TL;dr I interviewed for a full-time tech job in my field which has fallen victim to AI. Pay was extremely low for the role. I declined after accepting with a brief email to the manager who is now pissed off and sending me shitty messages about “honoring my obligations.” I HAD intended to tell him the real reason was that their onboarding process was too exhausting for the pay. Lesson learned, ghost these fuckers.
During the first interview with the somewhat hostile person from HR, I discovered it was a temporary part-time position with the possibility of going full time in two months. Maybe.
You know, if I prove me self as a loyal corporate slave. I must confess that this started me out with a bad taste.
The second interview with the manager went well. He was very professional and I could see they were desperate for someone they wouldn’t have to train. I decided to take it while I looked for a better job.
They had asked for all the usual paperwork, consent for a background check, etc. After providing all that through their portal, and setting up their corporate email account, there was an avalanche of utter bullshit to download and set up. Like there was an entire procedure for how to configure your email address that HAD to be done a specific way — fonts, colors, phone number format, etc.
Oh, guess what? They expected me to use my own equipment without compensation. I actually prefer this because then I control what gets loaded.
You know the usual shit you do the first day of training? They expected me to do it on my own time effectively providing hours of free work with zero support and hit the ground running — all while working my full-time job.
Had they acknowledged it was a lot of work and offered me $100 to set it up in advance, I might have been okay with it. But the sheer amount of bullshit turned me off so much that the very thought of working in this organization made me dread working there before I started it.
Deciding to not do any of this work was such a relief.
I was expected to first fill out a profile with a recent photo and all my hobbies, contact information, social media profiles, etc. which would be available to staff.
Then there was a program for scheduling and a handbook to read on PTO, policies, etc.
They had another system for tracking your work hours and hourly tasks for internal tracking and budgeting purposes that I was supposed to set up and learn how to use before actual training started. And then I was supposed to code all my work for billing purposes — down to every 15 minutes.
They had a separate system for tracking performance metrics I was to configure which had another profile to fill out similar to the one above — photo, hobbies, career goals, personality assessment, etc. I was expected to follow this for a temporary, part-time job.
There was an entire drive full of documents I was expected to know before “training” on how to do the actual job. I got the impression there was no actual training beyond using their internal systems. These are legal issues that are specific to each company and you need to pretty much memorize this stuff to do the job. Most places give you a minimum of two weeks to learn it because if you get it wrong, it opens the company to a lawsuit.
And then I was expected to sit through all the compliance videos on cyber security, sexual harassment, legal and regulatory issues, and whatnot, then take tests on the subject prior to starting work.
Then they wanted an ADDITIONAL background check and expected me to gather my previous W-2s going back three jobs, and my college transcripts even though I passed their initial not-an-ex-con background check. This job does not require a security clearance.
I was overwhelmed and not even so much with the paperwork, but just how shitty this company was. They didn’t even pretend they were trying to get free work out of you. Honestly, even if they matched my current salary and gave me full time with benefits, I would have hated that job from the get-go.
I estimated this stuff would take up to ten hours to complete given that any problems I had would have to be fixed on my end.
The whipped cream and cherry on top was the manager berating me via email after declining the position (go fuck yourself, Sean) and not caring WHY I wasn’t interested, but only how I had fucked him over.