Getting Over the Stigma of a Previous Job? 678
Subm asks: "Some friends-of-friends worked at a company with such a high profile downfall their past employer became a liability. They weren't involved in causing the downfall, but with the name 'Enron' on their resumes, interviews were spent defending their past employment. SCO is more focused in its industry than Enron, was and its reputation is in a downward spiral in that industry (Unix and GNU/Linux, not lawsuits, that is). SCO's staff will have to look for other jobs sooner or later, and most within the Unix/GNU/Linux community. Can good workers get over the stigma of an employer's reputation? How will working at SCO affect its staff's careers? Does anyone at SCO talk about this?"
It's about skills, 99.9% (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally it would depend... (Score:5, Insightful)
- Chief Financial officer of Enron: Not hiring
- Poor grunt at Enron who had no clue what hit him: Could look past that to his real experience.
- Lower level accountant at Enron: My get some questions asked in an effort to determine their position in all the mess
Obviously many don't think that way and wouldn't touch an ex-Enron employee with a ten foot telephone pole and I really feel sorry for them.However for every door closed there's a door open, consider writing a book about the mess or posing for playboy for example (they did a women of Enron IIRC)? You get the idea there...
IMHO there's always an opportunity for you...just look....
Employment stigma (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless your friends-of-friends are actively involved in upper management (director level +), they shouldn't have problems. If they are involved in upper-level management, then they already know several executive-level headhunters who will find them new jobs in a hurry. Sucks, but that's how it goes when you play at that level.
Can I get over the stigma of my last job? (Score:5, Insightful)
I gave that company three long hard years, and developed some absolutely killer applications for them. Now, if an prospective employer calls them, they make me out to be some malicious, spiteful Developer who left them high and dry. Three years of stellar work... down the drain.
With that said, I guess the best advice is that employment is like a marriage, you need to check them out, just as much as they do you. Else your left with stigma of the former employer, either you on them, or them on you. Either case, it's not good.
Silly (Score:3, Insightful)
It assumes prospective employers will look at a qualified job applicant and say, "No, I just can't hire this person because he used to work for a jerk. Even though he had no control over the legal matters of his employer, somhow I have to take it out on him."
Come on people, be realistic.
Good folk in bad companies will always happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Having been in a bit of this position, I can say that the best approach is to put things in the context of doing the job that is given to you to the best of your ability. While your job may not be popular par se (imagine trying to land something after having the tile of Asset Reclaimer at SCO), if show that you are doing it within the best of your ability in line with what the company is trying to do, then you will show that are willing to things that, while contrary to your nature (one would hope), you are willing to do the things that are necessary in a very ugly world to get the cash on the table.
And yes, I realize that in some cases these folk are evil and deserve to be shut out, and I agree with that, but for example I know a good man at SCO in a high position. He hates what is happening there, but was there before the shift to this current strategy last year, and so is doing the job. His job is of a nature that finding a new one and getting out in the name of being on the "side of righteousness" is a difficult item to do with many considerations, not least of which are small things like his house, cars, kids schooling and the like. I can see why he stays, and why he would try to keep everything on the downlow. He is also hella good at what he does, and shold SCO decides to redundant him, or they go the way of all good trash, then I would hate to see that a name on his resume would get in way of the fact that he is very competent and good at what he does.
Flame away boys!
not the worker's decision (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Industry defense mechanism (Score:4, Insightful)
The items I look for in hiring are:
If you are honestly doing your job and have nothing to do with any corrupt or questionable business practices, would you really want to work for a place that blacklists you based upon your commited work to a percieved "unethical" orginization?
Re:It's about skills, 99.9% (Score:4, Insightful)
Change careers- (Score:3, Insightful)
Took some time off from working, and did a career change. In retrospect, probably the best thing I have ever done job-wise.
Re:With the current economy (Score:1, Insightful)
I sure as hell wouldn't hire you, that's for sure.
Re:Stigma? Try Porn Star (Score:5, Insightful)
I can not believe that you would put your wife at risk this way.
On the medical side of things:
HIV viral loads are more sensitive for early HIV infection. They were swabbing your various orifices because those are typical areas for gonorrhea and chlamydia that can be passed around during various sexual practices.
