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Personal lives and hiring decisions (two threads in one!)
Posts
Sorry, guys.
I know I'm quite late to the conversation, but as of a few years ago, I worked in industrial security, and often worked with the investigators who processed security clearances for the government.
Your interview is typical, because your roommate isn't being investigated for a crime. You're not going to be put in a room, and have some guy grill you over your friend, because that's not the purpose of that interview. Before they even interview you, they've interviewed him, and read his SF-86, a massive document he's filled out detailing every aspect of his life. Some of it's silly - "Have you ever plotted to overthrow the U.S. government?", and some of it isn't "Have you done illegal drugs in the past seven years?".
When they interview you, they're really confirming what he's written in a legal document by bouncing it off of you. And the thing is - even if he's spent the past 6 of his 7 years stoned out of his mind, if he admits it in his SF-86, and his interview, it doesn't disqualify him from holding a clearance. The whole, entire purpose of the clearance process is to make sure that your room mate can keep a secret. He can have DUI's, an old drug habit, or even terrible credit, but if he's trust worthy, that's what counts.
That being said, there is an invisible bar that can keep folks from getting them. Too many black check marks are an auto-disqualify. A bankruptcy, or a foreclosure are sure fire ways to get screwed. If you're being blackmailed, that's an instant clearance denied. And then there's the aggregate - you're a recovering addict, your credit is terrible, and you haven't held a steady job. Odds are good the sum of all of those could likely deny you your clearance, and that's not counting your possible criminal background check, which can auto-disqualify you as well, if it's a serious offense. You might argue that none of those things make someone untrustworthy, but to Uncle Sam, they're indicators that you could inadvertently disclose information, or someone can apply pressure to you (tempt you, blackmail, or bribe you) to divulge state secrets - and that dog ain't gonna hunt.
TL;DR - Clearances aren't so bad. Polygraphs on the other hand....
They're typically looking at the whole picture of a person. Few people are totally squeaky clean, but a few negative points aren't going to disqualify you for the more standard clearances. Once you start going up the clearance ladder, though, it becomes easier to get dinged. Foreign connections are a hot button, for example.
Rigorous Scholarship
Not necessarily. What they look for are indicators of leverage. I don't mean some ne'r-do-wells kidnapped your family, and will start sending you body parts until you 'fess up. They look for something that can be used against you to make you divulge something you shouldn't, or, might coerce you into giving up the goods because you were on something that removed your good sense to keep your trap shut. Drug use is an indicator, because frankly, a lot of people who are drinkin' drugs do do stupid things, and they are hard to trust.
It's also a way to maybe sneak some moral jabs at a clearance applicant. Uncle Sam isn't above that - hell, as of a decade ago, they asked you if you were gay, which has dick all to do with keeping secrets.
Edit: Oh yeah, and willingness to break the law, etc., as well. Hi5 Modern Man.
Rigorous Scholarship
Those are three classes of people worth filtering out, imo.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
That said, they all managed to find a way to pass their screenings to get their jobs, and that has not kept them from partaking once hired, nor should it.
Yeah, I figured this was part of it. It almost seemed like a bit of a throwback to the Nixon days when they thought that LSD was undermining American values.
Sadly, false positives are possible. They generally ask what medications you've been taking, but I wonder if some employers disqualify positive tests even if the listed medications can cause false positives.
I was connected to the post and told that if I had used the title of the game, then I would have been fired and possibly sued, but since I hadn't I could consider myself lucky and keep my job.
With that being said, Penny Arcade's hiring practices are abnormal and should not be considered standard in any industry.
This assumes that its OK to be 'anti-Quarian' and that people should be protected from a negative reaction to 'anti-Quarian' behavior. Often a near universal negative reaction to a behavior, belief system or association is justified and even a useful tool. Its those situations where its not that either Congress of the Supreme Court (or its equivalents) steps in.
I mean the guy who wears a toupee made out of the poorly preserved otter pelts and carries a pile of human shit in his pocket at all times is going to find it difficult to get a job, but that doesn't mean that he deserves protection or that an employer should be forced to associate with this individual.
This is often the type of perspective that gets lost in the "hiring practices are unfair because it discriminates against me in the following ways" threads (not that this one is like that, but its a cousin thread). A great deal of having a job is doing what you are told, following the rules and conforming the behavior expected of you by your employer and society. Different jobs have different levels of expectations. Being able to show up dressed appropriately, pass the drug test, not publish pictures of yourself vomiting after doing a keg stand where all your professional contacts can easily find it? Those are standards of behavior that its not unreasonable to follow and if you can't its likely you will have difficulties with other expectations.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
If you introduced me to someone and then immediately told me the worst thing he's ever done, I'm probably going to think he's an asshole. "This is Bob, he cheated on his wife." Or: "This is Betty, she kicked a puppy." Or: "This is Todd, he was a Scientologist." Yeah, all those are pretty damning, but they really don't tell you anything other than that this person, over the course of the last couple decades, has done at least one really bad thing.
