Stupid Hiring Manager



  • About two months ago some headhunter called me with a position at MegaCorp, paying pretty big bucks (out of sorts for this company), and fairly close to home. I allowed him to submit my resume.

    After a month he calls me up, tells me it's <first name> (like I'm going to remember him after that long) and that the company wants to talk to me. I was leery if they took that long to respond, but I was bored and it was something to do. On the phone screen, the guy sounded intelligent, and took my grilling in stride. He was going to call me in for an interview - they were in a rush (uh oh).

    After another month goes by, they call me back and tell me that the on-boarding process is almost done. Wait a minute, I haven't MET them yet! Can you come in right now (another [nearby] state)? No, I'm at work! But we need to see you so we can get you in here. I make an appointment for next week.

    To be fair, I have no faith in any "process" that works like this, and I'd bet my kids that it's going to be a bust, but I just gotta see what these folks are like.

    Any bets?

     



  • @snoofle said:

    Any bets?

    All depends on who is "they' in "they call me back and"... If it is the headhunder, then I would not place a bet (ie. I believe it will be a bust), OTOH if it is someone from MegaCorp, I would place a bet, providing you give odds of say 4:1.

    If there had not been the time lag, and if the call was from MegaCorp, then I would still only take the bet with odds, but much closer to 2:1



  •  As much as I hate headhunters, this one is limited by the hiring manager, who is making the calls.



  • @TheCPUWizard said:

    odds of say 4:1
    I believe snoofle has 2 little girls.  He bets them both and if he wins he gets ... a half of a little girl?

    No bet.



  • It depends...  The recruiter probably has a really good relationship with MegaCorp, and he probably vetted you.

    I mean, you are a rockstar afterall, right?  Seems the recruiter knows how to spot the good ones...  I've seen it happen a couple of times (never to me though).

    I would, however, go there and meet with someone at MegaCorp before accepting anything.  Last thing you want is to do arrive at your new role only to be firefighting the whole time there...



  • @C-Octothorpe said:

    Seems the recruiter knows how to spot the good ones

    Recruiters like that exist?



  • Does either party know that you are THE Snoofle from TDWF?  If that's the case then they can just read all your postings to realize that you are the superstar they need!!!



  • I just got home and got an e-mail from the agency. Go to 123 Xyz Street, The City.

    I happen to know that MegaCorp has an office at 123 Xyz STREET in The City, and 123 Xyz AVENUE at the other end of The City (I've been to both over the years).

    Naturally, the agent is nowhere to be found. If I go where he said and it's the wrong one, there's no chance to make it to the other one on time.

    I'm going to the address he wrote. Will keep you posted.



  • In unrelated news, they found a 'donor' for my new kidneys.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @TheCPUWizard said:

    @snoofle said:

    Any bets?

    All depends on who is "they' in "they call me back and"... If it is the headhunder, then I would not place a bet (ie. I believe it will be a bust), OTOH if it is someone from MegaCorp, I would place a bet, providing you give odds of say 4:1.

    If there had not been the time lag, and if the call was from MegaCorp, then I would still only take the bet with odds, but much closer to 2:1

    Having been in more than one situation like this I can entirely believe their wheels actually grind this slow.

    I interviewed with two companies--the one I am currently working for, and another one. The other one had several conversations by phone and email, and then went dark. The first one made me an offer. I held them off for a couple days, but the other one didn't respond to my emails, so I took the offer. A couple weeks later, the other one sent me an email and I had to tell 'em I'd already taken the other job.

    I also did some contracting several years ago for a big company and everything took ages. Once I finally got there, I found out it takes 2 weeks to get a computer--they don't do any of the paperwork until you come onboard. Several days after the other guys got computers, I asked around and was told the paperwork appeared to have vanished and they would send around another set of work. Two weeks after that, I got the second computer. How many of you can guess what happened next?

    Yep, a week after THAT, my first computer arrived. The paperwork was left on the desk of someone who went on vacation, and when he got back, it took him a while to get through his pile of stuff to my paperwork, and then he pushed it on, and nobody else blinked, right up until the guy was delivering it--and that was the ONE non-WTF portion of the story, because when I asked him if this was my second computer, he said, "yeah, I guess this is...your...second..." and turned around and walked away with it. (Which was a little rude, but whatever.)



