Casual friend lied about college degree to get job (application, employer, remote job)
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2- Reddit is curated by moderators. We're allowed to speak freely here, but its not like this on Reddit. The "Reddit/Discord mods" will delete comments they personally don't agree with (often the political ones). Someone may have commented your friend is going to pay fines, the Reddit mod would have removed the comment under some silly stance, "Rule #5. No speculations on this forum. We are only here to discuss."
Many Reddits are also uber liberal, and criticizing something like that can get you a bunch of downvotes. Other sheeple see the downvotes and pile on. If the goodwill of the community (in the firm of upvotes) is important to you, you probably won't say anything to disagree with the pack.
I actually quit one Reddit when I was chastised by a moderator for directing somebody to the FAQs for a thorough discussion of their issue.
Agreed, but it seems like, at least in this case, it's paying dividends for him. Not only that, but it seems like a good number of people find this behavior reasonable and worthy of kudos. I'm a bit more understanding around some mild embellishment, but straight up lying about a (significant) qualification/achievement is crossing the line IMO. Maybe this is far more common than I dared to realize.
They're not all my friends. I was referring to the large amount of redditors who were praising and celebrating this behavior. I disagree with them and paid the price for it with copious amounts of downvotes.
First - for those of you who are taking the moral high ground and are saying you would not befriend someone who has lied, you'd have no friends.
Second - a lot of people have been chewed up and spat out by Corporate America in some way, shape or form. Whether that's low wages, layoffs/firings, horrible mismanagement or whatever. So on some level I understand where the Reddit crowd is coming from. Doesn't mean they would do that themselves but to hear that someone else got "one up" on some big corporation to get a job isn't going to cause folks to shed tears or get too upset. I get that.
Third - to somehow believe these "poor corporations" are being taken advantage of is a bit much. CEOs lie and/or stretch the truth or omit the truth quite often if it means higher sales and/or stock prices.
I'm not praising what this guy did at all. But I would not shed a single tear or get upset one iota over it either. If your company is set up to accept some half-azzed made up "diploma" that someone made on Adobe, you probably deserve to have employees who may not be as qualified as they claim to be. That's the unfortunate reality when you skimp on background checks.
First - for those of you who are taking the moral high ground and are saying you would not befriend someone who has lied, you'd have no friends.
Second - a lot of people have been chewed up and spat out by Corporate America in some way, shape or form. Whether that's low wages, layoffs/firings, horrible mismanagement or whatever. So on some level I understand where the Reddit crowd is coming from. Doesn't mean they would do that themselves but to hear that someone else got "one up" on some big corporation to get a job isn't going to cause folks to shed tears or get too upset. I get that.
Third - to somehow believe these "poor corporations" are being taken advantage of is a bit much. CEOs lie and/or stretch the truth or omit the truth quite often if it means higher sales and/or stock prices.
I'm not praising what this guy did at all. But I would not shed a single tear or get upset one iota over it either. If your company is set up to accept some half-azzed made up "diploma" that someone made on Adobe, you probably deserve to have employees who may not be as qualified as they claim to be. That's the unfortunate reality when you skimp on background checks.
I agree with you, but it's more nuanced than that for me.
As far as the "poor" corporations are concerned, I agree; bleep 'em. I've been on the receiving end of plenty of those lies and mistreatment throughout my career. I'm not shedding any tears over them.
My gripe on this issue is more of a matter of principle and ethics. Throughout my career, I've often felt like quite the impostor, and squirm at any modicum of embellishment that I bake into my resume. I blush over the idea of bragging about my accomplishments, because to me they feel so insignificant relative to the groundbreaking work people are doing in other cutting edge fields. That said, I worked hard throughout my life trying to achieve success by doing the right things. Knowing that this is all for nothing, that I'm up against (and probably losing out to) degenerates who did the bare minimum in life and who fabricated their way into successful outcomes is antithetical to my core values. I am not naive to believe that lying is not commonplace in the world. But I do believe that those people should be held accountable and face a little bit of karma, too. Or else what is the purpose of a civilized society?
