What's the Worst Job Posting You've Seen? 1214
Kickstart70 asks: "Recently myself and a number of friends of mine who work or worked in IT jobs have been remarking on absolutely horrible job postings for low-level IT jobs paying small change. It seems the headhunters and employers are still wanting knowledge in everything, at least one degree but preferably two, and want to keep employees on minimal wages (in the job listing linked, the wage is in Canadian dollars). Is this common everywhere? What's the worst job posting you have seen?"
A joke (Score:1, Interesting)
I am from the UK and work as a freelance writer, I did a piece not too long ago about how employers want more and more yet are in real terms offering less they were 10 years ago. I interviewed the owner of a large telesales outsorcing company, he had this to say
"People always complain about low wages, instead they should be giving me a medal. If costs become too high using staff from the UK I can just move the operation to India and save 40%. Not only that everyone of those Indian workers will be very highly educated and very grateful for the opportunity to work for me."
um wtf? (Score:3, Interesting)
? except for the rediculous amount of qualifications needed for that poisition, it seems like any other job posting ive seen for helpdesk. also 19 bucks an hour is alot of money to most entry level people i know (including myself). it should be noted that the rent in edmonton for a small apartment is usually around 500 CAN/mth and with this job working 40 hours a week would make like 3k.
how is 3k a month bad? have you tried looking for work lately? im tryign to find a job doing similar things in vancouver and would be more than happy with 12 or 13 dollars an hour. that would cover rent and internet and all that.
wtf is the poster on? does he expect everyone to be making 50k+ a year?
Wanted - Linux Admin (Score:2, Interesting)
5 years linux experiance
thorough knowlege of perl, c, php, shell scripting
ability to travel
BA in CS
was some kind of admin job for a new company
they offered us $8 an hour.
On-Call Outlook/Exchange Admin (Score:5, Interesting)
As soon as I see 'Administer Outlook/Exchange' and 'on-call 24/7', I don't care how much it pays.
Besides, I don't have 5 years experience with 2K/XP. I don't know if they do that to weed out liars or what, but it's a big red flag to me that the employer is reality-challenged.
Not the worst, but perhaps the most memorable (Score:1, Interesting)
There were two openings for UNIX systems programmers. They wanted degrees, and lots of experience. They asked for 15 and 20 years of experience working with internal UNIX code. Note that 1993 - 20 is starting to do UNIX systems programming in 1973 and not too many people would have that kind of experience. I showed this to my coworkers and we agreed they either didn't know what they were asking for or they thought they could get Kernigan or Ritchie for the job.
Re:My Own (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Welcome to the 21st century (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:be grateful for what you have (Score:1, Interesting)
I'm grateful to have a good job that pays enough for my food, house and toys, but it angers me to see borderline incompatant company leadership (not in my current company thank you very much!) make millions, per year, while downsizing their staff and outsourcing to cheap in a race to the bottom for those not lucky enought to have a C*O type job.
Bob Allen (formerly AT&T)
Darl McBride (SCO)
Bob Weischapple (formerly Motorola)
Carly Fiorino (HP)
'Knowing' isn't enough... (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall going through one ad, getting excited because I really did have the experience they wanted (Unix, C++, etc.). But then I came to the deal-killer, in all caps: "APPLICANT MUST HAVE THIS EXPERIENCE WORKING FOR A MEDICAL EQUIPMENT SUPPLIER."
Re:My Own (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Requirements that end up in a checksum failure. (Score:3, Interesting)
We're actually seeking candidates with three years of XP experience. We also brought in an instructor with a resume listing five years of
Sometimes the requirements aren't impossible, just extremely improbable. When I applied here for an entry SQA job several years ago, I was told that I need to have a Bachelors degree in Software Quality Assurance. At the time, there was only one college in the US that offered such a degree. Everyplace else was just a techschool certificate. I was told by the HR rep to first get a degree, then get 5 years of experience, then come back and reapply.
Out of 18 SQA personnel, none had these qualifications. If he could have listed a masters or doctorate in Software Quality Assurance, I'm sure he would have.
I went over his head to the manager with the req, and got hired. The HR rep never did talk to me afterwards.
You all act like this is something new... (Score:1, Interesting)
I can now scan down the Want Ads and pick out those ads that are just fishing expeditions for headhunter agencies (high salaries with low/reasonable requirements), sweat shops (low salaries with ridiculous requirements) and automated HR departments (resume must be submitted in Word format, resumes not in Word format will not be considered). None of these ads should be replied to. Any that are legitimate will learn their lesson and resubmit the next week OR they found a sucker and, luckily, it wasn't you!
