The age-old question of whether we are born good, evil, or neutral is one that we ask ourselves some time in our lives as we attempt to figure out who we are and understand others. Depending on what recently occurred, I have swung through each of the options in the past.
For a long while, I have believed that the question is not really a valid question because it was too muddled by what each term meant. Somethings are good to some, evil to others, and lastly the rest do not care at all. But because of all the superhero movies that have been coming out for the last decade, this has gotten me to thinking why does "good" triumph over "evil".
And in my limited reality, I feel that people are good. There is a lot evil events in the world, but when compared to the mass of the people, it really is the smaller percentage. But even then, I think people want to be good so there are even fewer people who are evil to be evil.
I think this is evolutionary because it is easier to survive by being good even though sometimes we believe that good people finish last, but rather good people stay alive whether it is physical, financial, or social. It is easier to be good because we do not have to put as much effort in being helpful to others than being evil.
To be evil takes a lot of energy and time. On the basic level of just pure evil, people seamlessly group together to fight a common enemy. This leaves the evil people who need to fit in with the good people.
These people then need to understand two worlds, one is the lie that they live and the other is hiding their true intent. This also scales down to smaller evil deeds like corruption, self-promotion, or even white-lies.
Even just braving a smile but dislike the person underneath takes more energy than just ignoring the person. If we could tell the difference, we would prefer to be with the person who is more forgiving.
I believe that simply by having good intent is natural because it is fundamental to our ability to survive because we do not waste as much energy as evil people. This would also explain why many of the unsuspecting evil people are highly intelligent. I get tired just remembering who doesn't like to hang out or work with other people. Many times, I believe that I only seem intelligent because I do not waste a lot of time with rumors where I tried to keep up but I became physically drained. I really do feel dumber as I figure things out because it always seem others seem to pick up on social cues and little tidbits so much easier than I do.
So although I have had some evil thoughts, I am probably too stupid to be any good at it. Unfortunately, this does not cover where my good intentions may clash with someone else's good intention. For example, the US presidential election nominee selections.
Well, it kind of does but not as cleanly defined as the prior examples. Although I believe people are well-intentioned, this area points out how lazy we can be. If we believe someone else will do something or if we do not understand which option is correct, we do nothing. On the extreme end, we have the capacity to become silent witnesses where we do not call the police even though a major crime occurred in a somewhat public area believing that someone else would have called it in. On a lesser end, we do not report misbehavior especially in a work-place because we are afraid of our social status of being a tattle-tale.
So the majority of people agree on good-intentions when life and death is the ultimate result, but when it comes to evil activities that are not life and death then our good-intentions become fuzzy even when we know what is right and wrong. If we add in evil activities where people believe they won't be caught or punished, this becomes even more dicey (like speeding when driving).
Then what is good people? Those who have more good-intentions than evil ones? Those who only have good intentions? Ultimately, I think the general population are misguided well-intentioned people. Our conflict is primarily on short-term gains versus long-term gains. Basically, when is good-enough, enough?
Monday, September 13, 2021
Friday, September 10, 2021
My Thoughts: Who Should Give Salary Range in Interview? IMO Companies
Yes, I am very biased as I have only been an employee. And I want to believe that even if I were a manager, providing the salary would be in my best interest too. But until that day happens, my thoughts will always be biased.
First, there is only one reason for a company to request the interviewer's salary range. Purely a power trip to see how much fear someone has in not getting the opportunity. Sure there are plenty of blogs and articles about psychological analysis for one's ego.
Because if the ask is greater than their budget, they can cut all ties even if the candidate could potentially provide greater value than they expected. To me, that means they are not looking for the best candidate.
If the ask is within their range, then they can kind of expect a somewhat amicable interview process.
If the ask is lower than their range, this is the same as within range but now they have the option to offer less. And there are plenty of blogs and articles that suggest that this is not in the interest of the employer. Also there are comments and feedback that candidates were offered more than they expected.
Personally, I have never had an employer give me more than I expected. In most of companies, I have also learned that I was paid much less than my peers even though I did the same work if not better (yes, I know this sounds very biased... perhaps I should write a blog on why I think I was not only better but preferred).
Among all the people I have worked with, I have never heard of anyone within my circle that was offered more than they asked. I don't quite ask, but talking about salary does come up every so often typically around review season. But this is more implicitly implied since I do not ask explicitly.
