Damn, the top comment on the article is about how you need to lie in tech interviews. How far have we fallen if we don't even have enough dignity to walk away from garbage tier companies who can't even put any real effort into hiring. Lying is not a solution, letting companies like Databricks die a slow painful death because they create toxic environments and all their programmers keep quitting is the solution.
A common way of avoiding having to lie is registering your own consulting company after getting laid off. No resume gap! As far as if it fools recruiters, no idea. It's got to sometimes, right? I see it too often on LinkedIn for it to be useless.
Perhaps in a very narrow sense, but I think it's more complicated than that.
Let's assume that there are facts that a person has a legitimate right to conceal in a particular context. What if the only way to conceal such a fact is to create a false impression?
I would hesitate to call that lying, because the word lying ususally implies that it is not legitimate, which contradicts the assumption.
Just actually register the company. In my country you don't even need to register, you just do business as a contractor. As long as you're under certain revenue limits, there's no registration necessary.
I mean as long as you have done some degree of contracting or consulting with the corp you made or at least can reasonably say that you planned to, it's not really lying.
When pressed it can be as simple as "maintaining a corporation for any work I do (when not working as a FTE/salaried employee) is preferable for accounting purposes". Of course if they press further you should probably have your accounting in order/understand the topic so you can explain this without looking like an idiot but it's unlikely they'd press you much further than that.
Some people think, "he says he was consulting, whatever, he's got the skills and seems like a good guy". Are they really fooled? Or do they just not care?
The real question is, will "consulting" fool the people who would reject you for a resume gap?
You would obviously need to give an overview of the types of customers and assignments and you had while consulting. And provide references on request.
At the very least it seems like it's useful for fooling the first tier recruiters who filter people out based on things like resume gaps or not having a particular keyword. It keeps your resume out of the wastebin, at least until you get to chat with the next tier recruiter.
I've had plenty of employers tell me something in the interview that was technically true but very misleading. They seem to think that's quite different from lying.
It’s a lie if you get caught and are in a position to be punished. You cannot do anything against a recruiter, ergo they cannot lie. Or rather, even if they lie they can give as many bad faith explanations or further lies as necessary and there is nothing you can do about it. Unless it is so egregious that you can sue them, in which case you have either a fat settlement or a court that demonstrates that they did in fact lie.
If you can't do anything against them, but they can do many things against you, there's not much hope for a fair agreement/outcome. I don't know what the fix would be, but it sure seems like there's something fundamental that needs fixing to make it so that when a would-be employer and a would-be employee meet to decide if they want to work together they meet on equal ground.
> If you can't do anything against them, but they can do many things against you, there's not much hope for a fair agreement/outcome.
Yeah, I tend to agree. It is depressing, but we are where we are. That said, I might be naive but I think things are fair most of the time. But mostly because people tend to do the right thing, often nudged by laws and regulations and not because they cannot get away with figurative murder, which some employers do.
> I don't know what the fix would be, but it sure seems like there's something fundamental that needs fixing to make it so that when a would-be employer and a would-be employee meet to decide if they want to work together they meet on equal ground.
I am not sure either. A good step would be to increase the bargaining power of the employees, which implies strong trade unions and a working social safety net. Employers have no qualm making informal agreements and coordinating hiring policies. Otherwise employees or would-be employees have intrinsically the lower hand: if they don’t work, they starve but employers don’t lose sleep over a worker’s life.
In an ideal world, this would be unnecessary because a bad employer would soon have trouble finding workers and an equilibrium could get established. We are not in an ideal world, and the equilibrium is unstable.
>A common way of avoiding having to lie is registering your own consulting company after getting laid off. No resume gap! As far as if it fools recruiters, no idea. It's got to sometimes, right? I see it too often on LinkedIn for it to be useless.
"Consulting" is the programmer equivalent of claiming "Entrepreneur" as a job title. Sure it exists, but it generally translates to "Unemployed".
Maybe for you, but tell that to the bank that gladly gave me a mortgage thanks to all the income I've made consulting in the past years. This web site is teeming with successful consultants and contractors.
When Silicon Valley was less toxic, less exploitive, and not so riddled with useless frat boy brogrammers, there generally didn't used to be any stigma attached to being laid off.
