoops required. Another type of person might care more about what they are working on, or their professional goals or their values and less about playing the game.
[EDIT:] Let me put my reply into some further perspective:
1) It's well known that job advertisements blatantly lie about the job description and requirements. The standard advice software engineers give to each other is to apply to jobs even though you don't meet all of the requirements, because the requirements often turn out to be optional, more of a unicorn wish list.
2) Ask yourself, which companies and which jobs specifically do lying software engineers apply to? Do those companies perhaps have a culture rewarding this behavior? And could honest software engineers be averse to applying there, instead seeking places or means of employment that are more amenable to their personal ethics?
I literally did that: "It's well known" "The standard advice software engineers give to each other". Is anonymous "kodah" well known? No. Do software engineers give each other standard advice about getting hired by kodah? No. Also, I talked about "companies" plural, not kodah's company singular.
The only one who insinuated about kodah, and about me, is you. You ought to read the guidelines yourself with respect to my comment and your own reply.
The intended implication of my previous comment was that the behavior of software engineers in our industry is driven largely by how companies are run, by their management practices, how their hiring works, how their promotions work, etc. The engineers themselves are not really in the driver's seat, they're in the passenger's seats, and the incentives for current and potential employees are often perverse.
1. I would say that our listing was accurate other than the fact that we actually worked in 4-5 major languages, not just the one advertised. That was never much of an issue though, we screened for a certain level of adaptability. To me there's a very big integrity difference between lying and applying for a role which you don't meet all the requirements. If you tell me, "I haven't worked on Kubernetes before, but I've worked on distributed systems and have messed with a lot of REST apis." I'd be understanding, no one can have all the right experience at once. Contrast that with someone having Kubernetes all over their resume only to find out they've pushed a button on an automated deploy pipeline and don't know the difference between a Deployment and a StatefulSet. The latter I consider a lie.
2. No, I know that company didn't have a culture of rewarding lies. In order to claim things for promotions you had to have multiple peers back up your claims.
What preempted the lies was probably discovering that we primarily did software development kit work, which most engineers have not done or don't have a ton of experience doing. Mix that in a bowl with the fact that we were easier to get hired at than Google and paid slightly above average (at times) it was fertile ground to attract candidates willing to espouse some aspirational stuff as if it were an accomplishment. This was especially relevant around Senior hiring when we'd ask about leading initiatives. A lot of SWEs have delivered software in a team, but few SWEs have led those initiatives, or only owned a very small part which they worked with (usually) one other engineer to deliver.
You could only screen who applied, and the job posting inaccurately described the language(s) used. How could that not have an effect on the applicant pool, and how the applicants approached the application?
> No, I know that company didn't have a culture of rewarding lies.
Banking and financial services? Hmm...
This is reaching imo. Most of the candidates never even got to a point where we were talking that deeply about the languages we worked on primarily. Second to that, candidates were allowed to pick whatever language they wanted for the interviews.
> Banking and financial services? Hmm...
This is a really odd take. We didn't do banking and we're heavily regulated. Additionally, it was a security product development team. Anyway, this line of conversation from you has been mostly unenjoyable and unhelpful.
I would imagine, because you seem to be missing the point at every level.
The larger point is that when I talk about "the biggest liars and cheats rise to the top", I'm not referring to something like your software development team, which is nowhere near the top.
Another point is that people who are nowhere near the top are mostly just reacting to the perverse incentives created by a system designed by the biggest liars and cheats at the top, a system that naturally tends to reward people like them. The less powerful have little choice but to operate within that system and deal with it as it is, flawed as it may be.
A small point is that when you talk about "the candidates", these are already the self-selected result of an inaccurate job posting, and thus what you do after you start talking to them doesn't make up for the false impression that was given before you talked to them.
> we're heavily regulated
So?
You flat out told me that the job listing was inaccurate:
> I would say that our listing was accurate other than the fact that we actually worked in 4-5 major languages, not just the one advertised.
"accurate other than" is a euphemism for inaccurate.
Anyway, you're still missing the point, which is that it's irrelevant whether your company's specific job posting is accurate, because job postings in general are inaccurate, with exaggerated requirements, causing job applicants to behave accordingly, which is to largely ignore the specific requirements listed in job postings and also exaggerate their own qualifications. And then companies scratch their heads densely and wonder why, somehow ignorant of the perverse incentives the industry has already created.
The rest of your post is just rambling. That's not why people lie, and there's a big difference between exaggeration and outright lying. You seem to have zero delineation in your head between this, which is frankly unsurprising given the interactions I've had with you here.
You: "When I was in charge of hiring I dealt with this every day. A huge swath of software engineers lie about their skills, involvement in projects, and just general accomplishments."
Also you: "Contrast that with someone having Kubernetes all over their resume only to find out they've pushed a button on an automated deploy pipeline and don't know the difference between a Deployment and a StatefulSet. The latter I consider a lie."
You later: "there's a big difference between exaggeration and outright lying. You seem to have zero delineation in your head between this"
The part of the quote you chopped off:
> If you tell me, "I haven't worked on Kubernetes before, but I've worked on distributed systems and have messed with a lot of REST apis." I'd be understanding, no one can have all the right experience at once.
If you have Kubernetes on your resume and this is what I find, that's an exaggeration. This is what would be "the former".
Anyway, I now realize reading through your comments why this conversation was a waste of my time. Have a nice day.
And the part of your own quote that you chopped off:
"To me there's a very big integrity difference between lying and applying for a role which you don't meet all the requirements."
That's not a difference between exaggeration and lying, it's a difference between honesty and lying. Where exactly is the exaggeration?
> I now realize reading through your comments that you're the kind of person that tries to vouch for flame bait and then complains about it. I've clearly wasted my time here.
Heh. Are you referring to this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849006
The commenter posted a link: "see his rebuttal here: https://tessier-lavigne-lab.stanford.edu/news/false-allegati..."
I said: "I've vouched for this comment. Not sure why it was flagged. Regardless of whether you believe Tessier-Lavigne's denial, it's directly relevant to the story."
The link was not flame bait, it was simply the accused person's response to the accusation.
Now, in retrospect it does turn out to the case that the commenter has engaged in flamebait in other comments. I did not vouch for those other comments, nor was I even aware of them beforehand. I didn't look at the commenter's bio or other comments before I vouched for that one particular comment, which was simply a link, a very relevant link.
Thus, your criticism of me is totally unwarranted and ridiculous. You're grasping at straws here.
[EDIT:] I noticed that you've edited your comment to remove the part about vouching. Have a nice day to you too!
Obsessed with how they stack up compared to others... Perhaps coming from a place of insecurity.
How did you filter for the lies/bs? Did you drill them to see if they actually knew the topics at hand?