  • @FrostCat said:

    Having been in more than one situation like this

    Where's your self-respect man?

    Seriously. Firstly, why would you even want to work with a company that's too institutionally stupid to figure out the equation: "cost of computer + monitor" < "cost of 2 weeks of professional's time". You know in advance you're never going to get a reasonable schedule from these people. GIANT RED ALARM LIGHTS going off.

    Secondly, why would you even want to work with a company that disrespects your time so much? "Spend two weeks doing nothing?!" Fuck that, I'll spend 2 weeks finding a employer who respects me.

    Even the horrible French Overlords aren't even a tenth as horrible as the company you've described. Why the fuck were you there longer than it takes to say, "hey I guess this position wasn't for me, sorry, bye."


  • Garbage Person

     @blakeyrat said:

    Seriously. Firstly, why would you even want to work with a company that's too institutionally stupid to figure out the equation: "cost of computer + monitor" < "cost of 2 weeks of professional's time".
    In this case, I suspect it wasn't so much about costing as just idiotic paper-pushing morons mucking with the procedures.

     

    At my current place of work, it takes two weeks to get a username, password and directory location on an FTP site.



  • @Weng said:

     @blakeyrat said:
    Seriously. Firstly, why would you even want to work with a company that's too institutionally stupid to figure out the equation: "cost of computer + monitor" < "cost of 2 weeks of professional's time".
    In this case, I suspect it wasn't so much about costing as just idiotic paper-pushing morons mucking with the procedures.

    That's the point, though. If the company allows those people to exist, then it's a bad company.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @Weng said:
     @blakeyrat said:
    Seriously. Firstly, why would you even want to work with a company that's too institutionally stupid to figure out the equation: "cost of computer + monitor" < "cost of 2 weeks of professional's time".
    In this case, I suspect it wasn't so much about costing as just idiotic paper-pushing morons mucking with the procedures.

    That's the point, though. If the company allows those people to exist, then it's a bad company.

     

    Unless "cost of finding & firing the paper-pushing morons, and sourcing and hiring someone who will actually do better" > "the occasional 2 weeks of lost programmer time"

    or "cost of revamping our procurement system" >  "the occasional 2 weeks of lost programmer time"

    or "the amount of money we think we'd waste company-wide on 2nd and 3rd monitors for everyone if we made it too easy to get a monitor" > "the occasional 2 weeks of lost programmer time"

    etc...  Tolerating a little inefficiency can be the lesser of two evils.

     



  • @snoofle said:

    I just got home and got an e-mail from the agency. Go to 123 Xyz Street, The City.

    I happen to know that MegaCorp has an office at 123 Xyz STREET in The City, and 123 Xyz AVENUE at the other end of The City (I've been to both over the years).

    Naturally, the agent is nowhere to be found. If I go where he said and it's the wrong one, there's no chance to make it to the other one on time.

    I'm going to the address he wrote. Will keep you posted.

    I'm assuming that you also responded with the email saying "Ok, I'm going to XYZ Street. If you actually meant XYZ Avenue, please call me immediately, or I cannot possibly make the appointment"

    Also, you have failed to keep us posted.



  • @Volmarias said:

    Also, you have failed to keep us posted.

    I'll assume that the interview was not actually on Friday evening or during the weekend.

    Timestamp on Snoofle's post where he says he just got home: Sat, Dec 17 2011 1:56 AM. Presumably he's several hours behind myself, and that time corresponds to Friday evening for him.

    Timestamp on your post: Mon, Dec 19 2011 7:31 AM. This is two days, five hours and thirty-five minutes after Snoofle's post. That would be Sunday night for him.

    Conclusion: If the interview is on Monday morning (and he only said it'd be this week), we'll hear from him in about 10-12 hours.



  • And here is the update....