Davak
Re:Industry defense mechanism (Score:5, Insightful)
It's about skills 99.9%, only to the short sighted (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but
Of course, not all risks are created equal. Hiring an ex-SCO employee could be hiring a plant; someone who will be placing SCO code in their new employer's product for future litigation in exchange for financial consideration on the side, etc. This is a real risk, but a pretty remote one.
Far more likely than the possible-but-remote possibility outlined above, and far more troublesome, are the simple consiquences of having unethical people in your ranks, whether it be to moral (back-stabbing of fellow employees), effeciency (covering up one's own mistakes by shifting blame to another, resulting in incorrect corrective action being taken, etc.), or liability exposure of the company (unethical behavior towards clients to pad one's own performance, unethical behavior on behalf of the company but unbeknownst to its CEO), and so on.
Anyone still working at SCO, knowing what is widely known now, isn't someone with the kind of ethical or moral foundation I would want within my ranks. The risk of damage (to morale, to our firm's reputation, etc.) is far too high, and the possible reward (a decent employee hired on the cheap) is both not worth it (the difference between getting a cut-rate ex-SCO employee and paying someone with a less questionable resume something closer to market value doesn't begin to outweigh the risks) and far too fleeting (sooner or later that underpaid employee is going to want to be paid market value and demand a raise).
Does this mean all current SCO employees are unethical? No, it doesn't. But given the widespread knowledge within the industry of SCO's current behavior and its ethical implications, of which no employee can realistically or believably claim ignorance (and doing so would be quite telling in its own right), one can pretty much reduce their willingness to stay to a few possiblities, all negative qualities in a potential employee:
None of these possibilities bode well for the success of a potential hiree, or their contribution to the hiring firm. Indeed, they represent substantial risk to any future employer and offer no significant benefit to counterbalance that risk.
Sorry, SCO denizens. There's no work for you here, at any price.
Re:"Worked at SCO" may not be a liability afterall (Score:2, Insightful)
There are three code pieces that appear to be copied verbatim. The first is forty-two lines of packet handling code. Following the ip_vs_state_table variable is where most of the infringement takes place. Only the state transition handling seems to be original. The second is sixteen lines of VM allocation code. Five lines after CONFIG_DISCONTIGMEM, and eleven lines after VMALLOC_VMADDR. And the last is seven lines after SELFPOWER, USB specific power management code.
There's another possibility. SCO and Linux may both have legitimately copied that code from the original source when that source allowed it. In at least one case (involving memory-allocation code), the code SCO claimed was copied from them actually was legally copied from the original AT&T Unix code. SCO's code was identical because SCO also legally copied that same original code.
Re:Can they be proactive? (Score:4, Insightful)
What if you have a sick family member, and need the health insurance the company provides you?
It depends on the interview (Score:4, Insightful)
If they say yes, hire them, anyone that'll do a good job there will do a good one for you.
If they say no, I did my best to sabotage their antiGNU efforts show them the door and say thank you very much for taking your time to come down, then warn your buddies at lunch just in case the guy ever shows up at their business. If they have no more personal integrety than that you can't trust them enough to hire them, they'll do the same thing to you as soon as the coffee vender puts in a blend they don't like, their favorite candy is out at the machine, etc.
You hire people to get work done, not to go off on their own prima-donna crusades.
Re:It's about skills, 99.9% (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll just put it this way - if there ever was such a creature as a reliable and honest worker, he was walked over, ripped off and had the crap kicked out of him years ago by his unscrupulous, self-serving cow-orkers and incompetant managers.
Re:ONLY FUCKING HIPPY LINUX ZEALOTS WILL CARE (Score:3, Insightful)
You'll have to be more specific than that or you may end up confusing Mac zealots with Linux zealots... similar, but different
Re:It's about skills, 99.9% (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I hate to admit it, but SCO people are marked.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate to remind people - but there are a lot of unemployed people who would love a paycheck from SCO *or* Enron...