At the end of the day, I think it goes back to the ol' saying that two wrongs don't make a right. Lots of corporations do suck and treat their employees abhorrently, but this doesn't justify what this guy did either. Not saying that you said that, but that is my reasoning for feeling the way that I feel.
Makes you wonder if some of these companies don't just pretend to run background checks or claim they run background checks and don't go through the effort to do the checks themselves or subcontract that background check out to another firm to save some money.
I've thought about that as well.
I worked down in Antarctica as a contractor, 3 times over a 3 and a half year period, and they supposedly used HireRight to do background checks on all applicants.
The reason I mention this, a full-time employee, who I didn't work for, but people I knew did, ended up killing his wife (who was also a full-timer at the same company) in 2012, because he was having an affair with a seasonal contract worker.
It turns out this guy spent five years in prison for sexually assaulting a minor in California in the early 90's before working down in Antarctica.
Many questioned, how the heck did he get a job, first as a seasonal contractor down in Antarctica in 2001, then as a full-timer.
I realize this is a little different than lying about going to and graduating from a college/university, but it makes you wonder if these background checks are really done at all, like checking if you're a convicted felon.
A prosecutor revealed last month that Robert Baker spent five years in prison for sexually assaulting a minor before he met his wife at a scientific research station in Antarctica.
Kathie Baker’s niece, Oregon resident Jamie Hill, and her attorney, Charles Arndt, of Coupeville, are trying to figure out how Robert Baker was allowed to work for Raytheon Corporation at the isolated South Pole facility given his felony convictions.
Hill said she contacted Raytheon about the issue, but received no explanation. A Raytheon official told the Whidbey News-Times that he couldn’t comment.
I agree with you, but it's more nuanced than that for me.
As far as the "poor" corporations are concerned, I agree; bleep 'em. I've been on the receiving end of plenty of those lies and mistreatment throughout my career. I'm not shedding any tears over them.
My gripe on this issue is more of a matter of principle and ethics. Throughout my career, I've often felt like quite the impostor, and squirm at any modicum of embellishment that I bake into my resume. I blush over the idea of bragging about my accomplishments, because to me they feel so insignificant relative to the groundbreaking work people are doing in other cutting edge fields. That said, I worked hard throughout my life trying to achieve success by doing the right things. Knowing that this is all for nothing, that I'm up against (and probably losing out to) degenerates who did the bare minimum in life and who fabricated their way into successful outcomes is antithetical to my core values. I am not naive to believe that lying is not commonplace in the world. But I do believe that those people should be held accountable and face a little bit of karma, too. Or else what is the purpose of a civilized society?
At the end of the day, I think it goes back to the ol' saying that two wrongs don't make a right. Lots of corporations do suck and treat their employees abhorrently, but this doesn't justify what this guy did either. Not saying that you said that, but that is my reasoning for feeling the way that I feel.
I get that, I do. I personally haven't outright lied but I've definitely called myself "proficient" in software that I was only a casual user of. If that's the worst thing I've done, I think I'm okay (besides, I can learn or become proficient in most anything fairly quickly). The only other thing that I was not absolutely up front about was a small gap in my resume where I was out of work. I just switched from "May 31, 2004 - October 12, 2008" to "2004 - 2008" to hide that small gap.
Coincidentally, they did check. And it literally did not come up on his background check. But the photoshopped, scanned copy that he sent was sufficient enough for them to move forward.
Funny thing about it is that he tried to pull this stunt with a large, reputable aerospace company several months back. They were about to move forward with his application contingent upon a background check, but then I guess he decided to withdraw before it got to that point since he knew he lied. Maybe he hadn't come up with the idea to photoshop the degree yet. Desperate times, desperate measures? But still, wow!
You know what an employer checked on a casual friend and what the back ground check did not bring up? Know!
I get that, I do. I personally haven't outright lied but I've definitely called myself "proficient" in software that I was only a casual user of. If that's the worst thing I've done, I think I'm okay (besides, I can learn or become proficient in most anything fairly quickly). The only other thing that I was not absolutely up front about was a small gap in my resume where I was out of work. I just switched from "May 31, 2004 - October 12, 2008" to "2004 - 2008" to hide that small gap.
And every decent recruiter will spot this red flag.
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