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Comment by tamarind8 | Hacker News Reader

Thank you. There was no warning. In-fact, every dev is free to setup their own local environment in whichever way the choose. There is no standard way to setup anything, and one of my goals was to setup my env and document everything step by step on the org's wiki. So that atleast we'd have one official, approved way of doing things.

What is most shocking about it all, is they have an Angular app, which they are thinking of moving to React, which is why they hired me. On the basis of my React and JS skills. They trusted me to get up-to speed on Angular, but dismissed me because I use Firefox? Don't want the job back, I'm just feeling that people should not feel free to d*ck others around like this. How will I explain all this on my resume?

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> How will I explain all this on my resume?

You don't. Omit that job.

The time gaps between jobs?

There have been times when I have strategically done my CV in yyyy or yyyy-mm dates to make such gaps less obvious.

But if pressed you can honestly say that you have no idea what the problem was, you performed your requests, and you were given no warning. In any case that was beyond your control and didn't turn into a real job.

Go with the easy route; add it as "Freelance Contract under NDA", period!

There are some good reasons to (as a matter of policy) not lie.

IMHO it's better to cast around for the best possible honest framing of the issue.

It's not a lie, because this advice came from a number of HRs I interacted with for a number of years; it was suggested as their personal advice and not their professional one.

One of them even codenamed it "the cloth of protection" lol.

How does an HR person saying something isn’t a lie make it not a lie? If you’re saying something happened which didn’t happen, that’s a lie. A HR person saying it’s okay might indicate that it’s not a lie people would look askance at, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t a lie.

As others have said, the correct thing to do here is to just not even list the job on the resume in the first place. No reasonable person expects every single short stint be listed on a resume. I’ve heard three and six months suggested as guidelines for the minimum lengths of jobs one should list. Anything shorter than that probably isn’t worth going into, as you’re still onboarding at that point. Also, people get sick, have sudden illnesses in the family, or otherwise can’t work for a couple months for loads of reasons.

I've been much better at getting paid well since I started... creatively reframing my comp.

I hear you. I wasn't suggesting that lying never pays off in some way.

And I concede that a policy of honesty might only make sense in some world views / ethical positions.

I don't tell my parents how much I make. I'm definitely not telling some random recruiter.

> I don't tell my parents how much I make. I'm definitely not telling some random recruiter.

FWIW, there are ways to not reveal that info, but also not lie.

For example, if a recruiter / employer starts fishing for my current salary, I just say "I'm not going to talk about that, but ...", followed by some carefully worded signal about my general salary expectations.

If lying in this context doesn't bother you in the slightest, then maybe you won't see value in this approach.

Good one easily verifiable by payroll as well because the checks showed up.

Three weeks aren't a gap, that's just a little time to relax between jobs.

I had already relaxed between jobs before getting this one... ;)

So it is more like a 3 month gap.

Easy to explain.

> Jobs at this time are hard to come by. The biggest employers in the industry have laid off hundreds of thousands. There is a lot of competition for every position.

Why would you have to explain those? To whom? You’re an adult and what you do with your time on Earth is your decision. Run away from anyone who doesn’t respect that.

That's hardly long enough for a holiday. I'd never dream of questioning a three week (or three month for that matter) gap.

You received an inheritance and decided to travel.

Yes, lying is a much better option and couldn't possibly be uncovered and give [legitimate] grounds for dismissal.

I agree with you. I have never lied, but saying the truth here will make it really hard to find my next gig, even though I did nothing wrong.

> How will I explain all this on my resume?

It's a 3 week gap, just omit it. If anyone asks, you were looking for a new job.

I've had jobs I didn't add to my resume because I don't want anything to do with those shitty companies ever again.

Nobody has ever questioned the <6 month gaps.

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