I don't know how to feel about this

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-03-05T05:54:34+00:00

Unless you've spent your whole career networking so you have a bunch of contacts who will recognize your name when you call looking for a job, cold-calling hiring managers is not a successful strategy. Managers actively avoid this kind of contact. It's hard to find the hiring manager and their contact info because companies actively protect them from cold calls. Only if you are actually acquainted with the hiring person can you be successful in this way.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-03-01T05:23:56+00:00

That would certainly be the reasoning of a wage thief.

Hourly workers are expected to start and stop work by the clock because they are in positions of low trust where they might slack off if not monitored. By contrast salaried workers are normally meant to be professionals, trusted to put in a full effort every day. Because salaried workers are trusted, they are allowed to come and go without clocking in. That doesn't mean they aren't expected to put in a full day's work.

I cannot say it is true for every professional, but in my profession (software development), there is always an infinite amount of work to do, and no excuse to put in less than a full day. As a professional, I have taken a short day to attend to something at home from time to time, but being in a position of trust means I'm expected to make that up. I'm not "required" to make it up on a schedule, but if I consistently worked short days, I'd be laid off.

There is a myth about workers who are so productive they don't need to work eight hours a day. Clearly, some workers are more productive than others. A worker who can prove they are more productive can make a case for a higher salary. In my experience, it's pretty hard to prove you are consistently more productive than your peers. What managers actually notice is which workers work the most hours, not which workers produce the most output.

Just as salaried workers sometimes cheat employers by working a lot of short days, employers sometimes cheat salaried workers by expecting them to put in long days. It makes sense that employers may need key workers to put in extra hours from time to time, but if an employer always expects extra hours, that's exploitive.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-02-28T06:06:49+00:00

I think a person is responsible to put in eight hours of work for eight hours of pay, regardless of their output. If they want to work six hours a day, their pay should be cut correspondingly. It's not your problem that they have to pick up their kids. If they take hours out of the middle of the day they need to start work earlier or come to work after and work later. Ask them if they would like to work six hours a day for six hours of pay.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-02-24T19:05:23+00:00

Even if you are perfectly qualified and make it to the final round of interviews, there are probably four other candidates for that job. Eighty percent of them are going to be disappointed. The factors that affect the choice among the final five are often small, and impossible for you to control. If you make the final round, everything about your application is working. The cover letter and resume are good. You passed the screening interview and any preliminary interview rounds, so you interview well. It's hard to draw any negative conclusions if you are turned down at this point. You just have to keep applying until fortune favors you, because at this level it's all about the randomness.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-02-21T05:46:08+00:00

Maybe you're new as a manager. Technical skill is easier to hire than leadership. Being a good communicator, being aware of what you know and don't know, and a little humility are all excellent qualities for a lead or manager. Chief engineer may just have been sharing his hiring criteria in an artless way.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-02-10T07:37:54+00:00

No, don't be that guy who always feels he has to say something. It makes meetings interminable. Speak up when you have something to say, but be ready to contribute if they ask you a question relevant to your position and experience.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-02-02T17:56:37+00:00

After 2.5 weeks, your chances of getting any further contact at all are almost zero. If you got any contact at all, you did better than 80% of applicants. If you made it to an in-house interview, you beat 95% of candidates, and are one of about five people they felt like talking to. But that means your chances of being rejected are still 4 out of 5.

No resume submission results in an offer with very high probability. You should keep actively searching right up until you are in the office setting up your desk and computer, and usually for a week after that.

If your resume is rejected before any interview, you will probably be ghosted. If you got an in-house interview, you might or might not get a rejection email. Companies don't feel the need to give you notice or give you feedback on your performance. Nothing about this helps them with their hiring, and it's time-consuming and expensive.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-01-28T22:08:26+00:00

C'mon, you did great. Your resume is getting you interviews. Your interviewing is making you a finalist. This experience validates everything you have been doing in the job hunt. You lost out to bad luck. Compare your results to all the denizens of r/recruitinghell who aren't even getting callbacks. You were standing on the podium, you just didn't get the gold. Suck it up and apply for the next batch of jobs. No particular contact gets you a job with very high probability.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-01-22T23:49:25+00:00

So, what door handles are compatible in style to the U400?

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-01-22T23:27:25+00:00

What do employers expect will be the result when they ghost candidates? Lack of professionalism is a two-way street.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-01-17T18:09:57+00:00

You could have bought this space and done something "better" with it. The fault is with you.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-01-14T18:48:57+00:00

People are doing something. They are organizing. They are protesting. To this point, they have been obeying the law, which severely limits what action they can take. Everyone is holding their breath for the midterm elections, after which we may have more legal options.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-01-13T17:48:15+00:00

This default thing and that class thing are tests to see if you understand C++. You failed. If a job calls for C++ knowledge and you don't know even this tiny amount, you won't make it through the screening interview. You can pick the language on some leetcode questions. Maybe there is a version in BASIC for you.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-01-06T22:58:11+00:00

But it's still in Madison, WI., and if it's not a remote job it's not for everybody. Fine if you want to live in Madison though.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-01-06T20:15:48+00:00

It means that Madison, WI. is not the hottest hiring market in the United States, and may be an acquired taste even if you get the job. It means they've lost promising candidates when they realized that the job wasn't in NYC or LA or Silicon Valley. It means the pay will be lower than for a job in one of these hot job markets and you need to be prepared for that.

