What a strange exchange.
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My mind is still reeling from this exchange.
Hello,
I received your info from one of the job boards and I was wondering if you are still in the market for a Sr. Dev lead?
If you are, please send me your resume.
Thank you
Wanda Tracy FallenarchesReceived my info from "the job boards." But needs my resume. Because it;'s not on "the job boards?" Well, I was in a mood, so I sent both my resume and my newly minted buzzword manifesto.
Good evening,
Would you be able to call me first thing in the morning to discuss this opportunity?
Thank you
Wanda Tracy Fallenarches
555-867-5309Now I'm a little concerned. This person is expecting me to call them? So I look up the domain. Same as her last name. It's a WordPress template site. Couple stock photos of smiling hipsters in an open office plan and not much else.
Still in a mood, so I don't call ion the morning but the afternoon. And the hits keep coming.
She has a phone that, when she drives, loses all volume. I am getting three words, some squeaks, three words, some squeaks, and so on. She starts asking me what I think of the position description that she never sent. I tell her that I have no information other than this e-mail from out of the blue. Now it's a front end engineer. And uses banking software that she's surprised I don't know of. After some questions about .NET, now it's Javascript UI modernization. What libraries? Oh, you know, JavaScript. Like, yknow, whatever and junk.
Now at this point, I've totally lost interest. This woman hasn't looked at the resume she asked for and doesn't know anything about what's going on. Now she needs my e-mail to send me a job description. Because she somehow e-mailed me twice without seeing my e-mail? So I told her I don't know, I just used webmail to reply, maybe there is a reply button she can use. I can't believe my tone is not coming through over the phone though I still don't expect to see anything.
Five minutes later, she calls me back. Did I see the e-mail? No. Wait five minutes. Now it's here. OK, this sounds a little more coherent.
Now she's confused about which resume to look at, ZenithResume.doc or ZenithResumeColorBuzz.doc (yes, I named them that). Now there's confusion over what I do, which evolves into, somehow, that I lack experience. I didn't put what specific versions of .NET on every line and what JScript framework on every line so I have somehow not recently done any development. Lots of "uh" and "like" and "I hear ya bro" and "maybe." Asks what I want to do. I want to do desktop development or backend development. I don't want to learn a new JavaScript framework every other day to rewrite the same commodity front end over and over and over with half the functionality of the previous versions. "Oh, but that's how the industry is, they want people that can keep up with shifting dynamics and trending opportunities" (said totally without sarcasm).
Suddenly, the talk shifts to clouds. I have used Azure, a little. I understand that a cloud is just a server at a Microsoft data center versus a server on the 3rd floor of my building. What have I been using it for? Oh, machine learning, artificial intelligence, market strategy analysis, you know, that sort of stuff. What frameworks do I use? What do you mean framework? There's an Azure console to set up databases and firewalls and file stores. Yeah but what frameworks? I don't understand what you mean. Well strategic shifting of resources in transitioning. Shouldn't your operations director being laying out that roadmap? Well all engineers have a cloud framework they like for developing projects in the cloud. Oh, well, I don't, I just use Azure. OK, maybe UI engineer postings are a poor fit. Yep, I agree, thanks.
Then another development description, a solicitation for another copy of my resume, and a LinkedIn friend request show up in my mailbox.
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One of the great conundrums of life.
People who actually know stuff are busy doing real work. People who don't know anything become recruiters because if they knew stuff they would be doing actual work and would have no interest in being a recruiter.
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
My mind is still reeling from this exchange.
Hello,
I received your info from one of the job boards and I was wondering if you are still in the market for a Sr. Dev lead?
If you are, please send me your resume.
Thank you
Wanda Tracy FallenarchesReceived my info from "the job boards." But needs my resume. Because it;'s not on "the job boards?"
That sounds more ridiculous than it is.(1) To be sure, the resume / CV (depending on country) is "on the job boards", but the recruiter doesn't necessarily know how old and potentially out of date it is. If you send one, in theory it will be up to date, or at least more so than the old one on the boards.
(1) I'm not saying it isn't ridiculous, just that there is a justification for it and that justification isn't complete nonsense.
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@Steve_The_Cynic At some point in this exchange, it was hinted that I applied for a position she was marketing, in which case the resume supplied would've been extremely recent. Although, I've found that almost universally, every recruiter that cold calls me has a resume that's 1 or 2 jobs behind. Doesn't matter if the latest job is 3 years or 3 months, they're always at least 1 behind. This person really struck me as weird expecting me to call her. I almost didn't and probably wouldn't have if anything else was going on it anybody else had been in the office. Then to double down with how 5 months in a job I want out of negates 15 years of prior experience...I understand why people throw phones.