How would, say - a Java developer, have any influence on anything the bigwigs at SCO or Enron did? If anything - they are being hurt the most and the most unfairly, if not exactly by their company - by people like you who will hold it against a regular joe something that is/was decided by people who own yachts, have summer homes, and send their kids to private boarding schools.
Re:It's about skills 99.9%, only to the short sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
You leave no room for the concept that a current employee has a job, gets up in the morning, goes to work, does their work, goes home, goes to bed just so they can get money to pay the rent.
If I worked at SCO, I don't think I'd want to work for you...
Re:It's about skills 99.9%, only to the short sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's about skills 99.9%, only to the short sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
You also missed one important possible attribute that a SCO employee may have: the desire to feed his kids in a bad job market. The idea of explaining to your children why they're having to move into public housing and buy milk with coupons might be enough to make someone want to stick it out until their idiot CEO is replaced by someone more rational.
Talk about morality all you want, but given the current IT career options, it could be suicidal to quit a full-time job. If you're blind to the possibility that there may be good, talented people at SCO, then that's a shame.
That's not really fair. (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember, the original SCO is now Tarantella, Inc., and a SCO employee of 5 years ago has absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the current SCaldera. Do such people deserve the opprobrium anyway? Similarly, should Ransom Love be blamed for the actions taken by Darl McBride?
MCI/Worldcom was one of the early corporate adopters of PHP. If you were interviewing for an IT position and wanted a forward-thinking individual, would you pass over an ex-Worldcom employee based on the ethics problems of Bernard Ebbers and his (probably small) cabal?
A single individual can rarely take credit for large corporate efforts (i.e. implementing an ERP system, etc.). Similarly, outside of situations where corporate officers are legally responsible, individuals should not be blamed for corporate wrongdoings.
Re:It's about skills, 99.9% (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:"Worked at SCO" may not be a liability afterall (Score:4, Insightful)
If you claim after having said why not just say, "I see some code that is identical, but I know nothing of its true origins" since there are obviously many, many more examples of identical code in Linux, BSD, and SCOwhatever. Moreover, many others have been making the same conclusions bases on the same scant evidence.
Missed one.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Industry defense mechanism (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I thought about that -- but if inexperienced newbs or immigrants can do the job adequately for less, then the company would already have replaced its workforce with them.
On the other hand, if the newbs or immigrants they would hire are less capable, then the company suffers. That has the benefit of
- Driving an evil company out of business, and
- Motivating other companies not to become evil.
If skilled workers know that they will not be able to get a job after working for a sleazy company, then the preponderance won't, or will quit when they see that their company is headed down that path. Granted, a few will join up or hang on -- the financially strapped, for example -- and those few can explain their straits to their next employer, if he will hear them.I haven't given this whole theory much thought: an economics PhD might just have a study up her sleeve proving me wrong. It just makes some sense to me.
Re:It's about skills, 99.9% (Score:3, Insightful)
Think about it... how many coding friends do you have unemployed? If you had a job, its hard to get another, and its even harder being unemployed or out of the IT industry. Some of these SCO grunts need you people to simply give them some slack. They probably have mouths to feed.
Re:"Worked at SCO" may not be a liability afterall (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect your post is nothing more than a high-class troll that somehow got modded up to +5 Interesting, but your claims are just about as fuzzy as Darl's. The symbols you mention appear in dozens for files. If you really have any such "evidence" state the file names.
Even if what you're saying is true, are you sure the code doesn't come from BSD or some other common source?
People don't hire threats to themselves. (Score:3, Insightful)
Which is why I apply for jobs I'm just barely qualified to do. But then I hear:
Frankly, it doesn't matter. An HR employee who doesn't like you, or even their job, for that matter, is going to make sure you don't get the job. They've got a list of excuses for every possible scenario:
There's no silver bullet to getting hired. Just put down what you're good at and submit your resume.
Re:Industry defense mechanism (Score:1, Insightful)
Cue the world's smallest violin: companies have to know that "at will" employment cuts both ways.
Re:It's about skills 99.9%, only to the short sigh (Score:1, Insightful)
I nominate this post for the Tin Foil Hat award of 2003...