I was loyally working at Kaleida (a joint venture of Apple and IBM) for a long time, and then applied for my dream job at Paul Allen's Interval Research Corporation, but they took a while getting back to me with an offer. But in the meantime Kaleida announced they were shutting down and laying off all employees (after having been steamrolled over by the Java Juggernaut).
Apple and IBM allowed Kaleida to pay out generous layoff packages (even converting worthless "KVAR" virtual stock options to cash) and gave job offers to most of the technical staff (which I turned down, because Interval was much more fun and interesting to me).
I told Interval that I wanted to delay accepting their job offer by a month or so, until after the Kaleida layoff, so I could qualify for the financial compensation in the Kaleida layoff package, and they understood completely and were just fine with it.
During that time period and before, Apple would even lay off batches of employees for a while to downsize, then eventually hire some of them back again, restoring all of their accumulated benefits and seniority.
I’ve seen consultants make around £30,000 a month. Including at least one case where the person in question did that after being let go, consulting for the same people who were her customers when she was employed. Not too bad for unemployed people.
When my last employer went through a technical bankruptcy and had to fire some people, I volunteered because it would enable me to start my own business. I've been doing pretty well since then. Not 30k/month, but good enough.
Congratulations! It is not for everyone, but I have friends thriving in this role. Now, to be clear they did not make £30,000 pcm year after year. Ups and downs average out over the long term, and the average certainly is lower than that. Still, they do complain about stress and such, but not really about the money.
In the company I'm currently working with, 60% of employees are contractors/consultants. On average they make 30% more than fulltime employees (but they don't have benefits so it washes out).
Myself, I've been either an entrepreneur (had a company with up to 12 employees for a few years) or doing consulting pretty much exclusively in the last 16 years.
So no consulting/contracting doesn't mean unemployed.
Well, my “unemployed” compensation was much higher in some years, compared to when I was employed. Consulting is great, if you can tolerate uncertainty (which is kind of your profession now).
I've been led to believe that there are brokers who have information on your employment history and that it will likely show up in a background check. Famously, employment dates are the only thing a typical HR department will give out when cold called by a potential new employer. Basically, it's not something I'd fluff beyond a month or two. I'd find something else to fill a big gap on a resume if needed (sabbatical, volunteering, consulting, whatever) just in case it's something that an automated filter is tossing out.
Yes if it gets to filling out background check documents, I don't fudge dates. I have though typically only needed to do those after offer has been made, etc.
Indeed. This is not a categorical issue since, as noted elsewhere in the thread, employers lie and obfuscate all the time.
Would I judge someone for fudging the dates of their last employment to get around a ridiculous recruiter screen like this? Absolutely not. Would I judge someone for directly lying about their experience or knowledge? Yes, that’s unethical.
> is about how you need to lie in tech interviews.
Doing recruiting rounds as a candidate in the early 00's taught me that you have to lie in interviews. All the questions were "give an example of a time when ... " - everyone displayed leadership when they were captain of the national championship winning football team, and overcame adversity when they climbed the three mountains taller than everest in the same day. At the end of the day ... it worked.
Much like social media etc today - real life cant compete with the fantasy of the 100x coder who added $50mil of sales to the bottom line of their last employer.
You should also consider lying to your doctor when they ask how much you drink / smoke / exercise. They will just assume that you are so 2x whatever you say for drinking and 1/10th the amount of exercise you self report - because everybody lies.
> letting companies like Databricks die a slow painful death because they create toxic environments and all their programmers keep quitting is the solution.
True, these places eventually fall away, whether it takes 2,4,6 10+ years. They eventually perish.
And sometimes the company really does prefer people who know how to package uncomfortable facts in a more diplomatic manner. Nobody wants blatant liars, but giving a positive spin on things is a surprisingly valued skill.
Other than questionable ethics, it can lead to immediate termination.
But as always, there's lying and "lying". Saying you quit when you were laid off, I would consider lying. Telling you needed new challenges when in fact your boss was so toxic you wanted to quit the universe, not lying.
In the end, a job interview is a courting dance and you'd want to put your colorful feathers on, but at least they should reflect your reality.
