How to Escape from Immoral Mazes
thezvi.wordpress.com
thezvi.wordpress.com
Young people fear it. Older people know it.
> Quit.
Not everyone is a 20-something silicon valley kid with companies falling all over themselves to throw money at them.
Hiring is effectively broken these days - especially in the software world.
If you're not from a top-flight university, maybe a little older, or in any other way less flashy/attractive in the job market, it can take months or sometimes years to get decent job interviews.
You can't just walk away from a decent income because idealism.
I'm in my mid-50s. Took me 9 months to find a gig a couple years ago when I was looking. Now to be completely honest that's also because I can afford to be pretty picky at this point and I was only applying for stuff that looked really interesting. And if it looked like there was just too much bullshit I wasn't interested. When you hit your 50s you've seen a lot of bullshit in your time and can smell it a mile away. So yeah, it works both ways. There's definitely ageism, but many of us who are aged have saved up enough so we are also picky about what we want to take.
I'm currently between gigs again (previous contract may come back when they get funding so I'm kind of biding my time because that was a good place to work and good places to work can be hard to find). I don't want to call it quits and retire just yet, but I'm finding less and less that's non-bullshit out there these days. And the way interviewing is done these days... well, let's just say it makes me want to retire. I like the work, but I hate the interviewing.
Personally I think there are lots of people who have an idea in their head (not always consciously) of what a hotshot developer looks like. And it’s not the old guy. And I think this manifests as concerns about “culture fit” or being overqualified or other vague objections.
We ALL have biases. It’s on hiring managers and HR departments and all of us to actively work to minimize their effects. This is hard to do and, unfortunately, some people don’t care to try.
But certainly there are other reasons too. Bias in hiring is a tough problem.
Older people have families, don't buy the "lets work 20 hours a day," or "we're a startup" despite being founded in 2000 or whatever, and that's a liability to some. (Another thing, is that they might be less willing to take orders from their 23 year old boss.)
Weak managers like to "take decisions" as a display of their value as a manager. This value elevation is undermined by old experienced employees who can point out bad decisions or that the manager doesn't understand the consequences of the decisions, i.e. a fear of being "exposed". Weak managers fear anything that makes them seem weak, like asking questions.
1. Stay at unethical job you hate.
2. Get a new job you don't hate.
Well, the answer is pretty obvious. But there is a deeper challenge, which is the choice between:
1. Stay at unethical job you don't hate.
2. Damage/destroy your career and job prospects.
This latter scenario is really a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. It forces you to pick. Would you rather be virtuous (i.e. ethical), or be paid?
> You can't just walk away from a decent income because idealism.
Sure you can. You just choose not to -- and (IMO) that's fine.
Much in the same way that you can jump in front of a moving bus if you want to - you just choose not to.
The implication is not that it's _impossible_ to walk away - it's that it just doesn't make any damn sense, given the likely outcomes.
If you’re median or better and in a city with a reasonable tech scene, you are probably going to have a straightforward path. If you’re median or better and not where tech is, look for remote jobs (admittedly harder) or move where tech is.
If your skills are notably below the median, staying put and working on your skills might be the most sensible course and changing jobs once you can interview and place well.
The biggest trouble for a soft. eng is getting to a real person. Once that is done, convincing them that you're median or better is the easy part. Most resumes are just screened out by a machine, or reviewed by a clueless HR dept that has no idea what a median-talent software engineer looks like.
I have taught hundreds of CS undergrads in this city, and have had some of the very brightest tell me they've put out 500-600 resumes, and never heard back a thing. Many do get jobs though - even some of the worst performers.
It's very hit-and-miss - not nearly as deterministic as you make it sound.
Interviewing is a lossy, semi-random practice for both sides. Candidates and firms take different approaches to address this randomness, but it’s still ultimately not a digitally precise (repeatable) not even especially accurate system. You could be the next Jon Carmack and fail to get an offer from 10 straight interviews for relevant positions. “Too experienced; we don’t really do what he’s interested in; bad culture fit; too good culture fit-we want more diversity; simply preferred another candidate; decided to not move forward with the role; lost the budget; existing employee transferred; never was a real open position anyway but we legally had to advertise it...”
Open to suggestions here - but no stalker advice, please - I do not condone friending hiring managers on linkedin/fb, or some of the other creepy tactics we've seen recently.