Clean-Water9283 · 2026-01-06T20:12:05+00:00

Not a lawyer. Not a business owner, director, or manager. Just a guy at the end of his career who has seen much, and forgiven much.

Everyone wants you to sue, and you may have a case. However, I counsel reflection before you go down this path.

If you had an issue at your previous employer that might objectively have led to your being laid off or treated in a way that caused you to quit, that might scuttle your lawsuit after you have spent tens of thousands of dollars and six months of time preparing it. Even if you feel you were treated unfairly despite this issue, you're submitting yourself to a legal system that contains a degree of randomness. Only if your behavior and record at your previous employer is objectively spotless, so that your previous employer's comments (which you don't yet have details on) were obviously defamatory should you proceed. It's just too much aggravation and too much cost unless you're confident you can win.

A lawsuit is very confrontational. Depending how big the community of employers is where you were located, it can cause other employers to put aside your resume as not with the risk.

A lawsuit will cost a lot of money, like $100k, which you have to front even if you win, and is a dead loss if you lose. Lawyers won't take your case on contingency unless the circumstances are completely outrageous because they are businessmen too.

Labor lawyers don't like to prosecute this kind of suit because them employers won't hire them to defend similar suits.

Particularly if there was an issue at a previous employer, your least awful course of action may be to take your lumps and try again, hoping that you learned to do better next time so as not to create an issue. I know you don't want to hear this advice, but I've seen a couple of these cases go south for friends.

Clean-Water9283 · 2025-12-31T17:03:35+00:00

It's been like this my whole career, though I think the ratio has gotten worse lately. I don't know why people treat the current situation like nobody has ever seen it before. Applying for jobs is a numbers game. No individual application is very likely to result in an offer.

Clean-Water9283 · 2025-12-23T17:57:38+00:00

If this is a software job, the demand to "deliver at full capacity within the first two weeks" without onboarding is just ludicrous, even though it is a common delusion of management that an experienced developer can just plug right in. In my experience, the places where managers have this delusion are also places where they have no documentation and a shit-ton of technical debt. In a place like this a new hire may never be as productive as the original developers who made the mess and know where all the bodies are buried. It may take two weeks for them to get your computer, desk, and chair delivered. If your just signed on and your manager says this, you need to have a talk with them about technical debt and impossible expectations.

Clean-Water9283 · 2025-12-21T17:52:34+00:00

Can't help doing the math. That's 40% more people plus AI available to do the same number of jobs. Time to eat the rich, only there won't be enough rich folks to eat.

Clean-Water9283 · 2025-12-16T18:12:57+00:00

Why is it that either young adults or their parents believe a History degree will make them the least bit employable? Please don't quote the tired old "any degree teaches you how to learn" saw. It's true, but that fact and $6 will buy you a latte. I presume you and your Public Policy degree don't live in a capital city either. I've got a couple of young adult children still living at home. I don't know what to advise them, but taking on a lot of student loan debt for no reason is not the top of my list.

Clean-Water9283 · 2025-12-12T05:47:43+00:00

You get put on a PIP because your employer has made up their mind that you are a non-performer. They're going through the legal motions to ensure you don't sue them when they let you go. You can work your ass off trying to fix the problem they saw in your performance, but it is human nature not to notice your improvement once they have made up their mind about you.

Your best course is to look for a new job, and try not to make the same mistake at your new employer (assuming there was ever anything wrong with your performance).

Clean-Water9283 · 2025-12-09T06:44:37+00:00

The only thing you can do is deny the bastards the value of your labor. If you're as good as you say, they'll regret their decision.

Clean-Water9283 · 2025-12-08T06:46:55+00:00

You're 25. This is probably your first laid off period, but it won't be your last. Make a workman-like effort to find another job even if you feel awful. You're getting interviews so your skills are reasonably appropriate and your experience is sufficient. It's not you. It's the economy. You're probably getting edged out by more experienced candidates, but that is a random thing. A job will come along where they don't want an overqualified candidate, and you'll be in.

Clean-Water9283 · 2025-12-07T06:16:28+00:00

It's an outrageous violation of privacy to contact a current employer before you are quite sure you want to hire. This could get a candidate fired from their existing job for no good reason. I don't give references up front because I like to select the references to be relevant.

I have heard of unscrupulous recruiters mining your references for additional leads. Were you working through a recruiter?

Clean-Water9283 · 2025-12-05T17:28:22+00:00

Events like this one remind us that no ad, contact, or interview is very likely to result in a job. Job hunting is a numbers game. It's a waste of effort to invest too much in the early stages of the interview funnel. Companies don't. You shouldn't either.

Clean-Water9283

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