Sure, some people would claim "It's just about putting your best foot forward and presenting yourself in the best possible light," but those people are such liars they lie about lying. Lying by admission is still lying.
God that's cynical. In the final round of my last FAANG interview after bumbling through part of it, at a very senior level, the interviewer flat out asked me "so uh, how long has it been since you did Android?", presumably due to my poor performance. I admitted I'd spent the majority of the last 2 years on iOS even though I'd done Android in the past too, and lo and behold, hired. Honesty and respect are valued where it counts, and if they're not, find another employer.
Congratulations on finding an empathetic and wise interviewer among the legions of smug know-it-alls who are enthused to watch you twist in the wind with their trick questions.
I admitted I'd spent the majority of the last 2 years on iOS even though I'd done Android in the past too
How would it be any different if you had simply lied about Android experience? As in, you simply were never remotely competent at it and you just said it had been awhile?
Fake it until you make it is age-old advice and you being lucky enough to have an interviewer who cared isn't really an argument against it.
I like to quite Dave Barry: A resume is not just a piece of paper, it’s a piece of paper covered in lies. And it can be the difference between not getting a job, and not even coming close
Fun fact: in some jurisdictions such as New York and DC, this is illegal. It's called "discrimination against the unemployed". Check the laws of your state, the state you would work in, and the state the company is headquartered in to see if this may apply to you.
While it's nice to know these laws exist, what would you really do with it? The company proved it has a terrible culture. Doesn't seem worth it to fight for a job with them.
Assuming sufficient evidence, one could have an employment attorney pursue the claim and let the attorney keep any damages awarded beyond their contingency fee. Negative stimuli may not improve the culture, but it may improve the discriminatory HR behavior. And even if the behavior isn’t improved, there is then a mostly immutable public record of said discriminatory behavior (which is arguably more valuable than whatever scuttlebutt is on Blind or similar platforms).
Possibly, in which case someone on the inside would have to be incentivized to be a whistleblower, either due to moral or financial considerations if silent rejections were covering up the illegal activity. With that said, people are lazy, they slip up or they become demoralized, disgruntled, and comfortable with spilling the beans. More so in a volatile macro with layoffs compressing more work amongst less staff.
TLDR Have your paper trail in order if you suspect illegal behavior, everything else is then logistics with counsel and/or regulators.
I like to think that it’s not always a direct individual outcome that helps. With enough soft complaints the regulator might write a reminder letter to the given HR dept which could go over relevant law and warn about repercussions of breaking it. And that might be enough to straighten out some practices.
This feels much too light to me. I'm not sure I can think of a worse thing to do to someone while interviewing them than discriminate against them based on a protected status, outside of proper criminal things.
Discrimination (including "unemployment discrimination") during interviewing should be an automatic, hefty fine, with a significant portion going to the target of the discrimination (assuming the claim is found to be valid). Just riffing, maybe set the fine to something like the equivalent of total yearly compensation package for the average employee in the position being sought. That would be penalty enough to encourage putting it right in the front of any training for anyone making offers, particularly HR.
"While it's nice to know these laws exist, what would you really do with it?"
This is exactly how I feel about tenant laws in the US. It's great they exist, but who's going to get a lawyer to stay somewhere they aren't wanted. All these laws that protect the vulnerable still require a lawyer to enforce them. Lawyers aren't accessible to most.
I just glanced at their career page and all the US based engineering and product management jobs are in the bay area. California doesn't have protected status for being unemployed.
It is very weird that your precise case has to fit a couple of narrow criteria to be protected against discrimination in the US. From a moral perspective, discrimination is discrimination regardless of its grounds. The default position should be that it is illegal. This would avoid endless sterile discussion about whether this or that is a protected class.
Job requirements "discriminate" and narrow the candidate pool. Also only one state considers it a protected class. Compare that to sexual preference which 29 states consider protected. Being able to cut candidates if they were involuntarily cut from their job isn't high on my morality list compared to other social issues.
So all hiring, all decision-making about people would be presumed illegal, until proven to be based on unprotected characteristics? Sounds.. inconvenient? Not how the law generally works?