I think the skillful students generally believe that investing effort to become skillful is all that's needed - and that doing so will eventually pay off.
This is sadly not really true as a general statement.
I have had many 'successful' students - who got more than one offer to choose from. Once, I asked one - who now works at a major investment bank - "so, great job - any advice I should pass on to other students if they ask about job-hunting?" (taking note for myself also - as I am a soft. eng mainly, and only teach part-time).
I expected something like "invest in your skills" or python, or java, or databases, or interview questions ...
The response was: "yeah - copy and paste the job description to the bottom of your resume, and turn the font color to white - so humans can't see it, but the machine will still read it and label you a good match for the job".
My point here is that the current system seems to work best for those who 'game' it to behave in unintentional ways - as opposed to filtering for actually skillful applicants.
That's what I've observed for very competent people around me as well.
Most of the companies I've worked for also rejected candidates for arbitrary reasons and also had "trouble hiring".
> (The median interview candidate is much, much worse than the median engineer because the worse you interview, the more frequently you show up on interview loops.)
Not sure I understand what you're saying here. People who haven't needed to interview in a long time are probably not good at interviewing but good engineers nonetheless. Conversely, people who are good at interviewing might be because they've had a lot of practice.
Joel Spolsky said it well: “A lot of companies think they're hiring the top 1 percent because they get 100 resumés for every open position. They're kidding themselves. When you fill an opening, think about what happens to the 99 people you turn away. They don't give up and go into plumbing. They apply for another job. There's a floating population of applicants in your industry that apply for nearly every opening posted online, even though many of them are qualified for virtually none of these positions.“
I've had a rough time looking for jobs, due to 2 main reasons: not getting it right when adapting the resume to a job posting. Many ATS just discard resumes that doesn't have the exact words that they use on the job posting. Even if you are saying the same thing with different words...
The other was the phone interviews, made by a HR person looking for who knows what. For most applies that I did, I didn't get a phone interview. After phone interviews, didn't hear back.
I only got 2 technical interviews for like, 100 applications. One was for the job I'm currently in, the other I declined because I got the job offer to my current job. Both I got through recommendations, even if the people recommending me didn't know me. But they looked at my resume and put it stray to the HR manager for them to talk to me.
I also had a friend (not in IT) that was not getting anything. I told he to look for recommendations. She went to LinkedIn, found someone that worked or used to work at a company she wanted to go, and talked to the person, got recommended, and got the job.
edit: this in Canada
When you say "older" how much older do you mean? 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s+?
I have not had any problem yet regarding my age (40s), and just landed a decent initial offer from a Silicon Valley company.
You don't need to be a 20-something to land a good job. You just need to be somewhat good at what you do.
In my last 3~5 gigs my age has never been brought up. Not even once IIRC.
No one will ever bring it up.
Do you really think someone will take on the liability of discussing your [age|race|sex|sexual orientation] in an interview? ESPECIALLY as a reason to NOT hire you?
> You don't need to be a 20-something to land a good job.
Agreed. However, your chances drop precipitously as you age.
Studies have found this to be the case repeatedly - with very little evidence to the contrary.
This is a vague statement that makes your premise unfalsifiable. If someone is not hired because of ageism, it is always possible to say they weren't good enough at their jobs, because good enough is never defined.
> Quit. Seriously. Go do something else. Ideally, do it today.
That's it, right there. The whole article could have been replaced with just that.
I've heard people express the opinion that they have absolutely "no choice" but to work at McKinsey, or some random hedge fund. I don't understand how anybody can reasonably come to that conclusion. The worst case for people like this is making only medium six figures.
People who claim they have no choice but to play the game have already decided they will tolerate it as much as possible.
Edit: I am dumb and completely missed the joke. Poe's law in action!
The maze aspect of a situation, or the immorality aren't really the important things! The thing that matters is whether you have a purpose in participating, to make anything better. When a private company is going down the tubes, there's an inherent non-linear and self-fulfilling type of behavior where people give up when they think others are giving up. It makes a large difference in what can be achieved when giving up is not an option for a significant number of people.
Wisdom? Determination? Scars? You can claim to earn or learn some of those.
Don't get me wrong, I am not aligned with the hnn society of smart idiots who think Harrison Bergeron was a how-to manual. The genetic dice roll can be cruel. I don't look like Clooney nor am I built like The Rock. But them's the breaks. The only thing worse than that unfairness is the unfairness well meaning and smart idiots would create trying to rectify the inequities.
