dunpeal

Do you also advocate for an embargo of China, which pollutes at over twice the rate of the US?

How about embargo of the EU, which currently pollutes at roughly the same rate?

Did you know that energy production in the US is overall more environmentally friendly than in Germany, for example?

> lots of of very smart, talented instructors take on these jobs to make ends meet while they look for something else that allows them to pursue their passions with their extensive educations.

My point is that you can't attract and retain top talent by offering low pay and no job security.

You are confirming said point by showing any person of talent taking this job is only for a short, temporary period while looking for something else.

> Of course, they are compensated horribly

Non-tenure track academic teaching positions that pay "horribly"... I can already imagine the kind of talent they attract.

From what I know, it's not that "people lie to themselves" about those terrible jobs, but more like the article describes: concerted effort by the employer to flood their reviews pool with inaccurate positive reviews, and muzzle accurate negative ones.

Some of the worst companies I ever encountered also had the best Glassdoor reviews and scores.

Sounds ironic, but makes perfect sense when you consider:

1. When a system is so easy to game simply by acting dishonestly, score will correlate with unscrupulous willingness to lie to your future workforce.

2. For these kinds of unscrupulous terrible employers, Glassdoor is seen as nothing more than an easy way to market themselves. Certainly cheaper than investing in your workforce, trying to make your employees happy, or fixing any of your real issues.

> The only time I've done a real take-home in less than 10 hours, it was rejected for not being polished enough.

Because you were competing with folks who were unemployed and probably invested 30+ hours in it.

Not sure what you're arguing.

I'm fine going through tough technical interviews.

I'm not fine spending 3-5+ hours on some trivial coding task that can be gamed and was issued to me by folks who may not have even thoroughly checked my resume.

Given the current supply/demand curve, and the fact that top employers like FAANGs do not require this sort of time and effort (and for a good reason), I don't have to jump through that hoop.

How do you get senior candidates to spend any time and effort on submitting "work samples"?

I'm a senior engineer. Last time I interviewed, I received multiple offers from brand-name employers. None of them required any work samples, just hard technical interviews.

A few times I saw a small unknown company that piqued my interest. I talked to them. Occasionally one would require me to do some sort of a task.

Why would I do it?

I don't need to do any of that for the top employers in the market. Why would I spend hours of my time, and precious coding time, especially on some small company I never heard of before?

I haven't done that in years, and doubt I'll ever do it again. The only way you could get me to do it is if I was desperate for a job.

By requiring this sort of time and effort from candidates, you are screening out the best ones, those who can get multiple offers from great employers without jumping hoops for you.

> They also bought Strongloop[0] a while back, so the developers from aqui-hires have to go somewhere.

That would be somewhere else.

Strongloop is in SV, there's no shortage of opportunity for the devs who worked there.

Unless they got some serious golden handcuffs, in which case I'm sure some will stay for the 3-5 years these last.

I only skimmed this rant, but if one interview is terrible, then the interviewing party might be an asshole.

If every interview you ever took is terrible, then you are probably the asshole.

You don't have to use a very large vocabulary to be a solid lyricist.

> Yeah, and how well is that going to work out for them? They should have known better than to invest in this company in the first place; companies like that are cults of personality.

So you are saying the investors (who are the current shareholders) stupidly bought into Neumann personality cult.

So now they are paying for their idiocy.

This isn't some failure of capitalism: it's the failure of large, wealthy, sophisticated investors to properly assess their own investment.

Just something to remember the next time a startup CEO tells you that "we" have to "work hard and give up some of our compensation" to "make a positive change in the world".

> But I think it's very important to remember that companies can have moral standards and follow them. Many companies don't sell-out in crucial ways, and throwing one's hands up and condemning them all is punishing the ones that stay true.

I agree, which is why I criticize shallow analysis of a company's motivation based on its skin-deep marketing veneer.

In this case it's not even moral standards - the implication is that WeWork's CEO is neglecting his fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value by lining his pocket instead.

That's in fact a corruption of capitalism, it's illegal, and he can be sued for that by shareholders.

> I think moral outrage is a very important and effective market force.

I completely agree, which is why it's important to look beyond the marketing.

If a company can breach standards of morality and decency, but get away thanks to some 30 seconds commercial featuring smiling kids, then we will not be effective as a public in enforcing those very real consequences that companies should face for their actions.

Either way, the truth value can be deduced by taking a hard, penetrating, objective look at the commercial entity, its policies, actions, and impacts.

It is not ascertained by buying into the shallowest outer layer of its marketing veneer.