Well, not really, it just means that grounds for rejection come from inadequacies between the applicants and the role, not because of the recruiter’s prejudice. I know how the law works in the US, that was more or less the point. The fact that it works like that in one country or several does not mean that it is just, moral, or natural. Non-discrimination should be the default state. It’s like a legal system where you would need freedoms to be explicitly granted, which is counter to our common definition of liberty (along the lines of “rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others”). By narrowing down the definition of illegal discrimination, one gives more power to the people who are already in a position of power and so one keep pushing the status quo away from equal rights.
This is the language in the universal declaration of human right: “everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status”. This is not US law, but the fact that this was written and accepted by the vast majority of the countries on earth at least indicates that we (including nominally the US government) tend to hold that discrimination itself is morally wrong, regardless of whether the reason was put on a list or not. So it is not an unimaginable concept.
The problem is that 'discrimination' is exactly what you're trying to do in sifting job applicants, for example. Not unduly prejudiced discrimination, but you need to discriminate somehow.
I'm not all that familiar with US law fwiw, but I understand there's a concept of 'protected characteristics' very similar to here in the UK & EU countries. I don't really see that there's any other way of doing it - you have to use something - if you're not allowed anything then you can only pick randomly. (You may as well take the first applicant, except maybe that's not allowed either because it discriminates against slower applicants.)
There's a missing bit of context here about what "laid off" actually means in this person's case. We are assuming it means a non-performance related reduction in force, but it may be something different.
If I had to guess, I'd suspect the hiring committee found reason to suspect this person was laid off for performance / behavior. For example, perhaps their company has not conducted a large layoff, or is known for laying off based on performance.
We also don't know what else happened in the interview. Perhaps he talked ill of their former employer in relation to the layoff. He may have cleared the technical rounds but the interviewer noted this, and the HC weighted it negatively.
All of this is conjecture - for all I know Databricks' HC is really made of idiots, but it's probably not the first assumption to make based on a Blind post that lacks context.
> There's a missing bit of context here about what "laid off" actually means in this person's case. We are assuming it means a non-performance related reduction in force, but it may be something different.
But that's basically the definition of a layoff; the elimination of roles from a company due to reasons unrelated to the performance of the laid off people (e.g. lack of work, economic conditions). If somebody loses their job due to reasons related to their individual performance, they were not laid off. They were fired.
I am aware of and agree with this definition. But...
One company I worked for had two rounds of layoffs - the first round got rid of exclusively low performers (they didn't announce it that way but it was clear) while the second cut across the board. If someone had that insight, they'd be right to consider someone cut in the first wave as a red flag.
But more generally, I don't think people stick to this definition, especially when talking about themselves. "I was laid off from X"... No dude, you got fired for harassment.
Again, all of this is conjecture - we have no idea what the situation in question actually was nor how the person communicated with the company about it.
I have never met a company that was able to reliably gauge performance. And would not put that against anyone unless they were intentionally fired and we're evasive about it.
…sure, but that's what circularity means. You think it's accurate because you set it.
The problem is when people are doing something useful the managers haven't noticed. (Or is successfully bullshitting instead of contributing anything.)
Not necessarily true. I have seen in the past employees be “laid off” solely due to their performance. Rather than fire the employee for performance reasons they opt to eliminate the role altogether, and not rehire for it. The team had a lot of flexibility and mobility in roles, so they could reallocate people to pick up any slack. I think they do this partially for the benefit of the person being let go, and partially because it’s more “paperwork” otherwise.
> I'd suspect the hiring committee found reason to suspect this person was laid off for performance / behavior. For example, perhaps their company has not conducted a large layoff, or is known for laying off based on performance.
Even if true, this is something the recruiter and/or some of the interviewers should also have been aware of. The candidate should not have to go through the entire interview loop (I would imagine at least 5 rounds) only to be rejected for this reason.
That's what I am saying. The HC is there to make final judgement based on the data. This is what's making me think it's not a systematic thing (we never hire people who were laid off) but something specific to that person (we suspect he was fired for a reason)
This is asinine, discriminatory and unfair. I'd even say it's borderline malicious.
Glad they named and shamed. I would't do any business with this company, nor attempt to work for them.