Still, I am empathetic enough to be amused by rantings of the intelligent regarding economic options when they seem to have not seriously considered some other people are less intelligent and may really have less options.
In the abstract I will side with those who declare no one is trapped. But there is a continuum.
You pretty much have to get me to Vichy France or San Francisco levels of disgusting society before I advocate a waitress with a 6th grade education just decides that supporting the evils of Cheesecake Factory is beyond the pale and worth joining the resistance, the kid's be damned.
Seems to me some of these smarty pants could create a utopia for the lesser folks who feel trapped by mortgage's, child support and other meaningless pursuits instead of wasting their horse power on blogs.
The unwillingness to acknowledge that intelligence is genetic (as are many psychological attributes) has completely neutered any meaningful discussion on a variety of very important issues.
What they tend to neglect is that when your possessions begin to own you, so too does your boss.
Kids, medical problems and bad luck can all contribute, but we generally have a very low degree of control over those situations.
Bad luck sure, but kids are an entirely deterministic and preventable outcome. Most medical problems are arguably preventable as well.
I agree regarding the link between possessions and employer leverage.
And these things don't even begin to cover things like rape, incest, and underage pregnancy where a guardian doesn't allow abortion.
Children are not always preventable
Other folks have already addressed the medical problems, so I'm gonna pass on it.
Not having sex is simply not a viable option for most people - especially so within the confines of a committed romantic relationship. In fact, it is an easy way to void such a relationship in most cases.
That's a huge stretch. You could say that for most illnesses we have some idea how to reduce the risk, but there is still an overwhelming amount of luck involved.
(And that's before we even get into the luck-based factors that make lower-risk behaviours harder or easier for different people.)
Those are all trivially avoided.
Most of what I need doctors or other quasi-medical professionals to assist with is congenital or... wait for it... sports related. Turns out that 'get plenty of exercise' doesn't automatically fix everything. And it's harder to manage 'plenty' once you get older and everything fucking hurts.
So many of my older friends have informed me that my definition of 'everything hurts' is adorable that I'm starting to worry that they're right when they tell me that I haven't seen anything yet.
Now I'm 40, and this Sunday night I start seeing double when gazing above the horizon. After finding an opthalmologist who would see me immediately and getting MRIs and blood tests, it is diagnosed as idiopathic optical inflammatory syndrome and mostly treatable (although it tends to come back). I suppose I should be happy it's not a tumour in my brain.
Ah youth, wasted on the young.
When I report all's well in fifteen you'll just claim it's good genetics.
There are things in my life that have gone spectacularly well, and some that have gone pretty badly. So here’s me in the middle, with a pretty okay life that others envy, but the bootstraps people look down on.
> The vast majority (85%) of cases of lung cancer are due to long-term tobacco smoking.[4] About 10–15% of cases occur in people who have never smoked.[14] These cases are often caused by a combination of genetic factors and exposure to radon gas, asbestos, second-hand smoke, or other forms of air pollution.
So even for lung cancer, a significant minority of sufferers have never smoked. Genetic factors are obviously out of one's control, and the others mentioned can be pretty damn hard to avoid, especially if you're poor and/or born in the wrong place.
Okay, but that isn't fully within anyone's control either, and you're still ignoring the diseases that are predominantly genetic, the ones that happen more or less randomly as far as we can tell, the ones caused by environmental factors in childhood, and all the people who get a 'preventable' disease despite doing what they could do avoid it.
I'll stop arguing after this though, I think we're either talking past each other about the definitions of 'vast majority' and 'preventable', or having an unspoken argument about the general attitude we should adopt toward people with health problems, or at a factual impasse that we can both google our way around if we care enough.
You may not want kids, but you can't choose not to want kids.
https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/32731/what-do...
Some people are so compelled to have kids that they don’t have a choice in the matter at all.
Personally my wife and I chose not to have kids, but we know many more people who had to have kids than those who felt they had a choice in the matter.
Keep to the Right at all times?
Or else Left works, too.
Just don't vacillate.
:)
https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2020/01/12/how-to-identify-an-i...
FWIW, this author seems to use the terms "moral maze" and "immoral maze" interchangeably, which makes their writing harder to follow than it needs to be.
EDIT: On rereading, that page only offers an implicit definition of the term.