Re:Stigma? Try Porn Star (Score:2, Insightful)
You suck. There are other ways to make money. I feel no sorrow for you. I only feel for your family, since the Dad they think they have is really a lie.
Re:Industry defense mechanism (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, with myself. The notion of corporate loyalty is dead. I mean, most companies will fire me and the whole department to save a few bucks, so why shouldn't I with a clear conscience leave when it's to my own gain?
Re:Industry defense mechanism (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but this is a little more short-term thinking. Companies these days are doing everything humanly possible to cut the bottom line. They're making really stupid decisions to take more money from their customers while giving them less and taking more and more control over their product after it's left the shelf.
What happens? Companies with intelligent management or (even better) small businesses step in and the whole process reinvents itself for another cycle.
Think Microsoft.
Re:It's about skills 99.9%, only to the short sigh (Score:3, Insightful)
My personal ethics would put feeding my children above working for a lying, litigatious employer. Idealism only goes so far when the house and college educations are on the line. It's only been some months since SCO has started to persue its new business model, and with a job market like todays it's not easy to find a job even in that period of time. Also, It's not like SCO is killing people. SCO is not that bad.
Many software people develop deep business relationships over the years. SCO still has clients.
What if, what if, what if??? To think this issue is black and white is hopelessly nieve.
I would wonder too... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been in the position of having to interview people with such qualifications. They ALWAYS act as if they are only there to get a salary once again (even if they say the low salary is OK -- it's only temporary to them). The second the market opens up, they're gone. This isn't sour grapes. It's a fact. Someone who's had a lot of training expects to be paid accordingly (and rightfully so, in my opinion).
Nuremburg Revisted! (Score:4, Insightful)
Integrity is the willingness to do what is right even when no one is looking. I have deliberately made choices knowing I would lose my job and career but did so anyway because it was simply the right thing to do. So it should be with the SCO employees.
I am the CIO of my company. What do you think the chances of any post-SCO-implosion employee being hired by me? Slim to none.
I'm sick and tired of people who know only about situational ethics.
Re:That's not really fair. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, they do deserve the opprobrium. It's not like the employees of SCO don't know they are participating in a pump-and-dump. But then again, with the way the economy is going, I can't really blame anyone for being carefree with their nerd karma. To sum it up succinctly:
A SCO job is better than no job.
Life isn't fair. (Score:3, Insightful)
If they're in debt that bad, they could be a risk. Do they have a gambling problem?
Health insurance is tricky. They can continue their coverage in many cases, but they'll have to pay for it.
That's why being proactive is important. I don't want some idiot who can't see what's coming because he's too busy worrying about his gambling debts.
If his life is THAT complicated (high debts, sick family member, etc) then he NEEDS to be proactive and he NEEDS to be interviewing now instead of HOPING that something good will happen with SCO.
If you have bills to pay and a sick wife to look after, and your job MIGHT be gone in 6 months....
Re:That's not really fair. (Score:1, Insightful)
> Similarly, should Ransom Love be blamed for the actions taken by Darl McBride?
Didn't Ransom Love hire Darl McBride?
It depends on when the joined, & when they qui (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I think questioning the character of an ex-employee from a questionable company is one of the best ways to guard against some of the detrimental corporate activity in world. If a coder knows that participating in something which will damage the tech world, will also damage their future employment opportunities, coders will be that much less likely to go along with nefarious plans, or even remain ignorant of what their company is doing. CEO's with evil plans will be that much less likely to carry their plans to fruition if they are restricted only to coders who don't care about anyone else, or even their own job prospects when their bosses unfurl their golden parachutes.
There is nothing wrong with holding people accountable for the choices they make. And there is a great deal wrong with not doing that. In technology, as it is in life.
That said, I don't think a low-level coder for Enron should be required to answer for the same decisions the high-level "death star" programmers should. But good luck getting hired by me if you accepted any work from Halliburton or Diebold during the last 3 years.
Re:Industry defense mechanism (Score:1, Insightful)
> The items I look for in hiring are ... Loyalty ...
