But it's a trick to keep people from leaving and to be able to continue to overwork their employees and squeeze out a bit more before burnout.
Probably Hanlon's Razor applies: «Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.»
In other words, it's a mixture of laziness, some need for employees but not following through, rigid software for job applications, corporate politics and plain stupidity.
I imagine one example how it might happen more or less like this:
- A product owner sees that their team is overworked
- They ask for a job opening or just enter the job description in the software
- They get shot down by someone higher up or they are replaced or fired themselves
- The process starts anyway and nobody is responsible for incoming applications
They hired someone, I handled the technical interview, I trained him, and then they suggested maybe I should find a new job.
Why on earth would you do this in a companywide meeting?
Throughout this period they kept promising they were trying to hire but I hadn't seen a single resume or interview.
Most jobs, I'd just bounce and leave 'em hanging at that point. But, I actually liked most of the people I worked with, they just had a terrible CEO that had a bad habit of seeing devs strictly as cost centers. I wanted them to fix it, and this was an appropriate move for that company and the company's culture.
Thanks for your judgement though, wish you'd been there to tell me how to be better.
It's not a social club, there's a requirement for devs to do work. Sometimes this work is boring or drudgery and as people we might say we don't want to do this and rather go sit in the sun and chill.
But the social contract is to either submit to both the interesting and unpleasant aspects of the work or go and be some free spirit elsewhere.
> Throughout this period they kept promising they were trying to hire but I hadn't seen a single resume or interview.
So, they were clearly lying. Pointing this out publicly like you did probably feels good for the ego and your principles BUT as you experienced, it's not a wise move if you want to actually stay at that company. Nobody likes to be pointed out in public, and unless you are in a position of power, you will be in the receiving end afterwards.
In any case from what you say that company wasn't a good place to be for you, so I hope you found another place.
I left for family reasons, but it remains the best place I’ve worked. Its product was leading the field because they actually had open discussions about things and built what people cared about.
It seems like the ruse would depend on there being interviews for the role, but interviews are so expensive and disruptive that I don't see someone scheduling them if they're not going to hire
More likely ghost jobs. I think that they aren't planning to fill unless a highly qualified candidate comes along that happens to be desperate and willing to accept a low offer. When that happens, I wouldn't be at all surprised if they hire them to replace someone who is earning significantly more. Potential for big cost savings at the expense of intangible accumulated institutional knowledge and team cohesion/morale.
I would guess this practice is pretty rare. There can be stale postings e.g. when a large company pauses hiring but nothing along the lines of what parent is describing.
HR said they didn't accept the offer and went elsewhere. What they didn't know is that the person LinkedIn messaged me saying they enjoyed the team, and were disappointed we passed, respectfully asking what I would recommend to work on for their interviewing.
Opinions on whether to reach out after a rejection aside, it highlighted what I already suspected; the job was never going to be filled, and even as the team lead they were lying to me and the team.
When there was yet another round of layoffs months later, the spot remained, unsurprisingly, unfilled.
Were you guys actively trying to fill the role (screen dozens of candidates, several went through final rounds, etc), or was this just some passive thing where recruiting tried to push someone who looked great?
That was 3 months ago (and 3 months into the position posting), and the position is still unfilled.
That's the mystery for me, why put the team through a charade that actively harms their productivity?
The only thing I can think of is the candidate disclosed something that would be a legal red flag and can't really divulge that is an issue without threat of a lawsuit. Or something came up in a background check, but I imagine it didn't get to that point if the candidate reached out to you directly.
- We'll hire more people, it's just so hard to find candidates! - We're doing bonuses right after evaluations, but we're doing a new evaluation system that's taking a bit longer than we expected this year - We're just finalizing talking to a customer we'll have them signed next month, we swear
That delays people looking, delays that large investment, and you can extract engineering time with little investment.
If you ran a company that couldn't afford another engineer for a team that desperately needed another engineer, are you going to paint the bleak picture for your team and risk losing those engineers that you have, or lie? If you have morals and say you'd be upfront, great; but that's unfortunately not a universal answer.
Harming productivity only matters for hourly staff (in the minds of bad executives leaders). Salaried folks have to finish the with no matter how long it takes, and it doesn't cost the company more.
This was an unequivocal HR lied and kept the mirage of "help is coming don't worry!".
Yes there's overhead of us spending time doing the interviewing, but a few hours here and there once a month is enough to keep the charade going. The applications site would go first to HR, then they'd put resumes in front of me. I always wondered why I couldn't just see everyone that applied and why it had to be filtered first; after this event I understood why. I suspect there was plenty more applicants than I was told of.
If your interviewing notes were simply a, "would recommend to hire" they'll pass.
I've also seen my company open applications for a job that is almost definitely going to be an internal promotion rather than a new hire, but for the sake of "fairness" they interview a handful of other people.
Hiring is expensive. It takes a lot of time and energy to do interviews and screens and stuff like that, and usually some higher ups are involved in the process, so wasting their time is probably worse than just not posting the job if you're not going to hire.
I don't buy the reasoning/justification.
The HR folks I worked with threw out fake job adverts to gauge the quality of applicants, salary expectations, and ability/speed to fine new hires. Essentially lets you create a few action plans if Jimmy in Accounting gets a better gig, or gets fired for sexually harassing people. Also generates plans / forecasting for layoffs, or windfalls that demand many new bodies.