(1) Companies try to avoid hiring unemployed people. It sounds mean (kicking someone while they’re down) and unfair (plenty of good workers got laid off). But it’s a huge scarlet letter, like you would not believe. Like, do companies always and only lay off the bottom quintile? Of course not. But do they rarely lay off the top quintile? Yeah. Otherwise, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot. Yeah, it’s never perfect, and companies tell stories about how downsizing is performance-neutral. But you can trust them to mostly act in their own best interest. They’re not letting the BFF star go. They try to minimize hard feelings; they don’t want laid off employees to retaliate and tell stories about how they suck or even maybe sue.
So, when you try to refer someone unemployed, the company sees UNEMPLOYED. It’s like women and single men vs married fathers. All else being equal, they’re definitely going for the latter.
You might be wondering, well, what’s the point of referrals if they’re going to turn their nose up at unemployed people? It’s what they don’t say. They want you to help recruit stars from their competitors. Now, they can’t say, “Matt, please get someone you know from our competitors to apply to work for us.” That’ll invite retaliatory poaching from said competitors. So they leave that out. They want you to read between the lines.
(2) I’ve never felt emotionally embarrassed or ashamed for being fooled by a lie, half-truth or something that was true enough in the moment but had no follow through. Betrayed? Maybe a little. But more so, I just felt like I had a factually wrong view of the world, and being disabused of a romantic view is painful. To me, it’s more like, I thought 2+2=5 but as it turns out it equals 4. Maybe I should have seen it earlier.
I kind of feel like what you’re describing is common, and not limited to employment or any industry. Tech might be worse because of all the hype and hoopla and mission-y stuff. But, like, it’s kind of the human condition for people to lie, mislead or lack any follow through. It hurts to find out that you just can’t trust people, further than you can throw them. But like no one looks at you and is like “what a dumbass, fooled again by corporate propaganda.” Idk. People lie, mislead or flake out at the slightest provocation, discomfort or inconvenience. It’s just kind of shitty.
Really enjoyed this post and related to a lot of the points, especially around referrals not being effective enough (at least at larger companies in my experience). I did want to add something about how as a manager I don’t set my team members’ performance ratings or promotions just by my opinion of them; feedback from their peers at multiple levels is the main thing I factor in.
Great post. The patent thing is hilarious. Same with the processes for internal promotion and referrals. I was wondering whether companies are better off having fake processes for internal promotions and only hiring senior people from the outside. Presumably, a company wouldn’t go all the way and tell its employees, “we don’t really do internal promotions.” So, that way, they can dangle the non-zero possibility of winning an internal promotion, and induce 60h workweeks. People play the lottery even though it has negative expected value. Like, it’s irrational but the dream is compelling. On the other hand, internal promotions (1) create drama and (2) have a limited talent pool. For drama, there’s the question of who gets promoted and who doesn’t, as you explain. Then, on the committee, everyone has a horse in the race, someone they’re bff with. Things get political real quick; the losers will def take it personally when their bff doesn’t get promoted. For talent pool, it just doesn’t make sense to consider only internal applicants. An outsider also has the benefit of external validation, especially if he’s coming from a more prestigious firm.
Sorry to hear about the referral thing. Maybe the market is bad. But also, with referrals, it’s hard to tell who has pull and who doesn’t in an organization. Sometimes, in a bad hiring market, it can be helpful to take ownership of the potential referree, like, I am referring X to work on my team and I’ll take responsibility if things don’t work out. But tbh if the market is really bad then things are just going to be hard no matter what.
Also, I wouldn’t assume that hiring market is good just because some other people are getting technical screeners. From what you’ve said, they’re not actually getting hired. Sometimes HR just pushes paper to seem useful. They need to justify themselves, so they push people who check some boxes (lol) with expectation that they won’t actually be hired. Heck, once i was bored so I got a screener for a role I was blatantly not qualified for and I did indeed choke and forget how to write a for loop, lmao. But I do check a lot of boxes.
It’s the same for the patent lawyers. They get you to waste time on dumb patents that are challenging for the office to search but would be trivial for a competitor to get canceled or invalidated, if that competitor had the need to fork over the legal fees. The completed applications and issued patents go into how the company’s patent lawyer justifies himself. He tells his boss, “I’ve filed X applications and prosecuted Y applications to issue this quarter.” And the boss is like, “wow sounds good, maybe I’ll put you in charge of a whole legal department with a dozen lawyers under you.” Anyway your dad was right about playing someone else’s game!!!