Here's a shocking idea that might knock the socks off of most employers in the U.S. - If you want employee loyalty, you have to be loyal to your employees. Giving your IT guys a pink slip at the first sign of rough times is a great way to ensure they will only look out for themselves and NOT the company.
Why should I give two shits about you when you're probably going to can me during the next economic down-turn? I used to be a loyal employee, geing grateful that I was given a chance to work for my employer. It's different now, though. It's us against them. We need you about as much as you need us, and you've shown us how much we're worth to you.
Re:Stigma? Try Porn Star (Score:3, Insightful)
I speak from experience.
He should go to a professional counselor and talk with them about coming clean with his wife. I wish him luck as it could mean the end of their relationship. Either way, that is.
For family and boss, whatever, they don't need to know everything. But for a spouse it is critical.
Cheers.
Re:People don't hire threats to themselves. (Score:3, Insightful)
The eonomy in the U.S. is getting a lot better, but from what I see it still isn't great.
SCO Vs Enron (Score:2, Insightful)
Enployees at SCO know at this very moment that some funky shit is going down. If they don't jump ship now they don't deserve jobs elsewhere. Unless they truly believe like some crazy jihad zealots that SCO is right, they are gambling their livelyhood on the prospect that SCO will win and be able to rape the rest of the linux world with licenses.
Keep implosion separate from scumbags... (Score:2, Insightful)
Of the two, Enron and the future SCO, only SCO is an organization that is publicly using lies and deception as its primary business model. Anyone still at SCO should know this and should be avoided like the plague by any employer in the industry. At the end of the day, you've got to stand for something; working for someone you know is unethical is just as bad as actively participating.
Enron and AA aren't in the same category. Enron masterminded a huge deception with the complicity of a lot of people, including their auditors and investment bankers. Fortune [fortune.com] did a great story awhile back, but it's not available on the web for free.
At the same time, Enron was a massive company that employed many, many people who had no clue what was going on. They were people who went to work every day and did a job that they thought was valuable. This included a number of acquired start-ups that were trying to build new technologies and business models. Unless someone was working in Enron's finance department or in some of their shady energy trading operations, it shouldn't matter. (And yes, I realize that there were many who deliberately avoided the truth because they were making a lot of money.)
If you have friends defending themselves based on the behavior of Fastow and Ken Lay, then your friends need to come up with a new answer. It should be a very simple, direct answer -- I was one of thousands of employees at Enron and I wasn't privy to any of the financial decisions. And that's the end of the story.
If someone persists and wants to go down the Enron road and you have to be more aggressive, then tell them you'll be happy to answer whatever questions they've got if they can tell you what their CEO worked on before lunch today and what their CFO discussed with their investment bankers the last time they talked.
At the end of the day, this shouldn't be an issue based on paranoid fantasies like, "Ex-SCO employees might plant code." It's a simple matter of the employee's ethics -- and an employee who is willing to cross the line, legally or morally, is a time-bomb. Sooner or later, he or she is going to screw you or your customer, because life is full of little temptations and opportunities to do the right or wrong thing.
Interesting - Ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
I absolutely agree - let me say that up front. Given a such a choice, I would feed my family first.
Ethics, however, is a deeper topic than either/or in a given situation. While it is true that companies go bad (like SCO), this is somewhat rare, I think. At least, most of the companies I've worked with both as a consultant and as an employee (more than 100, easily) rarely was much more than disingenuous on the edge cases. When they were more than that, I was among many that pitched the argument in the other direction.
Truly nasty companies are easy to spot: they target a market that has a weakness they think they can exploit. SCO (at least publically) thinks it can use legal attacks against Linix; Telemarketers attempt to exploit old people; credit councillor companies prey on those in debt. Most (not all, but most) reasonable companies realize they are part of a chain of commerce. Think about how your company fits into that chain.
I believe evil employers are rare. Should you find yourself in bed with one, leave. Worse, should you be employed by one, leave quickly!