Also, I've gotten a bit tired of employers "liking" a resume on ZipRecruiter (there must be a FaceBook like button on a screen somewhere) and not following up. What's the deal with that?
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@El_Heffe
Every once in a while, you get a LinkedIn message from a recruiter who actually knows what they're doing. 99% of the time, those are employees of the company they're recruiting for and their employer is a software company.So there are good recruiters, they're just smart enough to get a nice, boring, well-paid HR position in a big company.
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
Also, I've gotten a bit tired of employers "liking" a resume on ZipRecruiter (there must be a FaceBook like button on a screen somewhere) and not following up. What's the deal with that?
Hard to say from where I'm sitting - I haven't jobhunted anywhere in the last ten years - but they may be using their list of likes-given as a way to remember possibly-interesting resumes for later. I would in general assess that as almost equivalent to the tales we hear of people who use Outlook's deleted-mail folder as a store for email they want to keep but have finished dealing with (er, because they use the X button as a one-touch "file" command).
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in What a strange exchange.:
heir list of likes-given as a way to remember possibly-interesting resumes for later.
I would say that sounds as smart as liking every post as a way to remember what you read
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@Luhmann said in What a strange exchange.:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in What a strange exchange.:
heir list of likes-given as a way to remember possibly-interesting resumes for later.
I would say that sounds as smart as liking every post as a way to remember what you read
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
She has a phone that, when she drives, loses all volume. I am getting three words, some squeaks, three words, some squeaks, and so on.
Sure it wasn't a number in Suriname or something? Sounds like a typical 90s phone scam, although with today's phone rates I think they moved on to "special service SMS".
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@Luhmann said in What a strange exchange.:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in What a strange exchange.:
heir list of likes-given as a way to remember possibly-interesting resumes for later.
I would say that sounds as smart as liking every post as a way to remember what you read
And I would agree with such a statement.
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@LaoC said in What a strange exchange.:
@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
She has a phone that, when she drives, loses all volume. I am getting three words, some squeaks, three words, some squeaks, and so on.
Sure it wasn't a number in Suriname or something? Sounds like a typical 90s phone scam, although with today's phone rates I think they moved on to "special service SMS".
It wasn't that long ago (2016, something like that) that I used to receive calls from premium-rate numbers where, if I picked up in time, there would be a voice that immediately (as in, like, you know, before I could say anything) said, "I can't hear you," and would hang up. I think the idea was that some(1) people would call back at 2€/minute to find out what the missed call was...
(1) Er, enough for it to be worth doing.
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It said it was from Florida. I've been getting alot of calls from recruiters in Florida lately for some reason. There are days that I think half of the jobs in this area are recruiters trying to fill some subset of the other half and then there are days that I think half the country is part of some sort of recruiting scam. No lie, I recently had a Skype-like telescreening for a job 20 miles away conducted by a company hired by a recruiter hired by a no-bid contract organizer hired by a client that has an army of HR people in-house for some reason.
For all the hype about information technology over most of my lifetime, it often seems like computer literacy is actually lower than it was 20 years ago.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in What a strange exchange.:
To be sure, the resume / CV (depending on country) is "on the job boards", but the recruiter doesn't necessarily know how old and potentially out of date it is.
But it doesn't matter, because they haven't actually read it anyway. For example, I got a couple of emails recently from a guy I'll call Nagesh. One was for a UI developer with 5+ years of experience with Angular, Node, React, Bootstrap, etc. The other was a project manager for a medical device manufacturer with 10+ years experience in a medical device Class II industry with a working knowledge of specific US and EU regulations. Nothing on my resume even remotely resembles any of those skills.
The only reason I didn't delete them immediately was so that I could ridicule Nagesh here.
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@HardwareGeek said in What a strange exchange.:
Nothing on my resume even remotely resembles any of those skills.
Sometimes (only if it's via a LinkedIn message - because I'm clearing the unread flags) I'll respond "If you had actually read my resume, you'd see I don't have anything remotely resembling this experience." More or less hostile depending on my mood.
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@dcon I think I've posted before about one recruiter who sent me such messages regularly. I wanted to respond, with a CC to his/her manager, if I could have found out his/her address, along the lines of
Dear <name of incompetent recruiter>:
Please do not contact me again. I am neither interested in nor qualified for any of the positions you have sent me. It is clear from the discrepancy between my skills and experience and the positions you are trying to fill that you are either have not read my resume, are incapable of understanding what you read, or both. Even if you should happen, probably through sheer coincidence, to send me a relevant position, I doubt your ability to present me to the client competently.
Sincerely,
Hardware GeekSadly, the
was too strong to actually respond.