    I just got back from the interview. The hiring manager repeated our phone screen, nearly verbatim. Then said that his project is now more than a month behind schedule because I didn't start immediately after the phone screen last month (I had insisted on a face to face meeting). Why he waited a month I don't know. Also, since I'm working I'd need to give notice anyway. He went on to complain that when I come on board (no mention of terms or money yet, but WHEN I come on board) I will need to hustle to catch up. 

    This is a two year development effort that hasn't even begun requirements gathering let alone design. How can they have set a deliverable date if they haven't yet hired anyone and don't yet know what it is they need to build?

    Don't get me wrong, I'm always up for a challenge, but that seems a bit too WTF-y, even for me.

     


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @blakeyrat said:

    @FrostCat said:
    Having been in more than one situation like this

    Where's your self-respect man?

    Seriously. Firstly, why would you even want to work with a company that's too institutionally stupid to figure out the equation: "cost of computer + monitor" < "cost of 2 weeks of professional's time". You know in advance you're never going to get a reasonable schedule from these people. GIANT RED ALARM LIGHTS going off.

    Why would you think I knew that in advance? Also, what makes you think I had nothing to do? Admittedly, the work they found for me was more or less make-work. Actually the work, once I had a computer, was interesting. The wheels of the bureaucracy grind slowly. It was stupid, but not stupid enough to quit over, unless you're a prima donna.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    Unless "cost of finding & firing the paper-pushing morons, and sourcing and hiring someone who will actually do better" > "the occasional 2 weeks of lost programmer time"

    Actually, that's a one-time cost per person. Not trying to justify it, because it's stupid. But it's not as if it happened on a semi-regular basis once you were there.

    Ironically, the major product we worked on was an automation of a wildly slow paper-based workflow. (As in, replacing a manual process that used to take weeks with one that took days.)



  • @FrostCat said:

    Why would you think I knew that in advance?

    True; I'd never think to ask about something like this during an interview because it's so unbelievably WTFy. I generally assume I'm interviewing with sane companies, maybe a mistake...

    @FrostCat said:

    It was stupid, but not stupid enough to quit over, unless you're a prima donna.

    Well call me a prima donna if you want, but I'd at the very least have a serious conversation with management over something like that. I'd also keep the job hunt going because, again, giant red alarm lights...

    Besides, there's nothing wrong (IMO) with working for a company for a week or two before deciding whether you "fit" or not. I don't think anybody would have taken offense, or thought of you as a prima donna.



  • @snoofle said:

    Then said that his project is now more than a month behind schedule because I didn't start immediately after the phone screen last month (I had insisted on a face to face meeting). Why he waited a month I don't know.

    Clearly, so that he'd have someone to blame for the project behind schedule.  Are you sure the job title wasn't "scapegoat"?

    Being blamed for project slippage before you've even joined the company would be a red alert, run-don't-walk warning sign to me.  I probably wouldn't even bother to finish the interview, I'd just make my excuses and leave as soon as the sentence came out of his mouth.




  • @DaveK: Ths interview was winding down at that point anyway. I have no intention of taking that position, in spite of it's potential for entertainment (I get plenty of that where I am now).

     



  • For us, your dear readers, PLEASE take the job.

    MArk B.

    Actually, i think you should keep the old one too.



  • @SteamBoat said:

    For us, your dear readers, PLEASE take the job.

    MArk B.

    Actually, i think you should keep the old one too.

    I think we should clone him

    Every WTF company out there deserves its own Snoofle



  • @SteamBoat said:

    MArk B.
     

    What is this?



  • @dhromed said:

    @SteamBoat said:

    MArk B.
     

    What is this?

    You don't even?  I think as he was signing his petition to snoofle, he held down the shift key a fraction too long while typing his first name, I don't think it has any significance.




  • @DaveK said:

    @dhromed said:

    @SteamBoat said:

    MArk B.
     

    What is this?

    You don't even?  I think as he was signing his petition to snoofle, he held down the shift key a fraction too long while typing his first name, I don't think it has any significance.


     

    He signs all his posts that way, though.

     



  • @Someone You Know said:

    @DaveK said:

    @dhromed said:

    @SteamBoat said:

    MArk B.
     