I must say, I'd be very hesitant to hire someone who tolerated, say, Enron or SCO's behavior. I've been the part of some creepy deals, and when they crossed the line, I stopped taking part. I've been involved with startups that wanted to "grow" though non-standard methods, and I have refused to take part. What "the line" is varies for various people, but one bright line is what gets reported in the news. On a personal basis, I've missed out on some things because I wouldn't be dishonest. And that's not only OK, but very important to me. Because that's important to me, someone who facillitated massive fraud would at the very least be subject to a good, hard look. At least until the EEOC comes down with the No White Collar Criminal Left Behind recomendation.
I suppose I can only say that if you find yourself at an ethically challenged company now, with constraints (family, debt, whatever) that don't give you much room, the single best thing you can do for yourself is to find a local company that can use your skills, think about how you can add value to their company, and go talk to them about your situation, and how you can help their situation. Odds are many will turn you down, but you will find a job with a company that doesn't fuck people over, and still be able to feed your family. And remember, for every company that turns you down, you're learning a lot by thinking seriously about the business they do.
Interview Skills (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially someone technical who had nothing to do with the decision processes that led to the Enron/Worldcom/Tyco/SCO type insanity should put an accurate employment history on their resume and be prepared to bring an interview back to the correct subject: their ability to perform the job they are applying for. It would be a good idea to have answers for "questions" like: "Why did you stay there?", "Convince me that you had nothing to do with their accounting practices.", etc. These will be issues for some people so be ready for them.
Be prepared to address someone who keeps drifting back to the company and its policies directly with a "I had nothing to do with the upper management who did this stuff." This is also a good place to brown-nose a little and say that one of the things that attracted you to the company you're interviewing with is their good repuatation, etc. since this also puts your role at Enron or whoever into perspective to the person interviewing you. It should bring up for the interviewer how little control they have over such things.
Re:It's about skills 99.9%, only to the short sigh (Score:3, Insightful)
And what, exactly, do you think it is that Saddam Hussein's prison guards did? Or Enron's accountants? Or Darl McBride?
Unethical behavior is unethical, regardless of how the unethically obtained money is spent. A company hires an unethical person at their own risk. Hiring is as much about risk management as it is in finding the most skillful person, and a person with a proven track record of questionable ethics is, for a legitimate enterprise, a liability, and will generally be passed over for one who either has a proven track record of behaving ethically, or at the very least, a record clean of questionable behavior and associations.
SCO employees who left a year ago fall into one category (no reason to suspect their ethics or judgement). Those who remain, knowing full well what their employer is doing (or remaining willfully ignorant), fall into the other (their ethics, judgement, and quite possibly their intelligence are open to question). A competent person hiring for a legitimate company will not chose such a person over another candidate not so tainted.
Does that mean perfectly competent, ethical people who somehow kept their head in the sand these last ten months may get passed over? You bet. But it is the responsibility of those hiring to look out for the best interests of their firms, not to insure that every last, unfortunatel ex-SCO employee get the benefit of a tremendous and well-justified doubt.
Everything is an opportunity (Score:3, Insightful)
If you work for SCO (or some other scummy outfit) and feel that this will be a liability in the future THEN QUIT NOW! Don't wait any longer! The longer you stay the worse you look. Write a long resignation letter explaining why you feel you MUST RESIGN. If done tastefully that letter elevates you above [scummy company] and reinforces your image as a person of integrity. When you apply for new jobs and the topic of your past employer comes up you can demonstrate why you felt you needed to leave. A copy of that resignation letter will stand as your proclomation of values. Express in your letter the values you espouse and what you wish you could give as an employee (don't make it about what you want to GET. Prospective employers want to know what you can GIVE) and why [scummy company] isn't compatible with the contribution you wish to make. Offer to provide a copy to the interviewer if they wish to read it. That letter will have the effect of bearing testimony on your behalf. Think of it as a character whitness on paper.
Being able to demonstrate to a prospective employer that you were so uncomfortable with [scummy compay]'s practices that you had to leave voluntarily draws the line in the sand and demonstrates that you don't wish to be associated with [scummy company]. If you stay until the end it sends the message that you are more infuenced by greed than by principle, and that you were "one of them". That is a bad message to send to prospective employers. That's just my oppinion. (If you quit in protest and then can't find work don't blame me though).
