Absolute Idiocy in Advertising
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Dusted off the bunny-ears and watched the Oscars last night. As per usual, I muted the commercials and kept half-an-eye out to see when the show was back on. Nostalgia.
Happened to see a commercial for "Indeed", the job recruiting site. One of those super-flashy, get-the-job hurrah things. I'm sure they thought it was super hot shit and teh bomb. And maybe it is-- until you actually stop and think about it.
I can't find the video on Gootube, but the summary is basically a series of 0.5-1 second cuts in first person POV from the job searched:
- Going to interviews (all similar except the people)
- Handing his resume
- Interviewer reads it and looks disgusted
- Interviewer shakes head and rejects POV guy
- guy sulks
- Guy decides to PULL HIS LIFE TOGETHER or something
- Guy grabs Intro to Java book
- A couple quick cuts of code
- Guy applies for PRODUCT EXPERT / MANAGER role
- Guy goes to one interview
- Interviewer is all happy and beaming and impressed and hires him
- Walks into cubicle space where all the developers cheer and clap
- Fin
So here's the message I got from this commercial:
"Here at Indeed, all our candidates are colossal fuck-up failures. Just by glancing at their resume and talking to them, you'll instantly recognize them as toxic worthless piece of shit that you would never let near your company, not even to clean the toilets because they'd probably end up chlorine-gassing the whole place by accident. I'm specifically talking about you, Main Character, you goddamn brainless fuckwaffle.
But hey, we here at Indeed want to place people in jobs, to get our fat, phat commission checks, or however we get paid. So this shitgibbon basically picked up a Java For Dummies, read the first 5 pages, copy-pasta'd some StackOverflow answer, and put "JAVA EXPERT" on his resume. Who knows what other bullshit he's crammed in there. But either he's lying about his skill level, or is Dunning-Kruger-levels of self-ass-licking that he actually BELIEVES he's an expert in Java now. I mean, maybe if he's applying to an entry level position that'll be oka-- WHAT THE FUCK DID HE JUST APPLY TO A PROJECT MANAGER / PRODUCT EXPERT ROLE!??!
Okay-- well, as long as you see through that obvious ruse and realize he has no clu-- YOU FUCKING HIRED HIM? You hired an idiot who got tossed out of every interview he's ever been to-- and you put him in charge of your team of programmers who actually know what they're doing? He's going to be the sort of nose-poking, micromanaging asshole who will "um actually" your real Java experts, demand features that can't possibly exist in the real world! He's going to fuck up morale once all your devs realize that this cottage-cheese-headed fucknard is their BOSS and knows NOTHING but acts like he knows everything. Those smiles you see-- those aren't devs smiling because of their new boss. They're all doing the "smile and nod" thing because they KNOW this gormless poptart is going to tank the company. The fucking SECOND you have your back turned, they're all updating their resumes.
And you can be guaranteed for sure that they ain't coming within a MILE of Indeed!"
So yeah, maybe not the message they wanted to convey-- but certainly the message they DID convey.
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@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Dusted off the bunny-ears and watched the Oscars last night.
Idiot.
As per usual, I muted the commercials and kept half-an-eye out to see when the show was back on.
Ah, not quite so idiotic. ;)
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My experience with them is that they seem to provide their (employer) customers with algorithmic keyword screening. If your resume has ALL the keywords in the job description, you might get called for at least a screening interview. Like Hired or ZipRecruiter, Indeed is just another tool for employers to claim that there are no qualified candidates out there and justify hiring an overseas codemill on the cheap.
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@chaostheeternal said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
This one?
Just uploaded today, so I must have missed it. Yup, that's the one. It's even more insufferable with the sound on.
I forgot that "lern java" wasn't even his idea, but his fucking DOG'S idea. He's such a negative-IQ doorfucker that his DOG has to nudge him to do things like learn job skills and breath.
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@dkf said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Idiot
I need to understand the Twitter jokes.
@dkf said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Ah, not quite so idiotic.
You do remember I regularly tell people in the ad industry to gargle camel cocks and razor wire, right? What did you expect?