My favorite way of weeding out idiots is to submit my resume in PDF format. If they call back demanding that I send it in any other format, I give up now. If they call complaining that they can't open this in Word, I give up. If they call back and ask what a PDF file is and how can they open it, I at least give the benefit of a doubt; they might actually need me!
Here's my favorite story: I answered an ad in the paper, talked with the owner of the company and actually had an interview. About 1 week later I busted a private eye sitting in front of my house when I came home. 2+2 = ??? I called the owner of the company, told him I wasn't interested in any job he had to offer and, when he asked why, told him that he obviously wasn't capable of hiring competent people. Later that day I got a call from the private eye asking what the hell I'd done to get him fired.
It takes all kinds; I just don't want to work for most of them.
Re:Real posting... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Lots of them here (Score:2, Interesting)
andy
Re:Job listing I want to see (Score:3, Interesting)
Hell, even as a grad student, if you go into a field that is short on intelligent students (basically all the hard sciences) you'll be making a 20-30,000 a year salary as a grad student and not have to pay tuition. Spend a couple more years as a post-doc lackey making around 40,000 and get some good research published and you're set for life.
This is why I left the IT industry and went back to school. I was tired of low job security, annoying corporate culture, co-workers like something out of a Dilbert comic, and pointless tasks. The moron-to-person ratio is much smaller in academics.
Re:Real posting... (Score:1, Interesting)
I kid you not, in towns that were built around closed mines in that part of the country, you could drive in with a Winnebago trailer, and trade it straight up for a comfortably large house.
Granted, you will eventually die in that house, because you will never save up enough money to retire and move away at those wages... but if you plan on dying young you could do a lot worse than spending your life renting canoes out to tourists or working the docks or something while hunting and fishing every weekend. A lot of people have chosen that life, and have no regrets.
Oh... make sure you have that $5.10 per hour job locked up before you move there, because if you are there with no job you can plan on not getting one any time soon.
Focus on the Family (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mail room (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Real posting... (Score:5, Interesting)
IQ tests mean very little at any point. The bulk of the 'research' done to support the use of IQ tests has been either tainted with eugenic/racist theories or outright fraudulent. Stephen Jay Gould did the cannonical debunking of them in 'the mismeasure of man'.
When I was at high school I posted some IQ scores that were well outside the standard range - 160 to 180. That is because the school was a selective school and we had a weekly coaching session on the exam to get into the upper school. My scores went from upper decile to 2 to 3 standard deviations above the mean. All through coaching and practice.
Then when we got into the upper school we were told that research shows that the results are innate. I said the results had to be faulty since the entitre class of us had shown the same type of improvement (not necessarily as extreeme). Thats the point where I discovered that English public schools can hire some awfully stupid geography teachers. The science staff backed me up though.
Odd thing was that despite all that testing the school never picked up the fact I have a form of dyslexia.
Re:Worst I've seen (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, they're residents.
This guy has laid out that what the position requires is professionalism and pride in your work. If you want to be a clock-monkey, don't show up. He clearly states that initially you get paid between 45 and 65k - and that once you prove yourself by making PRODUCTS THAT WORK (i.e. fufilling your job requirement), you get raises. And it's all tied to the bottom line, and laid out before you PRIOR to the interview.
And the reason you think he should shove it is because it's written to get rid of those of you who want to punch the clock.
You have a job to get a paycheck. You pick your career because you want to love what you do. Don't ever confuse the two.
Re:Unfair moderation (Score:2, Interesting)
http://slashdot.org/~NoMoreNicksLeft/journal/46
Got mis-moderated by a troupe of chimpanzees masquerading as slashdot readers. Some idiot accused me of cutting and pasting a list of OS's I claimed to use.
Sort of like the pot calling the kettle black.
SAT score rescaling (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not going to comment about whether or not 1220 is a "good" score, but it is definitely a better score back in the day than it is now.
Sometimes it's not the public postings.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Okay, what are they like?
...yeah, how many people for these 100-ish boxes?
"Great company, very busy, lots of growth."
Do tell. What kind of shop do they have?
"75 to 100 servers."
So they're not quite sure how big they are. You've been talking to a clueless manager, then.
(Pause) "Yeah, he wants you bad."
How bad? How many people are supporting these...
"uh, closer to 100 servers"
"3 on staff right now."
So they either had a cost-cutting purge or the previously overworked staffers walked before they keeled over.
"So then, do you want to talk to them?"
So sometimes it's the postings you *don't* see that you should worry about.