A RIF has nothing to do with a person's performance .. at least officially. One has to assume it was a business decision only, not performance based, although with a large reduction it seems improbable that the people left would be, now or in the past, under-performers. More than likely, the person being laid off was due to their salary being high, and their function being covered by someone else. Nothing more complicated than that.
For anyone like you (and me) who says being laid off doesn't mean bad performance you have someone else saying it's good that Meta, Twitter, etc. are cleaning house, getting rid of all the slackers. Those are the folks calling it a red flag later.
The thing, is we want to believe that a company makes careful decisions about whom to lay off. We know it doesn't quite work like that but as you said yourself there can be a bunch of reasons. And with that context you're still looking at the reality that the company didn't deem the laid off workers important enough to keep.
I don't agree with what happened to the candidate here and we are all at risk of being laid off after all, but at the same time we cannot just assume the companies didn't have reasons to select one person over the other. And being overpaid itself might be a red flag for some hiring managers.
What I mean is, we cannot have it both ways, saying RIFed doesn't mean anything while at the same time assuming that companies follow a rational decision process and don't just play roulette.
I got laid off along with 30% of the company and 1 month later was contacted by my manager to let me know that he had put me on a “single point of failure, do not fire” list, and someone in HR managed to get some spreadsheets mixed up and I instead made it onto the list of people to be laid off. At this point I already had accepted another offer for more money, and obviously had less than stellar feelings towards the company, so I told them I wasn’t coming back.
Everyone wants to believe that the people and organizations holding their careers in their hands are competent, rational, and trustworthy. Unfortunately that is often not the case.
It can both be true that most of the people who were laid off were done for "performance reasons" and also that it's not rational to reject a candidate because of a "red flag" like being laid off, at least if you are doing any evaluation of candidates yourself. After all, the prior company could have been wrong? Or they value different things?
I agree with you in that you can’t infer whether it was random or performance related but RIFs first start with underperformers from the last review cycle at a lot of companies.
I think their HR culture may be a little toxic. When I told them their offer was not enough, they got very irate. They said if I only care about money I’m not a good fit for their culture of builders, and that I should watch out because there are lots of lay offs happening. It all left me with a very poor impression of them.
This is the type of toxicity I experienced at most companies in a top third world country (that shall not be named).
I worked there for about 3-4 years and people would try to make you feel bad or guilty for all kinds of things. Sharing you got laid off was an automatic disqualification from any interview. Lying your way through was the only way. Now I think it could have been systemic or cultural.
My advice to OP, you really dodged a bullet. This isn’t a healthy workplace culture that values you as a human being. Pat yourself on the back and move onwards and upwards.
A "little toxic?". This is a nuclear bridge burning option from them, for absolutely no reason at all.
Instead: "Mr. Cochne, we're sorry that we can't match your salary expectations this time. We do find you a good fit for the company, so please think about us in the future."
There. No hard feelings. No burning bridges. Professional. People come and go.
I met Reynold a few years ago about a job and also withdrew because he frankly got too self-righteous and made me feel uncomfortable. Cloudera was a bit warmer but was missing a lot of productive energy. I think the founding Databricks team are just very analytical and system-oriented, even when it comes to people. It's reasonable to expect the early team to have adapted to people management by now, but some of the potential champions of that have left, and the product remains primarily B2B.
> They said that I should watch out because there are lots of lay offs happening.
They should display some more empathy and should read the situation correctly. A significant portion of the recently laid off people are from HR and recruiting.
If money isn't that important, why are they regularly getting VC money for 10 years at something like 40 Billion valuation?
The sad reality is this industry is full of assholes, I don't even mean they trying to pay as little as possible, that's "business", I mean unprofessional people who play "good cop, bad cop" and all the childish games they learn on TV movies.
Some of them really think they are the "new Steve Jobs", and act like one.
These are just recruiters, though. It’s a sales job and they have quotas and incentives. Many of them were not in the industry a short time ago and many are now leaving the industry on a rail.
Do you expect your car sales guy to be professional? I’d love for that to be the case, but the reality is usually not so.
I'm not defending it as a good idea, but where's the dishonesty? It honestly seems more like just a waste of your time unless you really need the job NOW
If you dont stick to a bad job and leave within a few months… just don’t put that short term job on your CV. The CV doesn’t need to include anything that’d make you look bad.