So until I know how much work I will be doing, why would I give what my expectations are? If I give my real expectations and it greater than the offer, I will never know if they are offering easier work which I may consider.
First, there is only one reason for a company to request the interviewer's salary range. Purely a power trip to see how much fear someone has in not getting the opportunity. Sure there are plenty of blogs and articles about psychological analysis for one's ego.
Because if the ask is greater than their budget, they can cut all ties even if the candidate could potentially provide greater value than they expected. To me, that means they are not looking for the best candidate.
If the ask is within their range, then they can kind of expect a somewhat amicable interview process.
If the ask is lower than their range, this is the same as within range but now they have the option to offer less. And there are plenty of blogs and articles that suggest that this is not in the interest of the employer. Also there are comments and feedback that candidates were offered more than they expected.
Personally, I have never had an employer give me more than I expected. In most of companies, I have also learned that I was paid much less than my peers even though I did the same work if not better (yes, I know this sounds very biased... perhaps I should write a blog on why I think I was not only better but preferred).
Among all the people I have worked with, I have never heard of anyone within my circle that was offered more than they asked. I don't quite ask, but talking about salary does come up every so often typically around review season. But this is more implicitly implied since I do not ask explicitly.
Back to the point
The main reason I do not believe I should ever share my expectations is that I want to get paid for the work that I will be doing. If they are asking me to work 20 hours per day, I don't mind being paid half the normal salary. If I only have to do half the work of my peers, then I don't mind being paid half their salary.So until I know how much work I will be doing, why would I give what my expectations are? If I give my real expectations and it greater than the offer, I will never know if they are offering easier work which I may consider.
My other point
What is the big deal with companies not providing the salary range?
Some say they want to save time in case the range is too far apart. If I can see the range, then I can save you the trouble and skip over your job post. I would save you the trouble to even calling me to ask my salary expectations.
They may miss out on some good candidates. Yea, and then you would not be able to afford them and wasted all that time anyways.
Salary expectations do not match all industries and all geographical areas. Why force the candidate to give a static number that means only something in one place and time and industry? Let me decide whether it is worth my time to do that line of work.
If you don't get enough candidates then offer more. If you get too many candidates then lower the offer.
My conclusion
So I believe a fair negotiation between company and candidate is far greater than the ability to pay less or even the perception of paying less. Even if you were a fair company, I will never know. It will always be over my should that I could have been more aggressive.
The company has the power to replace you. I have no power to change the amount of work I will get after I get hired (except for quitting).
I think the HR industry has a great potential to be so much better. I think there are still many opportunities for new companies to enter the market purely by hiring the right people. I also believe there are plenty of people who are willing to build a career just to be at a fair and just company for a lower wage. But because we are asked first, the general candidates fear to be paid too low which thus causes us all to fear those who fear.
Thursday, September 9, 2021
Scammish: Job boards and Company Online Jobs Listings (based on my personal experience and thoughts)
To be fully honest, I am not a fan of the current HR (Human Resource) industry/practice today.
I have used glassdoor, indeed, monster, linkedin, and a couple others in the past. And my experience is that I rarely ever get any response from any online applications (including directly on the company websites). All my work opportunities (nine different employments, eleven if you count contract to hire) have come through a physical person whether that is a friend, acquaintance, or even a recruiter.
Yet when I interview through traditional means, my success rates to get offers are extremely high, nearly 100%. And usually with a day or two of my interview (which makes me think my salary request is on the low end, and never has a company offered more than my ask). So this makes me think there are a couple things I am doing incorrectly with online applications.
The easier and within my control is not using the proper keywords or catchphrases that will get me past the automatic filtering system. I have so many variants of my resume. I tailor my resume to the job positions. So I like to think that I should have been accidentally correct at some point.
The other reason is a bit scammish. I have seen a few of these practices myself.
The simplest one is that some companies are require to post positions publicly even though they already have someone in mind. This typically is with larger corporations and most definitely for contract-to-hire positions. As mentioned above, I have had a couple of these. This transition took time, and part of the reason is that HR has to post the job publicly and it needs to be up for a certain period of time. They will field the minimum candidates with the minimum amount of work. I may have been focused on my work, and I am not one to keep an eye out for what my managers do, but I am pretty sure they did not interview anyone. Eventually, I get transitioned to full-time employee status. Therefore, people saw the post, applied, and most likely never heard back.