From my company's job board (Score:1, Interesting)
POSITION: Entry Level Software Engineer
LOCATION: Various
SALARY: $36k-48k, depending upon qualifications
DESCRIPTION: ********* is seeking motivated individuals to fill several key entry level positions in software development. Successful candidates must have 10+ years project experience with at least 5 years in leadership or staff level positions. Candidates must be fluent in C, C++, C#,
====
Re:Job listing I want to see (Score:2, Interesting)
As programmers, we laugh our guts out when we see job listings for a C programmer or Perl programmer, etc. because we know that anyone worth his or her salt should be able to pick up a new language quickly. After all, these languages are Turing complete. You can only express a for loop or an if statement in so many ways.
Those of us in the know realize that you want to hire for domain knowledge. I mean, I've been programming in C for 10 years, but if someone asked me to write medical imaging software in C, my language background is useless because I don't understand the problem.
When you hire a permanent employee, it obviously makes sense to hire for attitude and aptitude, since tech skills become obsolete so quickly. However, in defense of these job postings that have hyper-specific, buzz word laden requirements, I should point out that many are from recruting firms (head hunters). Their clients call them and say, "We need an experienced programmer that already knows C++ and can start work THIS WEEK because the project is already late/fubared/etc." Their clients often don't have time for you to inhale the O'Reilly book. They are desperate for someone to fix their problem immediately.
Re:From my company's job board (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the tricks big companies use to underpay H1-B's is to give them an 'entry level' position. The government has tables that list the average salary for a given position, and the job must pay an entry level worker that amount give or take something like 12%.
Companies always pay exacly 12% less than that number.
I wish I could remember where I read that. It was a fairly recent article somewhere, maybe on cnn or even here. Who knows...
Another evil bastard tool is the L-1. If a company is multinational, they can bring a foreign "guest" in on an L-1 Visa, which has no requirements whatsoever. They can be paid the prevailing wage IN THEIR HOME COUNTRY for as long as they're here, and there's no limit whatsoever on how long they can be here.
Subsidized drugs? Bullshit. Shorter patents. (Score:3, Interesting)
However you missed the boat on drugs. Drugs are NOT subsidized in Canada. Nor is dental work, nor are eyeglasses. But, patent life in Canada is shorter. This means there is more competion, and medicine is cheaper. Ah well, you are right Canada does have slow health care. Charging $50.00 to the the morons that show up at the emergency ward with the sniffles (a non emergency) instead of the doctor's office would help Canada afford something better. It happens all the time. This is the one lesson from American health insurance that Canadians could well learn from. It costs about 3 or 4 times the price of a doctor's office visit to go to the emergency room... and that is just to be triaged before treatment!
However... and now a major rant against American health care: You're probably the type who never bothered to notice the clerk at a local store wince because he or she is in pain from a back injury. And you probably don't give a shit that they can't get it fixed becuase they can't afford it on the wage they make, the store they work at doesn't provide health insurance, and they make too much to get medicade. Just as long as you can get your MRI in a day, who gives a fuck about the 70,000,000 who can't get any MRI? But then again, maybe you are also one of those hypocrytical born again Christian assholes who says universal medicare is not for you because the people who can't afford health insurance should stop whining and get a real job like I hear these dickheads say all the time. Like Jesus when healing a lame begger ever stopped to say, "do you have an HMO or a PPO? What, no insurance? Sorry piss off."
It is amazing that a county that outspends by far any other country in the world per capita in health care, doesn't care to make sure everyone is covered. That is the black side of American health care. On the other hand, you may need a long time to get an MRI in Canada, but you will get it whether you are employed or not. And if it is an emergency, you will get it in minutes. Urgent, in hours. Nice to have, you have to wait. I had a shoulder operation after I was hurt... after I was laid off from a company. I wouldn't have been able to afford it here. Canada has also either the first on second healtiest population in the world according the the U.N. That is because everyone has access to basic health care. The mattress store clerk in Ballwin, MO. wouldn't have to live in chronic pain. The U.S. by the way, falls way down the list, below Canada and many of the European Union countries who all have universal health care.
So you want to knock universal health care? And people keep saying Americans are selfish. Can you imagine that? Get a clue.
Re:HR and CEO's holding their breath (Score:1, Interesting)
It will take one or two significant failures, even to the point of bankrupting a large company or two, to scare the large corporations away from offshore work.
Intellectual property laws are non-existant in those countries.