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@HardwareGeek said in What a strange exchange.:
@dcon I think I've posted before about one recruiter who sent me such messages regularly. I wanted to respond, with a CC to his/her manager, if I could have found out his/her address, along the lines of
Dear <name of incompetent recruiter>:
Please do not contact me again. I am neither interested in nor qualified for any of the positions you have sent me. It is clear from the discrepancy between my skills and experience and the positions you are trying to fill that you are either have not read my resume, are incapable of understanding what you read, or both. Even if you should happen, probably through sheer coincidence, to send me a relevant position, I doubt your ability to present me to the client competently.
Sincerely,
Hardware GeekSadly, the
was too strong to actually respond.But what about giving us quality Story Time?
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@HardwareGeek that's assuming his/her manager hasn't deliberately and clearly instructed the recruiters to shoot blindly into the crowd.
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@Steve_The_Cynic said in What a strange exchange.:
Outlook's deleted-mail folder as a store for email they want to keep but have finished dealing with (er, because they use the X button as a one-touch "file" command).
Best part of Outlook 2016: A proper "Archive" button.
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@heterodox Just in time for many organizations to take away archiving via group policy.
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
@heterodox Just in time for many organizations to take away archiving via group policy.
The archive button moves to a folder, not a PST.
But to your point, I've been seeing more organization-supported archiving solutions, not less -- moving toward online archives and away from PSTs stored on users' hard drives that are nearly impossible to track down for FOIA requests/legal discovery.
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@heterodox said in What a strange exchange.:
But to your point, I've been seeing more organization-supported archiving solutions, not less -- moving toward online archives and away from PSTs stored on users' hard drives that are nearly impossible to track down for FOIA requests/legal discovery.
That works if they're actual archives. We were told that they're turning our archives into a shredder and nuking everything older than a certain date. ASt which point I promptly moved everything back to a PST.
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in What a strange exchange.:
@heterodox said in What a strange exchange.:
But to your point, I've been seeing more organization-supported archiving solutions, not less -- moving toward online archives and away from PSTs stored on users' hard drives that are nearly impossible to track down for FOIA requests/legal discovery.
That works if they're actual archives. We were told that they're turning our archives into a shredder and nuking everything older than a certain date. ASt which point I promptly moved everything back to a PST.
I've read that the reason for companies going the shredder route is also because of legal discoveries: if you no longer have the data, you won't have to give it to the other side's lawyers, and have them find something incriminating in it.
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in What a strange exchange.:
@heterodox said in What a strange exchange.:
But to your point, I've been seeing more organization-supported archiving solutions, not less -- moving toward online archives and away from PSTs stored on users' hard drives that are nearly impossible to track down for FOIA requests/legal discovery.
That works if they're actual archives. We were told that they're turning our archives into a shredder and nuking everything older than a certain date. ASt which point I promptly moved everything back to a PST.
I'd be wary of doing that if they made this decision for legal reasons. A discovery request could reasonably include employee hard drives as well as corporate central data stores.
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Yup, just make sure you have the policy in place. Than the last minute shredding session isn't incrimenating, it is merely enforcing policy.
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@Dragoon "Our policy is to shred everything when lawyers show up."
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@pie_flavor said in What a strange exchange.:
@Dragoon "Our policy is to shred everything when lawyers show up."
Especially the lawyers.
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in What a strange exchange.:
That works if they're actual archives. We were told that they're turning our archives into a shredder and nuking everything older than a certain date. ASt which point I promptly moved everything back to a PST.
It seems to me your company's e-mail retention policy is probably there for a reason and willfully violating it might be a mistake on your part. But you do you.
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He didn't say it was a good reason.
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
For all the hype about information technology over most of my lifetime, it often seems like computer literacy is actually lower than it was 20 years ago.
It certainly is among IT professionals, and is reaching absolute end user levels of illiteracy in the development community.
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@thegoryone said in What a strange exchange.:
PHP guy, fuck your experience
Do you believe this not to be for the best?
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@HardwareGeek said in What a strange exchange.:
@Steve_The_Cynic said in What a strange exchange.:
To be sure, the resume / CV (depending on country) is "on the job boards", but the recruiter doesn't necessarily know how old and potentially out of date it is.
But it doesn't matter, because they haven't actually read it anyway.
Of course they haven't. That's why I get emails from recruiters pitching jobs ideal for developers who are younger than my career.
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@Steve_The_Cynic we have a couple forum users for whom any job is like that.
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@Gąska said in What a strange exchange.:
@Steve_The_Cynic we have a couple forum users for whom any job is like that.
Not any... (Maybe most...)
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@dcon what job needs more than 20 years of experience?
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@Gąska You have to have at least 35 years of experience in staying alive if you want to be a US president.
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@julmu and twice that if you want to be successful.
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@levicki I would like to be able to do that but it removes most of the native English speakers from the pool. Parsing out thick Indian accents over the phone is positively exhausting for me. Is it supposed to seem easier for an introvert to go into sales than computers? Because it does.