But since that applies to everyone - and if you tell me you've never done anything really terrible, you're a pathetic liar - you're really not communicating anything relevant. But since the information exists in a near vacuum, since it's one of the few data points you have to go from, you're going to hold it against them, because you're also human, and the human brain works with what it has.
And as society is increasingly comprised of people who grow up with their entire lives recorded on the internet in some capacity, it's going to be easier to find that One Terrible Thing if you're determined to search for it. Maybe Bob is a great person who donates to charity and is a great father and is now a great husband. But that doesn't matter, because all you know is that he cheated on his wife, and you know this only because you were specifically trying to find something bad about him.
And it's all pretty irrelevant. You can portray it as "it was just a background check, because we didn't know anything about the guy, and maybe his resume was a lie." Except a personal background check has dick-all to do with your resume, because all that information can be verified by calling up past employers and saying, "Hey, did this dude work here as a so-and-so?"
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
Except I am skeptical that how you conduct your personal life and how you conduct your business life are necessarily that intertwined. Someone can be a shitty husband, a lousy friend, and a giant asshole, but still follow the orders his boss gives them. And a better means of seeing if the guy can follow orders is to look at his professional references and whether or not he's been fired from past jobs.
I mean, gauging future business performance by looking at someone's personal life is a bit like trying use phrenology to see if some guy is missing a leg when he's sitting in front of you pointing at the stump.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
So what, in your mind, makes otter-pelt-toupee-wearers acceptable for discrimination, but not Muslims or married people?
"The law says so" isn't a complete answer. There needs to be a logical moral justification behind laws, or else they're pointless.
They want me to work overtime for free? Schedule me for more than 8 hours a day? Have me work holidays? I need to not get fired.
note: The shitty situations I get to deal with at work are not specific to me, they are across the board. If someone is being unfairly singled out and asked way more than others, it would be a different story.
And as Feral already pointed out, what if your boss is as repulsed by small-breasted women as you are by the guy with the otter-pelt toupee? "Oh well the law" is not an answer, because then all you're saying is that perhaps we should amend the law so that bosses are forced to hire people with pocket-shit.
You're also assuming that every findable bit of information about you on the internet is a) put there by you, b) under your control and c) true.
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Your belief is touching, if kinda wrong.
It's certainly true that the world has changed such that it is often considered unacceptable for corporate executives to treat the entire world like their personal titty bar. It's certainly not true that there is no double standard anymore, or that the entire corporate world has gone straight-edge.
Now, this is not to say that the executive you speak of should have been retained, or that that particular company would have reacted any differently if the miscreant were male, but the idea that there is no longer a double standard - particularly in male-dominated sectors - is, let's call it overly optimistic.
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I'm no philosopher, but discriminating against someone based on their race, religion, or orientation is bad discrimination that is wrong in its essence.
Discriminating against someone based on their education, hygiene, fashion sense, or the fact that they brought their pillow chan to the interview because "they're a team" feels more justifiable because to some extent it speaks to their social skills. I suppose the thing that makes it ok to exclude someone that has a horrible toupee is that his lack of self awareness is a character flaw.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
A lot of people with clearances have done drugs. Really, the best use of that question these days is "Is this applicant a lying sack of shit?"
I do not condone polygraph examinations.
I don't have a clear idea of an answer to the question I posted above, BTW. I'm honestly not sure. I doubt that there is a clear logical dividing line - anything we come up with is going to be based to a certain degree on arbitrary notions of appropriateness. Neckties are desirable, but not clown noses.
I know that some things clearly have no bearing on a person's work. My sexual practices are so far removed from my professional life that I should not be discriminated against for being gay, or bi, or a swinger, or whatever. It shouldn't matter whether I take vacations to Branson Missouri, Aspen, Burning Man, or a red light district in Thailand. So I tend to feel that somebody's sexual orientation, and sexual practices in general, should have as little bearing on employment as possible.
At the same time, I do think it would be awfully nice to work for a boss who is polyamorous, or work for a boss who loves Democratic politics, or even a boss who enjoys video games. Simply liking my boss as a person makes me happier and improves my work productivity. Maybe it shouldn't, but I'm a human being and I think that it's natural. So why shouldn't a poly liberal gamer give me preferential treatment in a hiring decision? Maybe I lack one or two skills that my Christian conservative competitor has - but I can learn skills!