    What is this?

    You don't even?  I think as he was signing his petition to snoofle, he held down the shift key a fraction too long while typing his first name, I don't think it has any significance.


     

    He signs all his posts that way, though.

     

    Ooooooh.  I didn't know.

    Maybe it's a subtle hint that he's from the Markab Confederacy.

     



  • @DaveK said:

    @Someone You Know said:

    @DaveK said:

    @dhromed said:

    @SteamBoat said:

    MArk B.
     

    What is this?

    You don't even?  I think as he was signing his petition to snoofle, he held down the shift key a fraction too long while typing his first name, I don't think it has any significance.


     

    He signs all his posts that way, though.

     

    Ooooooh.  I didn't know.

    Maybe it's a subtle hint that he's from the Markab Confederacy.

     

     

    ...and therefore a plague victim?

     



  • @aliquot said:

    Unless "cost of finding & firing the paper-pushing morons, and sourcing and hiring someone who will actually do better" > "the occasional 2 weeks of lost programmer time"

    or "cost of revamping our procurement system" >  "the occasional 2 weeks of lost programmer time"

    or "the amount of money we think we'd waste company-wide on 2nd and 3rd monitors for everyone if we made it too easy to get a monitor" > "the occasional 2 weeks of lost programmer time"

    etc...  Tolerating a little inefficiency can be the lesser of two evils.

     

     

    I had a desk change take five weeks once. If I didn't have a coworker out on maternity leave for the last four weeks of it, (I stole her machine) I would have been screwed.

    I was a contract employee, so every IT ticket went through extra sign-offs before anything would be done on it. I'd submit a ticket, ticket would be reviewed, passed to my boss, passed to the head of IT and then back down to the guy that originally got it. 

    So I changed desks and call IT to move my old PC, because the desk I just moved into has a slow Compaq with a noisy CDROM drive, a broken faceplate, and has none of the software I need installed on it. IT decides they need to see if I need an upgrade instead.

    Week later, they inform me they won't be upgrading it, and will be out to just move the machine.

    Another week passes, IT informs me they won't be moving it, because the guy that got my old desk was due an upgrade and they don't want to move two PCs if they don't have to. They'll come out to install the software I need next week.

    Install appointment comes and goes, IT decided the old beige Compaq needs replacing. Oh, and they and won't be installing the software because they don't want to duplicate effort.

    Takes another week to get a new machine. Mail room delivers it to my desk, and wow! Dual-processor, multi-head video card, lots of memory, super-expensive DVD writer, and Windows 2000. Call IT to tell them it arrived. IT sets it up the same day, but doesn't install my software because "It's not certified to run on Windows2000. We'll need to put in a ticket to have it brought down to us and reimaged to NT4." 

    The PC disappears after a few days, along with the 'Aliens' DVD on my desk. When they 'return it', it mysteriously has a Trident video card, less memory, a yellowed 4x CDROM... And still has Win2K on it.

    I didn't get the 'Aliens' DVD back until I owed something like $90 on it, (I rented the three disc set and couldn't return just two discs, so I was accruing three times the rental fee!) which took an act of $deity and HR threats to make IT pay for. Took another month and VP threats to just not pay IT for the machine to get the hardware put back in. 


     


  • Garbage Person

    @NoOneImportant said:

    Mail room delivers it to my desk, and wow! Dual-processor, multi-head video card, lots of memory, super-expensive DVD writer, and Windows 2000. Call IT to tell them it arrived. IT sets it up the same day, but doesn't install my software because "It's not certified to run on Windows2000. We'll need to put in a ticket to have it brought down to us and reimaged to NT4." 

    The PC disappears after a few days, along with the 'Aliens' DVD on my desk. When they 'return it', it mysteriously has a Trident video card, less memory, a yellowed 4x CDROM... And still has Win2K on it.

    Maybe my memory is off, but I'm pretty sure writable DVD standards hadn't been solidified in the Win2k era. DVD itself was still young. Hell, I'm pretty sure that in that era, *CD* burners were still exotic and expensive.

