I thought of a great an analogy about recruiters. You can say that Taylor Swift has x years of experience as a musician. Then you have some person who can produce his own music, play wild advanced guitar solos with hammer ons, pulls offs, bends, slides. Sing and scream while doing it.
But Taylor Swift still has more experience.
It’s the same thing in programming. A lot of programmers with experience are bad programmers. I’ve had to work with many and I’ve been sidelined by them, over office politics, when I kindly tolerated their low performance.
I just think recruiters need to be knocked down a peg. They tend to not respect talented people who don’t have a lucky career path.
There are times when an employee is wrong. But there are other times when a middle manager launches an attack, with only a flimsy argument. I think in these situations you do have to stand your ground, because if you don’t, people won’t realize that you were actually in the right and not just a lucky person being cut a break.
These are the sort of situations where in my past positions as a programmer, I sort of didn’t stand up enough. I sort of bit my tongue and took it in stride, then later these flimsy arguments were used to justify actions against me that were really motivated by personality clashes.
I don’t play soccer, but in a soccer game, the refs can only blow the whistle if you actually commit the foul. And if the ref blows the whistle and you didn’t really commit the foul, you have the right to complain about that.
Again I’m the sort of person to just says “no big deal, who cares.” Well if you don’t defend yourself, everyone thinks the person who blew the whistle was right.
Now if the upper management is doing this stuff, that’s when you have got to look for another job.
It’s possible to find fault even with someone who is doing a good job overall at their job. If someone who has an assist to turnover ratio of 5 to 1 gets fired and someone who has a ratio of 1 to 5 gets continually forgiven, that is office politics.
I think people who are productive and get the job done and sort of don’t schmooze and play social games at times do experience discrimination. Again, either they get blamed for other peoples’ mistakes or mountains are made out of molehills. I really think it’s that low performers can’t sort of stay at a par level performance and they try to knock out the people who are better than them.
There’s both office politics and then there’s bringing political politics into the office. Office politics is favoring your friends, family, people you like over people who are actually doing the job correctly.
Then there’s the case of actually discriminating against someone for their real or imagined held political positions or ideology, which is increasing due to the internet. The lower performers who desire to knock off better performers are really the only reason people bring up politics in the office. It’s not the moral values garbage.
I view all this political division as a huge win because it’s bursting peoples’ bubbles big time. All these people who think life is fair and everyone gets along are learning the hard way that human beings are tribal and they at time stick together instead of sort of doing what is objectively speaking the fair thing to do. I’m glad people are forced to have this right in their faces, so they can stop blaming people who have bad luck with economics, as if life must be fair and somehow those with bad luck deserve what they got. It’s sort of like how Lenin liked when starvation happened, because people stopped believing in god and he was an atheist.
From my past experience in factory work and my current work experience out of the IT field, I can tell you that there is definitely something “weird” about the IT field. To put it bluntly, not enough rewarding of people who do a good job and too much of a desire to create an inner circle and remove people who aren’t in the circle. It’s not technically skilled workers with a blue collar mentality, it’s nerds who punch above their weight. Then it’s recruiters who don’t really understand skilled from unskilled and focus on background factors instead of ability.
If I’ve learned one thing, it’s that being non-confrontational and just “moving on” doesn’t work because the next employer assumes you didn’t do a good job and that’s why the job ended when really you were messed over. And if you don’t put up a fuss they don’t get the message.
Nice guys get stepped over with the assumption that they deserve whatever happened to them in the past. Future employers will cut off capable people by doing what they think is due diligence, but what is really reading between the lines and seeing the wrong story.
The definition of retaliation has to be expanded to terminating someone for engaging in discourse on issues of public concern.
If I discuss the environment or my preferred candidate, it may not be protected labor activity, but it should still be illegal to fire me because I oppose your view.
That power should be taken away from monopoly corporations at the hands of an authoritarian government. It’s very clear what I’m advocating.
Corporate brown nosing and group minded, popular thinking will never make 2 + 2 into 6 and those things will never make Daryl into an average programmer or justify his impervious mistreatment.
Run your mouth all you want, my talent speaks for itself.
This is how discrimination usually happens. One of three main ways.
Before you are hired, there is a stealth google search and low quality unapproved under the radar background check that is supported with a wink and a nod. Upon discovering information about your background, political views, religion, or even what they think it is when they are wrong, your application is disregarded. Also the criminal background check is used to use court cases that have no relationship to the actual job. A truck driver cannot have dui chargers/convictions. A computer programmer absolutely can, and it goes against PA law to consider an irrelevant criminal history. Additionally, future employers fail to connect the dots and realize that this increased gaps in the past, and go on about “work history.”
The other main way is that another reason is given for your firing or lay off but it’s really the discriminating reason. Basically you get fired in a situation where it is either someone else’s fault (this is the most pathetic type), or cases where essentially another person in the same situation would have not been fired for the same thing (less pathetic but still unfair). Or in some cases a bunch of people get laid off but you are much better technically than the other people who were also laid off and some of the people who were not laid off.
A third way is to use the line of “experience” to age discriminate but also to discriminate for other reasons. Sometimes you get the experience but employers ignore it and act like it is not there. Other times, there arises (frequently in tech) a situation where you do not have the exact qualifications down to the letter (you have version 3.5.4.444 instead of 3.5.4.447), but could obviously learn to do the job. In this situation reasonable accommodations are not made despite your obviously high potential when they would have been made for another person in the same situation. If there is a double standard, then it is discrimination, although it can also be very stringent requirements legitimately.
This is a major problem in tech and anyone who knows the political system is screwed up knows that employers discriminate. It is much worse in computer programming than it is in other industries, but not exclusive to computer programming. This is because many people in charge of hiring computer programmers are instant gratification addicts. Like chess players who cannot see a few moves ahead, they cannot look a few months into the future and see the benefits of allowing someone to grow into a position. It is a problem for everyone when this happens, but it is discrimination when other people are given that chance who show less promise than you do.
It should be noted that these things only apply to native born Americans. If you are Indian you do not get googled, have your political views investigated, have extensive irrelevant criminal background checks for misdemeanors and non-violent charges. That is only if you are American. Instead you promote your own people and discriminate in reverse.
Pennsylvania must introduce two new laws. A law banning political discrimination, like New York does. A law banning discriminating for legal, off the job conduct, like California does. Its law banning discrimination based on non-related legal issues (for instance a telemarketer who hit his wife, it is not related) needs to be enforced 10 times harder.
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