But a few years ago, when I was desperate for any job, I balked at that attitude. I can do the job just as well as a conservative Republican! Why should my boss's politics or hobbies or personal subcultures affect my work?
I suppose maybe the least-bad situation would be a more robust social safety net, and less inequality of wealth. That way, if I'm out of work, I won't be quite so desperate to take any job. At the same time, we could let employers have a lot more personal discretion, because firing somebody or failing to hire somebody over personal incompatibility would be less of a problem. We'd still maintain anti-discrimination laws in situations where discrimination threatens to put entire classes of people on welfare - like blacks, or single mothers.
But, again, I'm not sure. I'm kind of thinking aloud here.
It's kind of a bad way to gauge that, though. Everyone will lie about certain things under certain situations. If a prospective employer is asking you about drug usage, you're going to assume that answering positively will keep you from getting the job. Even if they say, "If you say yes we totally won't discount you automatically."
So what they're doing is manufacturing a situation where you're more likely to lie, and about an issue that almost certainly has nothing to do with your job performance. They may as well ask if you've cheated on your wife, or if you're the guy who farted in the lobby. If they want to see if you're lying, they should interrogate the shit out of you regarding your claimed accomplishments. Because that's actually, you know, relevant.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
For a security clearance it does matter. If you're willing to lie about breaking federal law then you shouldn't hold a security clearance. Should an employer be willing to discriminate based on what you do on your off time? No, Unless what you do is illegal. Nobody wants to hire criminals/liars.
If I'm hiring you to work on a new high frequency trading algorithm, and I find out you've got some serious (to you), but legal skeletons in your closet, should I not be allowed to toss your application? If I found out, my competitors can too.
What if I find out that neither your wife, nor your kids, know that you hang out at gay bars on Thursday nights? I'm not discriminating against your sexual preference directly, am I ethically permitted to decline your employment?
Things like this, and future evolutions of it that we can only imagine, are just going to become more common and ubiquitous as time goes on and I'm pretty sure we're all going to have to become practical about it. And perhaps also in the process finally find some extrinsic motivation to be accountable for shit.
It depends on what those skeletons are, but if they make me unattractive as an employee then yes, I think you should be able to disqualify me for that. The gay bar one, I don't know. What if it's not a gay bar? What if my wife just thinks I work late Thursday nights but I really go to any bar, hang out with friends, and hit on the patrons? Nothing has really changed as I'm still lying to my wife about my whereabouts and actions. Would you still want to disqualify me?
It's all grey area when you get into "but that might be risky." A criminal record is less so. If you want to disqualify somebody from working for you for taking part in illegal activities that ought to be your right as an employer.
The issue isn't whether you're lying to your wife or not, it's whether the secret you're lying about is dangerous enough to possibly compromise your ethics to keep it.
No one is gonna cave to "tell us _______ or we'll tell your wife you're really with your mates at the pub."
Many will cave to "tell us or we reveal to your whole family that you're cruising gay bars/seeing hookers/cooking meth in an rv"
SWTOR: Allanna (Shadowlands) / TSW: Sara-Luna
In any case, this is going off on a tangent as your basic background check doesn't delve balls deep into your personal life. This is really only a concern where some serious goddamn vetting is being done.
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM
Why?
Because of ElJeffe.
Thanks, Jeff!
Rigorous Scholarship
Every time this quote is posted, the pagerank goes up.
A quick search of my real name doesn't really turn up much. A quick search of this username doesn't turn up much. A quick search of my professional handle turns up some of my professional work. There is some stuff that might be considered a "hot button" but it was really a one-off I had with someone who 'sperged about my not following standard definitions when I reported a problem which I eventually solved without his help altogether because he couldn't get past my not using the non-standard terms to give out any meaningful advice. He harped on it for about 3 posts then started sputtering nonsense I had already covered. To which I think that would be beneficial in my professional career calling out shitstains of coworkers.
I also clashed with some douchebag at codeproject and microsoft's forums because he disliked that I gave a partial answer to a problem to help someone rather than get deeper about bytes and bites and why you can't know this and that because it's platform independent this and that. But all the dude asked was if there was a way to do xyz and there sure was.
Also unfortunate and I am so very sorry and whatnot.
But mostly the best thing.
Maddie: "I am not!"
Riley: "You're a marsupial!"
Maddie: "I am a placental mammal!"
#FreeScheck
#FreeSKFM