Re:Lots of them here (Score:3, Interesting)
And there are a lot more small and medium sized software companies out there than Fortune 500 companies. Just something to noodle over for those of you so entrenched in Big Corporate America that you forget about the alternatives. Is a good CEO worth two or even three times what a top engineer is? Maybe, maybe not. But that's a very different picture from your factor of 1000, which is the exception, not the rule. Obviously no man is likely to provide _that_ much more value to the company on the margin than everybody else.
Re:fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. (Score:3, Interesting)
Then you are a rarity, and might well be worth what you are paid.
The irritation expressed on Slashdot (at least from me, as well as many others) is aimed at managers who did *not* rise from the ranks, who do *not* understand the domain they manage (understandable, as currently business schools churn out generic, non-domain-specific graduates) who reached their current pay level through cronyism rather than even a vague approximation of a meritocracy.
I am vaguely curious as to what business skills you feel are so crucial and so difficult to acquire, however. I agree that certainly, not every engineer can make a decent manager. However, I also think that a lot of folks either mix marketing- or sales-related skills with business skills, or overestimate the difficulty necessary to acquire (not fine-tune) business skills. (Of course, I also feel that the same applies to web programming, which probably wouldn't sit well with many folks on Slashdot.)
Re:That's like... (Score:1, Interesting)
The medical insurance wouldn't pay for it, the doctor refused to fight them over it.
She died from brain cancer exactly 8 months ago. She fought the good fight and in the end died surrounded by her family.
And they failed to diagnose the ovarian cancer for several years even though she was complaining and going in several times a year for tests and sonagrams. Because they couldn't be bothered to actually look for anything wrong, if the doctor finds anything wrong they get less of a bonus from the insurance company come the end of the year.
I am sad, and that person is so wrong about american health care.
Our health care sucks.
Worst? Land mine disposal (Score:3, Interesting)
Those stories make me appreciate the relatively low risk the IT industry is, but I have been arrested once because of a stupid fuckwit recruiter. The job was for a security cleared individual, with a security rating that matched some acronym on my CV. The fuckwit recruiter scum just assumed because I had the TLA and the word security, that was enough. He never told me the "security clearance" part, or the "Ministry of Defence" part, just that the employer was the national phone company, and they needed a security analyst specialising in big secure networks to work at a client site for a few weeks filling in for a sick Cisco specialist.
I showed up at the unmarked HQ of the ministry of defence in a country which doesn't have a sense of humour. So they kept me for a few days. Non-stop questioning with no food or water, sleep deprivation, bright lights and a painfully loud klaxxon every time my head nodded or I closed my eyes. Meanwhile they checked out my story, and eventually decided I was the victim of a fuckhead agency. Then I was allowed back to my hotel, ordered to return the next day to start work. So for one day I was the star techie in the group, the project manager had tons of technical questions for me, and lots of shooting the breeze. They then expelled me from the country later that friday afternoon. The sleazy headhunter guy was fired before I even got back, the company said he had been an independent, and refused to deal with me. I never got my new 486 laptop back, or paid for my lost week. I had to get a new passport, because they put a big red stamp in it stating "expelled permanently for economic espionage". Quite worrying for a while, since a spying charge there carried the death penalty.
I vet all my contracts very carefully now, and refuse all jobs that ask "can you start tomorrow or next monday".
the AC
Re:My Own (Score:3, Interesting)
[shrug] Okay, fair enough. That wasn't clear to me in the initial post.
I'd care if I was taking my machine in for repair because it's incredibly rude to impose that sort of thing on others. There's a difference between leaving your porn in a folder somewhere when it goes into the shop, and having it be your desktop and screensaver.
[sigh] This is where we get into gender differences. Imposition wasn't at all the issue I thought you were bringing up -- rather, the possibility that he might be shamed.
I suppose the closest equivalent I could think of would be if I ran into a woman's computer with pornography of men, or perhaps a guy with gay porn on his computer. I just...I can't say I'd feel imposed upon. I'd probably get a chuckle out of it, but not feel uncomfortable.
To be honest, the tint of dishonesty is what bothers me more. Obviously, we try to lie to each other, to present a different image from what we really are. People clean up the house when they have relatives coming over, job interviewees wear formal business attire for interviews (even if they never would on the job), and generally sexuality is Not Spoken Of. It kind of bothers me -- I wish everyone could be entirely open and honest -- if they happen to find tentacle porn appealing, it'd be nice if folks could admit it. I've had a couple friends that are gay, and the degree of net emotional agony they go through with having to deal with hiding the fact much of the time seems like a mind-bogglingly awful social issue.
It may be that two hundred years from now, folks will be as far beyond us today regarding honesty in sexuality as we are beyond Victorian times and the kind of hidden social issues that Freud turned up.