    This is yet another reminder of just how fucking old WinXP is, and makes the fools that cling to it look like even bigger luddites.


  • @Weng said:

    @NoOneImportant said:

    Mail room delivers it to my desk, and wow! Dual-processor, multi-head video card, lots of memory, super-expensive DVD writer, and Windows 2000. Call IT to tell them it arrived. IT sets it up the same day, but doesn't install my software because "It's not certified to run on Windows2000. We'll need to put in a ticket to have it brought down to us and reimaged to NT4." 

    The PC disappears after a few days, along with the 'Aliens' DVD on my desk. When they 'return it', it mysteriously has a Trident video card, less memory, a yellowed 4x CDROM... And still has Win2K on it.

    Maybe my memory is off, but I'm pretty sure writable DVD standards hadn't been solidified in the Win2k era. DVD itself was still young. Hell, I'm pretty sure that in that era, *CD* burners were still exotic and expensive.
    When one of the first affordable domestic IDE all-formats DVD writers became available (the IoMega Dual Drive, in 2003) I rushed straight out and bought one, plugged it into my win2k box and it all worked without any problems.  (DVD-R burners had already been around for a couple of years at that point but I waited for one that could do DVD+R as well.)




  • @Weng said:

    Maybe my memory is off, but I'm pretty sure writable DVD standards hadn't been solidified in the Win2k era. DVD itself was still young. Hell, I'm pretty sure that in that era, *CD* burners were still exotic and expensive.

    Oh please. The first Windows 95 system I built had a CD burner in it, and it wasn't particularly expensive.

     



  • @Zylon said:

    @Weng said:

    Maybe my memory is off, but I'm pretty sure writable DVD standards hadn't been solidified in the Win2k era. DVD itself was still young. Hell, I'm pretty sure that in that era, CD burners were still exotic and expensive.

    Oh please. The first Windows 95 system I built had a CD burner in it, and it wasn't particularly expensive.

    First CD burner I had 1993 - 0.5x burn rate, 4u Rack Mount Unit (Philips). You had to make the image on the HD, then optimize the harddrive so it could keep up (no buffering, a single bobble and the disc was toast). Average time to burn 2 hours, average success rate about 60%.

     Ahhh the "good" olde days...

     note: the above time was for the "Burn" only. Including prep-work and post-validation a single disc typically took about 4-5 hours, but subsequent duplicates only took 2....



  • @TheCPUWizard said:

    @Zylon said:

    @Weng said:

    Maybe my memory is off, but I'm pretty sure writable DVD standards hadn't been solidified in the Win2k era. DVD itself was still young. Hell, I'm pretty sure that in that era, *CD* burners were still exotic and expensive.

    Oh please. The first Windows 95 system I built had a CD burner in it, and it wasn't particularly expensive.

    First CD burner I had 1993 - 0.5x burn rate, 4u Rack Mount Unit (Philips). You had to make the image on the HD, then optimize the harddrive so it could keep up (no buffering, a single bobble and the disc was toast). Average time to burn 2 hours, average success rate about 60%.

     Ahhh the "good" olde days...

     note: the above time was for the "Burn" only. Including prep-work and post-validation a single disc typically took about 4-5 hours, but subsequent duplicates only took 2....

    That's not really a "CD burner", that's a pro-audio CD mastering device.



  • I have to use QWOP to simultaneously keep the CD spinning and the data going.

     

    Sometimes the CD comes out backwards.

    Not sure how that's possible given that it's a circle, but it does.



  • @dhromed said:

    Sometimes the CD comes out backwards.

    Not sure how that's possible given that it's a circle, but it does.


    Hyperdimensional CDs..?

    [url=http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2388]See also[/url].



  • @Xyro said:

    See also.
     

    This is what I mean, man.



  • @dhromed said:

    @Xyro said:

    <A title=http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2388 href="http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2388" target=_blank>See also.
     

    This is what I mean, man.

    It's not that cables exist in 4-dimensional space; rather, they are clearly fermionic particles with spin 1/2, and two full revolutions are required to bring them back into phase.

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