Depends on how the rest of your CV looks like. If you just have short term jobs, sure it’s a red flag. If you have one ones in a while, everyone will understand that it just didn’t work out.
I've got two <1y permanent jobs in a row on my CV - first one was running out of money and I quit to save them a salary (I didn't believe in the holy grail pivot or new tech lead - company folded 2 months later anyway); second one "let me go" after they got a new tech lead that didn't agree with my approach. Neither is a red flag, both are just bad timing / luck.
I had a pretty bad experience with them when I interviewed about a year and a half ago. I don't remember all the details, but I recall them giving me (a frontend SWE) a phone screen problem that was all about micro-optimization. I think they wanted me to implement a trie within the last five minutes of the interview or something. After the interview, I emailed the recruiter and said I didn't want to go forward with them.
I'm sure some people here will say DS and Algorithm questions like that are perfectly reasonable to show off CS skills, but the question was just so far removed from anything a frontend engineer could expect to do that it showed that they just had no respect for the specialty and were hiring for the wrong thing.
I gave a ref check for someone trying to join databricks and honestly their level of probing gave me the creeps. Like they were trying to find some dirt. Never seen anything like it. It seems like they’re either not confident in their interview process or trying to lowball people, either way wouldn’t recommend interviewing there
Instead of laying off maybe companies should make a press release like they do with top execs that get fired “15% of our staff has decided to spend more time with their family”.
Lol like that time a VP at google sent a resignation letter saying that he wants to spend more time with his son who just went to college (wat) but it turned out it was sexual misconduct.
What a disgusting but revealing story. By saying "being laid off is a red flag" they are loudly signaling that actually they have no way of measuring interview performance and are just trusting the former employer's judgement? So why even bother with the interview then?
It would be like if someone is selling me their car and I run the car history report and see it was in a minor collision but was repaired. I look over the car and see the repairs were done fine. In fact I bring out a mechanic I trust and they tell me that yes the repairs were completed with high quality and everything is great with the car, am I really justified in calling myself rational if I reject the car anyway because of some metaphysical spookiness I think inhabits cars that were in collisions before?
If my selection criteria for an employee was their ability to come up with good analogies to certain situations, you would be eliminated pretty early on.
That's fair. A car that is in a collision is always at best as good as a car that has not been in a collision, whereas that's not the case with an employee who was terminated.
I was trying to get at where you don't need to trust someone else's judgement of something, you can just ... go look yourself. Or hire your own expert. Because why do those other things if they don't actually change the outcome?
It seems so strange they would openly give this feedback to a candidate. Even if it weren't illegal, the only action available to the candidate is to lie about the nature of their termination in the future.
It also doesn't seem like a good idea to avoid hiring laid off people. Hiring is a lemon market regardless of layoffs, and plenty of great people get laid off. It just doesn't make sense to reject a great candidate at the very end of the process because you realize they had been laid off. Either they weren't a great candidate for other reasons, the Blind post is an unreliable report of events, or the hiring committee really is stupid.
This is, no question, absolutely terrible but the comments section on the post is a little wild:
"Asking for references after clearing interview was also Dik move tbh" (sic)
Is this a straight troll? Because if it's not, stop and think that through, will you?
I have no idea how many people have listed me as a referee over the years - quite a few (and enough that I know plenty of companies don't check references) - but if every referee is asked to provide a reference for everyone who has listed them for every job for which they pass CV/resume sift (or even some stage part was through the selection process), well, that's a lot of references.
Now, of course, you could write one reference for each individual and send that out to everyone who asks, but lots of companies have forms you have to fill out and they're not all the same. And you'd be doing this for a lot of jobs your applicant either wouldn't get or wouldn't take because they have competing offers on the table or are going through a process with multiple organisations.
So you know what the result would be? Referees won't give references.
This isn't a "dick move" (ah, sorry, I mean a "Dik move") by the hiring company but a sensible strategy to avoid wasting referees' time.
This seems like a lot of discussion for a single report from a possibly-disgruntled (but definitely rejected) candidate, about a policy that was denied by multiple Databricks employees in the thread, who clearly said that Databricks has hired a number of people who were laid off recently.