Re:Industry defense mechanism (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That's not really fair. (Score:3, Insightful)
Hiring today, in this employer's market, is more of a cattle trade than a creative, symbiotic process. I am an excellent project manager with a great deal of ERP and CRM experience and have yet to encounter a hiring manager with a shred of creativity and an ability to look beyond the incomplete job description on the desk in front of them.
Until hiring managers get unassimilated from the collective hive (polite way of saying they need to pull their heads out of their.....), those who worked for Enron or WorldCom or any of the other 'scandalous' (that's another topic entirely) companies are doomed to unfair discrimination.
Re:You can do whatever you want. (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, they want to work for a company that provides them with the very best job that there is. And that might not be you, but they still have to pay the rent, right?
I bet you'd hire someone that didn't quite fit your needs knowing fully that you'd fire them later if a better suited individual came along if your company couldn't otherwise function without someone in the position.
So why is it o.k. for you to put your company's needs ahead of your employees and not o.k. for them to do the very same thing?
not a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's about skills 99.9%, only to the short sigh (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably. I can teach skills. Fixing your ethical handicaps is beyond me.
SCO is a good example. Spammers are another one. I would expect people who work for them to be ethically challenged. Either that or unaware of what their employers were up to, in which case they'd be too clueless to bother with.
Why again, would hiring a kickass forward thinking ex-SCO sysadmin [...] not be in the "best interests of their firms"
The overly dramatic choice you set up, between the inadequate but nice employee or the skilled former concentration camp guard, isn't the one hiring managers face. The reality is that the manager will end up with a bunch of people who will probably be fine; the challenge is in picking the best one in the long term.
There are a few reasons I'd lean away from somebody with an ethically suspect past.
One would be that ethical problems are hard to detect. If somebody is incompetent, I'll know in pretty short order. If somebody is casing the joint for embezzlement opportunities, I might not know until the bank account is empty. Or, less dramatically, I might not realize that he's really clever about covering up shoddy work.
The second, and probably the biggest for me, would be a concern that the person won't get the big picture. A person who doesn't mind making a living spamming can't have much sympathy for the fucking colossal amount of trouble they are causing for their recipients. Why would that person care any more about the end users of the new company's products?
And the third would be simple CYA. Even if there's a relatively small chance that a person working for a corrupt company is themselves corrupt, what happens if it turns out to be true? Then suddenly not only am I the guy who hired the thief, but I'm the guy who hired the thief who used to the sysadmin for Enron's accounting department. Hindsight will make me look like a chump.
Re:Missed one.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Desperate: They stay because they have to provide for their family but can't find a job because no one will hire a SCO employee.
...and if such a person presented themselves to me, right now, wishing to leave SCO because of the way SCO is behaving, then I would indeed consider that person on their merits, and give them credit for trying to get out of such an ethically untenable situation.
However, if they wait until SCO is crushed to a pulp, my reaction will be rather more circumspect (ie they can get stuffed)
And now you lose. (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/fortwayne/classifi
And I do NOT want to hear about "that doesn't pay enough". As long as it pays enough for basic food, shelter and clothing and it's ethical, it meets the criteria.
And THAT was the point. People will do unethical things because they're greedy. They value money and material possessions over other things.
"I cannot relocate from Fort Wayne because of family issues."
And that's another of your problems. You can relocate. You just don't want to make the sacrifices and commitments required for you to relocate.
Overqualified (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't bitch - kids don't just happen, fool (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, well - you're the one who decided to have a kid. There are many, many ways to have sex and not have children. If you didn't have the financial resources to have children, then you shouldn't have impregnated your signifigant other. I am really fucking sick of this. Having children is a choice. If I whined in the office that my sports car needs a new set of $4000 wheels, then I'm going to get looked at like I'm crazy. I'm expected to be sympathetic to the SAME rant, except subsitute tuition, braces, school, whatever for wheels. Kids are luxury items.
Don't cry to me. I'll do your job for half the money with a smile, and I like Ramen. I wouldn't dream of having kids until I was confident I could support them without relying on a "paycheck". Society doesn't owe you any more just because you have kids. If there's one thing the world DOESN'T need, it's more fucking people.
Life's hard, deal.