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@slavdude said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
If your resume has ALL the keywords in the job description, you might get called for at least a screening interview.
Given that none of them read your actual resume, I wonder if I can upload a resume that has the "major" keywords in the Skills section (C++, Java, .Net, Javascript, etc)... and then the rest of the resume, which would normally be:
Job Title (From - To)
- Description of skills used
- Another description of job duties
- Etc
But instead of that, just Lorem Ipsum it-- but instead of Lorem Ipsum, jam it with every keyword the site has.
I will match 100% of the jobs, and be the best hire ever!
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@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
You do remember I regularly tell people in the ad industry to gargle camel cocks and razor wire, right? What did you expect?
As far as I can tell, gargling camel cocks is what the ad industry does for fun. (I approve of the razor wire.)
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@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Java For Dummies
Is there any other kind? </troll>
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@cvi said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Is there any other kind?
Well, there's the kind that involves complex class loader hackery and dynamic code generation… so that's for, I dunno, high-functioning dummies?
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@dkf I resemble that remark!
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@dkf said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
so that's for, I dunno, high-functioning dummies?
Is "high-functioning dummies" ⊆ dummies? Or what's the relation there?
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@cvi said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Or what's the relation there?
Not sure exactly, but messing around with the depths of classloaders both requires and induces madness, and obviously so. It's very much not for ordinary dummies ('cos it is subtle as hell), but only someone with some form of fundamental dumbness would try to delve into it in any depth.
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@dkf said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
@cvi said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Or what's the relation there?
Not sure exactly, but messing around with the depths of classloaders both requires and induces madness, and obviously so. It's very much not for ordinary dummies ('cos it is subtle as hell), but only someone with some form of fundamental dumbness would try to delve into it in any depth.
Oh, I don't bother with the actual classloading. Mojang did the weird bits so we don't have to.
But the runtime code generation isn't all that bad, really.
GitHub - Mojang/LegacyLauncher: Hacky code to launch our old versions from the new launcher!
Hacky code to launch our old versions from the new launcher! - Mojang/LegacyLauncher
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@lorne-kates Needs more bold-text*****
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@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
He's going to be the sort of nose-poking, micromanaging asshole who will "um actually" your real Java experts, demand features that can't possibly exist in the real world! He's going to fuck up morale once all your devs realize that this cottage-cheese-headed fucknard is their BOSS and knows NOTHING but acts like he knows everything. Those smiles you see-- those aren't devs smiling because of their new boss. They're all doing the "smile and nod" thing because they KNOW this gormless poptart is going to tank the company. The fucking SECOND you have your back turned, they're all updating their resumes.
Ah, the memories.
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@dkf What do you need a custom class-loader for anyway? Shouldn't it just, you know, load classes?
I guess it does magic like process annotations or something, but I really have no clue.
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@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Given that none of them read your actual resume, I wonder if I can upload a resume that has the "major" keywords in the Skills section (C++, Java, .Net, Javascript, etc)
Or add ALL the keywords/abbreviations you can think of, but as transparent / 0-sized text, so that your resume looks completely normal, but the algorithmic keyword search reports you are omniscient.
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@adynathos said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Given that none of them read your actual resume, I wonder if I can upload a resume that has the "major" keywords in the Skills section (C++, Java, .Net, Javascript, etc)
Or add ALL the keywords/abbreviations you can think of, but as transparent / 0-sized text, so that your resume looks completely normal, but the algorithmic keyword search reports you are omniscient.
hehhe, I forgot that some of those dumbfuck sites still let you upload a Word resume, and they'll parse it for you.
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@topspin said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
What do you need a custom class-loader for anyway?
Whole bunch of things. Partitioning libraries from each other. Advanced scope control. Code rewrite intercept points.
Scary stuff; class loaders are where Codethulhu lives in Java-land…
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@lorne-kates No, it is not what happened. See, the guy is really good, but he wrote his resume using comic sans and left vim modelines in the start of the document, so he got rejected from all the first jobs. Then he finds indeed, get some clues, and read few pages of a java book to remember some stuff he doesn't use on his daily activities, and he gets the job.