What I find strange in OP's story is that HC and recruiter actually gave a reason for the rejection. Most companies after they reject you are tight-lipped.
> denied by multiple Databricks employees in the [Blind] thread, who clearly said...
That proves nothing. HR departments shill on Blind.
I agree “HR departments shill on Blind” but the claim made by several people in that thread (at least one who said they are a hiring manager) that Databricks has recently hired multiple people who were laid off is verifiable as true or false. It’s not just a generic weasel statement like “it’s not our policy to…” or “we treat all applicants fairly” or something like that.
> but the claim made by several people in that thread (at least one who said they are a hiring manager) that Databricks has recently hired multiple people who were laid off is verifiable as true or false
How exactly, again, did you verify their identity as a hiring manager?
My partner recently left Databricks (or "Datadicks", as we like to call it) after a year of dysfunction, unrealistic deadlines, many breakdowns, and severe burn-out.
He took a few months off to recover and is now back in the game at a small consultancy with some incredible peers. Half the pay but absolutely worth it.
This may actually be illegal[1], particularly if it disproportionally aligns with any other sort of protected factor (like age, sex, or national origin).
In a labor market where Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft haven't recently released collectively dozens of thousands of well-qualified workers into the pool, I suspect this situation might have ended differently. It's "buyer's market" out there now and employers can afford to be extra picky. This dynamic may not have applied to the poster's case since those other available resources would have been laid off as well. But the core point stands.
To build on this with concrete numbers, warn tracker used public data to break out the number of affected employees by more specific data.
You can see that from Google there are 300 entry level SWEs, 500 mid level, and 200 senior level. The whole industry had 12,000 Google employees, but you’re only competing with a few hundred SWEs of your experience level (using payroll level as a proxy for experience).
You can imagine this is repeated for various companies, and could still be thousands of new job seekers, but it does limit the perception of a “flood” of engineers.
Right? I'm going to make a post saying Google rejected me because they saw I posted on HN and post that here. Apparently if it's on Blind it's the truth...
In my area it’s still a sellers market, we struggle to get folks. Yes, industry articles talking about the continued shortage in area X. So we have hired folks who have had shorter tenures / been laid off etc. I think sometimes folks can be a bit blind to why they’ve ended up getting laid off especially if it’s been repeatedly because it can become obvious.
Maybe the candidate is missing some information (references didn't go well for example). Why would a company spend all the time to interview someone they weren't going to hire? Even if Databricks found out later after the interview loop, they gain nothing by telling the candidate that specific reason for the rejection.
The _average_ quality of those who where laid off is indeed probably a bit lower than the average quality of those who weren't.
But there's so much variance within those groups! The very _worst_ way of using that information that is:
- Interview everyone; run them through the full assessment process
- Once you have a successful group through the process, nix anyone with this trait
Instead, you arguably want to more thoroughly reference check folks who were laid off, in the same way you want to more thoroughly assess someone's technical ability who doesn't have a technical background. That lets you incorporate _more_ information, rather than acting on the very low-information signal of them being laid off.
I always take first layoff offer I get. Free salary for couple of months. I have no trouble to find new gig... And old job will only go downhill with more workload, paycuts and less generous layoff offers.
It's so funny... I've had a list of potential new employers ever since I re-opened my linkedin profile to "semi-open for opportunities" a year ago or so, and over time, every single one of them has basically disqualified itself with horror stories. I'm probably not looking hard enough, as I guess I'm only hearing about the opportunities that are needing to advertise heavily due to being lousy places to work.
Don't say you were laid off, say you left the job to start a new web site, but it's not working out financially. And obviously have a small website ready with a reasonable sounding business idea.
It is totally reasonable for counting being laid off as a red flag, it puts a ceiling on your performance - if you were really that productive, they would have kept you.
The problem with the last part here is that even if it signifies a performance issue at the person's last employer, unless you have exactly the same company culture and exactly the same type of projects it tells you very little.
But there are also many other reasons why otherwise productive team members will be made redundant. E.g. sales are flagging and the company needs to cut cost, and are cutting whole teams because they've already cut the low performers.