Basically, it's an organization that is steeped in perverse incentives. Most individuals are incentivized to behave in ways that are detrimental to society and to the long-term profitability of the organization, and the corporate culture implicitly accepts this.
Like everything, the approach can be abused (I feel fine about taking this high-paying morally dubious job, because I'm earning to give... but oh wait, now I have a family to support, and the cost of living is surprisingly high here, and I've got to wear good suits and drive a decent car or my professional reputation might suffer...) but a lot of people are sincere about it, and it does make sense.
What bothers me about some utilitarian perspectives is the lumping outcomes together of outcomes, based on vague definitions of benefit and harm, instead of keeping the effects strongly tied to their causes.
If you take that approach joining a company, you better know how much of the company money passes through you, and you better spend it very ethically and keep track of the development of the ethics of the company.
"Knowing a tree by its fruits" and all.
AFAICT it's the philosophical blind spot that got us parallel construction (an illegal US police practice), manufacturing evidence based on desired convictions, to reach a desired monetary, political or personal end.
There's also a New Age concept for it, it's called "spiritual bypass". "If only I'm spiritual enough, I can do whatever I want", or "if the Lord wanted my garden to bloom he'd water it, I did my part praying".
In psychological terms it's called "rationalization". I don't think it's an avoidable abuse as long as you don't do your own bookkeeping.
Is part of your point that we should be as precise as we can about the effects of our actions, tracing lines of causality at the highest possible resolution? I agree with this in principle (allowing for the fact that improving our knowledge isn't costless, so it will rarely be worthwhile to literally maximise it), but I think usually all we realistically have is a best guess, maybe a rough probability distribution for the outcome of each action. And throwing that out because it's uncertain would be letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, IMO.
What I meant to say was this:
"The lumping together of outcomes in roughly two boxes, while also discarding information about the specific actions that lead to the outcomes."
Once this has been done, there is no longer a line back from the outcomes ("buying food") to the actions that led to it ("receiving a salary"). Or "finding a job for some or other purpose", which leads to "working for company X", and then "receiving salary from company X", and then assuming part of the responsibility for the actions of "company X" by spending the money earned there.
I know almost no one who considers where their money comes from, and then actually implements steps to make their spending habits congruent with that.
Ethical use of money does not just involve spending it at the right places, it also involves earning it in a way congruent with where you spend it, e.g. keeping track of where the money originates from. Companies do not create money and everyone who works for them knows this.
For instance, if I receive money from place A which is involved in studying agriculture, if I then spend it in a place which is agriculturally underdeveloped, anything I accidentally reveal about agriculture to the place where I spend my money is well placed.
In the same vein, if I'm part of a criminal underworld involved in child trafficking and prostitution, I should not be spending it on schools, even if it were possible to keep the two worlds completely isolated in all my other actions. Thinking such a total isolation is implementable by hand without actually knowing you can do it and how, is highly unwise and a sure sign of an overgrown ego.
Taking money from one place and moving it to another just creates an undeniable and indestructible trace from place A to place B. If you are not a perfect filter to things which are at place A and should never be at place B, you are responsible for any and all harm caused, through willful ignorance of the fact that companies make money in cooperation with the society they function in.
To give you a simpler example, if I'm developing software that pushes some kind of social frontier, it makes sense for me to import my food from the most socially backwards countries, so that I don't accidentally mistake the actual problem space for "just my backyard". Because then I literally owe my food to the support of a country which has bigger social problems than I do personally.
Ideally this makes the software I develop less complex, I get a wider picture of the problem which makes it harder to even consider complicating the solution, and it helps aim my attention more precisely in ways which are known-good.
However, if I only were to consider the outcomes of my actions, such as great software or great tasting food, I may be effective at producing sharp weapons but not so much at producing tools for peaceful ends.
Meanwhile, mankind continues gradually burning itself to death and the most advanced machine learning algorithms in the world recommend I buy a different edition of the book I just bought.
Worker owned co-ops will indeed solve this problem, because they are very hard to scale. So they won't ever reach the level where mazes are a real problem. This being said, they also have the potential to come with their own set of issues - trying to get a bunch of people to decide things is also a very time consuming endeavor.
I'm also cynical enough to think that taking all the "moral people" out of one workplace / school / whatever and forming a "moral maze / company" will still not be a utopia...
People are what they are...