Technically, this is not the job boards fault but it kind of is if they scrape these positions from the company websites which most of them do.
A more scammish practice is companies that are not real. They just post jobs to just collect data. I have worked for a marketing group, and there is a lot of bartering for personal information (especially behind the scenes). One of the biggest values to data is how much of their data is legit data. Job applicants on job boards are one of the best and easiest sources of data to be collected. I use a separate email and phone for my job search. After applying to certain unknown companies, I get sudden spikes of spam. Sometimes all it takes is just to publish your resume on the board which I typically get smaller spikes and more sporadic.
A similar practice but more borderline scammish is corporations doing similar practice but only to populate their HR system of records. Because they purchase bulk amounts of job postings, companies that have remaining posts will just use them to post non-existent positions. This has all sorts of implications. The simplest is just to have a queue of available candidates. Second, they can see how desperate the candidates are which can be used to set their expectations on how much they pay their current employees. Last, they can also use that on low-balling other or future candidates.
Suspiciously, even the job boards ads and site metrics seem to avoid how effective they really are. Many states number of users but they don't state how successful they are. Maybe it is also due to users abusing the system too. But if they claim number of users then they must take responsibility that number is somewhat accurate, thus they should have the ability to give some estimate on how successful users are. Otherwise, they should not market how many users they have.
References
https://zerista.s3.amazonaws.com/item_files/ab2f/attachments/458970/original/source_of_hire_2018_pdf.pdf
I have used glassdoor, indeed, monster, linkedin, and a couple others in the past. And my experience is that I rarely ever get any response from any online applications (including directly on the company websites). All my work opportunities (nine different employments, eleven if you count contract to hire) have come through a physical person whether that is a friend, acquaintance, or even a recruiter.
Yet when I interview through traditional means, my success rates to get offers are extremely high, nearly 100%. And usually with a day or two of my interview (which makes me think my salary request is on the low end, and never has a company offered more than my ask). So this makes me think there are a couple things I am doing incorrectly with online applications.
The easier and within my control is not using the proper keywords or catchphrases that will get me past the automatic filtering system. I have so many variants of my resume. I tailor my resume to the job positions. So I like to think that I should have been accidentally correct at some point.
The other reason is a bit scammish. I have seen a few of these practices myself.
The simplest one is that some companies are require to post positions publicly even though they already have someone in mind. This typically is with larger corporations and most definitely for contract-to-hire positions. As mentioned above, I have had a couple of these. This transition took time, and part of the reason is that HR has to post the job publicly and it needs to be up for a certain period of time. They will field the minimum candidates with the minimum amount of work. I may have been focused on my work, and I am not one to keep an eye out for what my managers do, but I am pretty sure they did not interview anyone. Eventually, I get transitioned to full-time employee status. Therefore, people saw the post, applied, and most likely never heard back.
Technically, this is not the job boards fault but it kind of is if they scrape these positions from the company websites which most of them do.
A more scammish practice is companies that are not real. They just post jobs to just collect data. I have worked for a marketing group, and there is a lot of bartering for personal information (especially behind the scenes). One of the biggest values to data is how much of their data is legit data. Job applicants on job boards are one of the best and easiest sources of data to be collected. I use a separate email and phone for my job search. After applying to certain unknown companies, I get sudden spikes of spam. Sometimes all it takes is just to publish your resume on the board which I typically get smaller spikes and more sporadic.
A similar practice but more borderline scammish is corporations doing similar practice but only to populate their HR system of records. Because they purchase bulk amounts of job postings, companies that have remaining posts will just use them to post non-existent positions. This has all sorts of implications. The simplest is just to have a queue of available candidates. Second, they can see how desperate the candidates are which can be used to set their expectations on how much they pay their current employees. Last, they can also use that on low-balling other or future candidates.
Suspiciously, even the job boards ads and site metrics seem to avoid how effective they really are. Many states number of users but they don't state how successful they are. Maybe it is also due to users abusing the system too. But if they claim number of users then they must take responsibility that number is somewhat accurate, thus they should have the ability to give some estimate on how successful users are. Otherwise, they should not market how many users they have.
References
https://zerista.s3.amazonaws.com/item_files/ab2f/attachments/458970/original/source_of_hire_2018_pdf.pdf
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)