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@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Guy applies for PRODUCT EXPERT / MANAGER role
Where do you see that? The guy applied to be a Product Manager, for which you don't necessarily need technical skills. Maybe just skimming through a java book is enough provided that you also know wtf you're doing managing the product and you listen to your team.
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@dangeruss said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Where do you see that? The guy applied to be a Product Manager
Paraphrasing, mother-asser!
@dangeruss said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Product Manager, for which you don't necessarily need technical skills
You are a horrible Product Manager.
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@adynathos said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Given that none of them read your actual resume, I wonder if I can upload a resume that has the "major" keywords in the Skills section (C++, Java, .Net, Javascript, etc)
Or add ALL the keywords/abbreviations you can think of, but as transparent / 0-sized text, so that your resume looks completely normal, but the algorithmic keyword search reports you are omniscient.
I have actually posted various "resumes" that do similar things. It is a good filter for those organizations to completely block.
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@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
You are a horrible Product Manager.
Well I guess then it's good I'm not a product manager? Seriously though, while some technical background is great for a product manager, they don't necessarily need to be an expert in the technology used.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the title, but from what I understand the product manager liaises with the bigwigs and helps drive the product forward as well as manage any bugs.
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@dangeruss said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Well I guess then it's good I'm not a product manager?
Very good you aren't, because you'd be a bad one.
@dangeruss said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the title, but from what I understand the product manager liaises with the bigwigs and helps drive the product forward as well as manage any bugs.
Even better! You can liaise between workers who you won't understand, and bigwigs who you don't understand, and who don't understand the product, and who you can't explain it to because you don't understand it.
And you can manage bugs in a product you don't understand, so you can't assess severity or priority or paths to fixing it.
I would never, ever hire a product manager who didn't have knowledge of the product and technology behind it. If someone wants to be an idiot who barely knows anything about a product but still feels they can speak to it's features and capabilities, without having any responsibility for their lack of knowledge, they should go into Sales.
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@lorne-kates you just described all our product managers and project managers
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@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
And you can manage bugs in a product you don't understand, so you can't assess severity or priority or paths to fixing it.
Understanding the inner plumbing of the product is not necessary for assessing the severity of a bug:
- It crashes easily for all users: maximum severity (showstopper)
- It crashes for a particular workload that affects 10% of users: probably also a showstopper, but not quite as bad as the first.
- It calculates noticeably wrong values for some significant fraction of users: pretty bad, but at least it doesn't crash.
all the way down to:
- One guy who's persistently late in paying the invoices for product support thinks one particular button should be FE0100 instead of FF0000: why is he bothering us with this? Send a goon round to chastise him with a baseball bat.
Priority is similar - you don't need to know the internal plumbing to just which bugs should be fixed first. A good first-pass guide is that high-severity bugs are also high-priority. (Yes, it needs refining, but it's not a bad place to start.)
Paths to fixing it? Are you asking the Product Manager to futz around with source code? That's the developers' job. If he can't trust the developers to tell him accurately how much effort it will take to fix things, then there are more serious problems with the organisation, and it won't really help him to be able to fix it himself.
The Product Manager should be sufficiently aware of technologies to be able to tell when developers are trying to pull a fast one, but he does NOT need technically-detailed knowledge of how to use the technology.
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@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
You are a horrible Product Manager.
A manager of a horrible product or a horrible manager of a product?
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@jaloopa Why not both?
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@dkf said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
Dusted off the bunny-ears and watched the Oscars last night.
Idiot.
As per usual, I muted the commercials and kept half-an-eye out to see when the show was back on.
Ah, not quite so idiotic. ;)
The commercials we're probably better than the Oscars this year. If he had watched then instead he would not have had to watch Jimmy Kimmel fawn over Oscar because he has no penis and therefore...can't hurt anyone?
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"Idiocy in Advertising" seems redundant.
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@el_heffe That's why 'Absolute' was tacked on.
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@ixvedeusi said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
@lorne-kates said in Absolute Idiocy in Advertising:
it's features and capabilities
Is it, now...?
Your being and ass whole
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