It is worth probing a bit of someone has been laid off, but I've personally had to make people redundant who I'd have rehired again in a second while keeping lower performers because they were essential in some way or other, and we couldn't justify making them redundant only to move someone else into their position (even with the ridiculously weak employee protections in the UK that'd suggest it wasn't actually a genuine redundancy; but even places where it's legal, it doesn't mean everyone will do it).
Your suggestion about a project to fill the gap might be worthwhile if the gap is long enough. Otherwise it'll just add new questions about why you're giving up so soon.
Not only is Databricks a deplorable company when it comes to HR, but their product is terrible. I really don't get what it's all about. Much rather spin up my choice of a python notebook, have my own underlying data storage, etc.
I really don't understand how they got so big so quickly? Was it all hype? VCs helping close deals?
it's simple: Many companies are on Azure for some reason. (mainly because of preexisting microsoft contracts, and because its so tightly coupled with office that if you want office at the enterprise level, you always need a little of Azure)
Now, those companies need data infrastructure. Azure ML studio is horrible. Azure data factory is somewhat okay'ish, but far from ideal. Azure Synapse is a steaming pile of junk that doesn't seem to improve. Azure data lake is kinda functional as a data lake, but lacks any decent ways to analyze that data.
Spinning up jupyter notebooks is not something most IT teams understand, they want a managed service.
As far as I know, Databricks is then the only solution offered by Microsoft. That's why they get such a high adoption rate. Not because of merit, but because they are the only somewhat acceptable solution on Azure. Good enough to just work. Not good enough to gain a competitive data advantage.
I hate what the world has come to, but sadly IT procurement has too much influence and CTO's dont understand the modern world enough. They just care about the big Microsoft contract, because it makes them look good (look at all these savings!)
If Microsoft would showcase Teradata or Dataiku or a bit of Snowflake, all of those run through the azure marketplace anyway,... we would be better off. But consultants and premium partners naturally only care about Databricks
Well said. It is a sad state of affairs.
For those of us who can, push back against IT procurement and show leadership the value (and likely cost reduction) when using tools outside the norm.
And yes, the Azure Marketplace has several great solutions for data processing.
This is the author's perspective and it's not necessary true. There's a tricky part in hiring process on the employer side, and it is enormously high cost of false positive. If I hire a wrong person, company should spend a tremendous trove of resources before the mistake could be corrected. Thus it is intuitive to just put a "no hire" resolution in case of any doubt.
In my opinion, Databricks' layoffs are not necessarily a "red flag." Changes in a company's structure are common in the technology industry and can be a strategic move to improve efficiency and performance. It's important to carefully evaluate the reasons behind the layoffs before jumping to conclusions about the company's health and direction.
AFAIK it's rare for a company to actually share reasons for rejecting a candidate. The main reason for this is probably compliance issues. Is there any reason to believe this post is actually true? Startups tend to be more forthcoming in rejection reasons but I would be surprised if Databricks is still in such a laid back mode.
So they are actively trying to filter out people that have worked for startups? Because if you work for start-ups you will eventually get laid-off, if not multiple times.
But there is something like reputation. Once you have a reputation for being a place with a toxic HR/hiring culture its hard to get rid of that. Finding good people is hard in our profession, and most people have plenty of other options. This is not the first time I've heard something shady about the hiring practices of this particular company.
I mean if you’ve been laid off it literally means you’re the person they like the least from the company. Otherwise steve would have been laid off instead.
So it makes sense to not want someone who is the worst in a company.
Nah. Goog just laid off some really spectacular people (in both talent and personality). Examples: Chris diBona and cat Allman. (I don't know cat personally but I do know Chris and he's an incredibly likeable person.)
Both involved in activities that generated Google a boatload of community goodwill but likely not a lot of direct revenue.
That can be true, but it depends on the company. For example, sometimes layoffs are in order of seniority, so if you had the poor fortune of being the most recently hired, you are also first on the chopping block. I think it is probably not quite as black and white as you described.
May as well be shutdown of a department or project, where everyone gets off-boarded. Believe a lot of the recent GOOG reductions included very senior people who just happened to be on low-priority projects.
You are on low-priority projects because you aren't trusted on high-priority projects or have been out-maneuvered for them by other senior team members, or don't have enough political capital to convince others of the importance of your project to make it high-priority.