Sorry I want to add two thoughts.
(1) Companies try to avoid hiring unemployed people. It sounds mean (kicking someone while they’re down) and unfair (plenty of good workers got laid off). But it’s a huge scarlet letter, like you would not believe. Like, do companies always and only lay off the bottom quintile? Of course not. But do they rarely lay off the top quintile? Yeah. Otherwise, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot. Yeah, it’s never perfect, and companies tell stories about how downsizing is performance-neutral. But you can trust them to mostly act in their own best interest. They’re not letting the BFF star go. They try to minimize hard feelings; they don’t want laid off employees to retaliate and tell stories about how they suck or even maybe sue.
So, when you try to refer someone unemployed, the company sees UNEMPLOYED. It’s like women and single men vs married fathers. All else being equal, they’re definitely going for the latter.
You might be wondering, well, what’s the point of referrals if they’re going to turn their nose up at unemployed people? It’s what they don’t say. They want you to help recruit stars from their competitors. Now, they can’t say, “Matt, please get someone you know from our competitors to apply to work for us.” That’ll invite retaliatory poaching from said competitors. So they leave that out. They want you to read between the lines.
(2) I’ve never felt emotionally embarrassed or ashamed for being fooled by a lie, half-truth or something that was true enough in the moment but had no follow through. Betrayed? Maybe a little. But more so, I just felt like I had a factually wrong view of the world, and being disabused of a romantic view is painful. To me, it’s more like, I thought 2+2=5 but as it turns out it equals 4. Maybe I should have seen it earlier.
I kind of feel like what you’re describing is common, and not limited to employment or any industry. Tech might be worse because of all the hype and hoopla and mission-y stuff. But, like, it’s kind of the human condition for people to lie, mislead or lack any follow through. It hurts to find out that you just can’t trust people, further than you can throw them. But like no one looks at you and is like “what a dumbass, fooled again by corporate propaganda.” Idk. People lie, mislead or flake out at the slightest provocation, discomfort or inconvenience. It’s just kind of shitty.
Really enjoyed this post and related to a lot of the points, especially around referrals not being effective enough (at least at larger companies in my experience). I did want to add something about how as a manager I don’t set my team members’ performance ratings or promotions just by my opinion of them; feedback from their peers at multiple levels is the main thing I factor in.
Great post. The patent thing is hilarious. Same with the processes for internal promotion and referrals. I was wondering whether companies are better off having fake processes for internal promotions and only hiring senior people from the outside. Presumably, a company wouldn’t go all the way and tell its employees, “we don’t really do internal promotions.” So, that way, they can dangle the non-zero possibility of winning an internal promotion, and induce 60h workweeks. People play the lottery even though it has negative expected value. Like, it’s irrational but the dream is compelling. On the other hand, internal promotions (1) create drama and (2) have a limited talent pool. For drama, there’s the question of who gets promoted and who doesn’t, as you explain. Then, on the committee, everyone has a horse in the race, someone they’re bff with. Things get political real quick; the losers will def take it personally when their bff doesn’t get promoted. For talent pool, it just doesn’t make sense to consider only internal applicants. An outsider also has the benefit of external validation, especially if he’s coming from a more prestigious firm.
Sorry to hear about the referral thing. Maybe the market is bad. But also, with referrals, it’s hard to tell who has pull and who doesn’t in an organization. Sometimes, in a bad hiring market, it can be helpful to take ownership of the potential referree, like, I am referring X to work on my team and I’ll take responsibility if things don’t work out. But tbh if the market is really bad then things are just going to be hard no matter what.
Also, I wouldn’t assume that hiring market is good just because some other people are getting technical screeners. From what you’ve said, they’re not actually getting hired. Sometimes HR just pushes paper to seem useful. They need to justify themselves, so they push people who check some boxes (lol) with expectation that they won’t actually be hired. Heck, once i was bored so I got a screener for a role I was blatantly not qualified for and I did indeed choke and forget how to write a for loop, lmao. But I do check a lot of boxes.
It’s the same for the patent lawyers. They get you to waste time on dumb patents that are challenging for the office to search but would be trivial for a competitor to get canceled or invalidated, if that competitor had the need to fork over the legal fees. The completed applications and issued patents go into how the company’s patent lawyer justifies himself. He tells his boss, “I’ve filed X applications and prosecuted Y applications to issue this quarter.” And the boss is like, “wow sounds good, maybe I’ll put you in charge of a whole legal department with a dozen lawyers under you.” Anyway your dad was right about playing someone else’s game!!!