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@HardwareGeek said in What a strange exchange.:
But it doesn't matter, because they haven't actually read it anyway. For example, I got a couple of emails recently from a guy I'll call Nagesh. One was for a UI developer with 5+ years of experience with Angular, Node, React, Bootstrap, etc. The other was a project manager for a medical device manufacturer with 10+ years experience in a medical device Class II industry with a working knowledge of specific US and EU regulations. Nothing on my resume even remotely resembles any of those skills.
I got one asking for 10 years experience in Angular or React.
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IT Recruiters are getting nuts over here in the UK. I assume it's something to do with Brexit and the sudden dearth of mainland Europeans wanting to come and work over here. I've been out of the industry since 2002. I don't handle stress well, and 10 years in development was enough for me at that time so I left to be a postal worker instead. It pays 2/3rds of the wage and has zero stress, so a win for me. The last time I put a CV on a job board was 17 years ago. I hadn't even done ANY programming for at least 10 years up till a few months ago.
For the last couple of years I've been getting increasing amounts of messages from IT recruiters. At first it was just the occasional email from some recruiter who must have found an ancient CV on some job board, or who had looked through their old records from the last time I was looking, but especially in the last few months it has massively escalated. It's now an average of 10 emails a day trying to get me to apply for development jobs. I think they are starting to get desperate.
Of course it won't last. They'll try to fill the jobs over here for a while longer yet but after Brexit goes through and it gets even harder for them to find staff they'll give up and those that can will bugger off to somewhere they can actually find staff. I very much doubt that'll get easier over here any time soon.
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@Zenith said in What a strange exchange.:
"shifting dynamics and trending opportunities"
BINGO! What's my prize?
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@Seppen British companies could do something novel and hire British people for those jobs.
From my point of view, the US has many non-technical people that think they should make technical* decisions. They don't research, don't listen, and don't take responsibility. Qualified people push back or bail out. So what they end up doing is shopping for H1Bs that just say "yes" to everything. And they keep shopping for the magical H1B that will spin their ignorant decisions into a world class product.
*There's a huge difference between "I want this to run on Windows, support X users, and cost Y dollars" and dictating languages, libraries, frameworks, design patterns, tool chains, hardware models, and bracket placement.
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@Zenith They could if there were enough British people with the skills needed, which is the problem. There simply aren't enough British software engineers, even including those who are destined to end up on the pages of this website. I'm seeing entry-level jobs advertised for £40-£50K and they aren't getting filled. I have actually considered getting back into the industry. The salaries I could get are certainly tempting, but I'm not greedy and my current job, while paying now about a quarter I could get in IT, is a cushy job where I'm happy so no dice.
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@Seppen There's David Braben but he's already got a gig.
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@hungrier Sadly, the British technical expertise of the past is gone. It started with the dumbing down and stripping down of the education system by Thatcher in the 1980s, but at least then there were still decent technical colleges. I went to one rather than University. They started to get run down themselves by the 1990s then Blair almost completely killed them off by commodifying University education. With the now increased fees, it's become just another consumer product where the customers expect a quality product. It's now difficult to get less than a 2:2 degree, because the universities fear being criticised for offering an inferior product, and they are competing against each other to offer top-class facilities and almost guaranteed top-class degrees, rather than spending the cash on actually teaching the students.
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@Seppen said in What a strange exchange.:
It's now difficult to get less than a 2:2 degree, because the universities fear being criticised for offering an inferior product, and they are competing against each other to offer top-class facilities and almost guaranteed top-class degrees, rather than spending the cash on actually teaching the students.
It depends on which one. Not everywhere is the University of Bums on Seats. But the places that are actually good definitely can't satisfy the level of demand that currently exists; it's nearly as crazy as dotcom boom…
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@Seppen said in What a strange exchange.:
entry-level jobs advertised for £40-£50K
Is that in London by any chance? Out here in the sticks it's far lower.
I've just moved jobs, so I saw a load of IT position listings while doing my due-diligence on EE salaries.
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@levicki If you've ruled out people that use LinkedIn and Indians, isn't that 99.9% of the market?
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@Zenith It's politically correct to give room to low-opportunity minorities.
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@Cursorkeys said in What a strange exchange.:
Is that in London by any chance? Out here in the sticks it's far lower.
Interestingly (to me, at least), I just came across this article:
High rents in English cities forcing young to stay in small towns
Young people can no longer afford to move to cities where wages are higher, says Resolution Foundation
One of the problems may be geography. Software is pretty unique in that it can be done remotely (though I suspect many to most people aren't well suited to working that way) but perhaps someone will come up with a new paradigm in response to this sort of thing.
