S02E04 — APR2020

The Luxury of Dissing

Hello world and welcome to the sixteenth edition of this rather tumultuous newsletter. 

Mild spring fatigue
Eternal, long hair
Into the keyboard

Ok, let’s do this.
 

✦

We’ve all seen one of these: a tech worker, usually young male, dissing recruiters in a cringy social media post. Either someone misspelled their name, they are sick and tired of generic messages, they are getting too many job offers, or they got offended by something else — only known to such special snowflakes that they are.

I honestly don’t know why this happens (for me this is domestic upbringing 101), but I’ve been triggered numerous times by this behavior in the context of the local tech scene. Once again, I’ll be looking through the prism of a micro-scope rather than a global phenomenon. It’s not that these two are mutually exclusive, the former is definitely a subset of the latter, but there are some quirks tied to our region.





Degamification
A broken economy in combination with an inverted system of values created fertile ground for this kind of snobbism, which doesn’t seem to exist in any other industry. The conviction is that a monthly salary of €1k automatically puts you in a position of higher value and power than the majority. Now add infantilism, and a lack of life experience of an average 20-year-old to this equation. You get a reality-bending ego-trip.

Sorry for popping the bubble here, but this isn’t a contest and there are no points. Except for the negative ones. You need to be really ignorant to think this kind of public bragging will bump up your market price and serve as free self-promotion. 

Elsewhere this would be treated as a “career-limiting move”, but the scene here is still young and forgiving due to high demand for tech labor. 

“Ugh, I have so many job offers” — if I only got a dinar each time I heard this phrase.

The fact that someone sends you a request or a message, doesn’t mean they are offering you a job. It’s signaling they have an open position. Also, not everything is always about transactions. Sometimes it’s about relationships.

Toxicification
The same people dissing recruiters are the ones dissing their clients as well. Design in tech is a very new discipline here and both of these groups are on the same boat — coming from outside the tech and various backgrounds. So, it is totally OK when design and everything around it is misinterpreted. We don’t yet have recruiting specialists, ideally coming from design-related disciplines. And even if we did, it’s questionable whether things would be different.

What these haters don’t realize is that they are doing harm not only to themselves but also to the current and future designers. Their actions don’t tell as much about recruiters (or anyone else really), as they do about themselves.

Being toxic is easy. Especially being surrounded by the mentality where toxicity is almost a default modus operandi. Having a positive mental attitude, being constructive and doing soft education is a way harder path.
 
Toxicity is deceptive and that’s why it’s so popular. Instead of spending the energy to earn some instant gratification on social networks, it’s better to find an angle from which you can improve something you care about.

Because what’s the point if you don’t care?

Apathification
It goes without saying that designers should practice empathy and a delicate touch, online as much as offline. Not just towards the users they are designing for, but people around them as well. People from the industry who are doing their job. A human being behind the message in your inbox.

If you are not interested in speaking with a recruiter, maybe you know someone who is. Answering politely and being respectful is the minimum someone could do. Being helpful and enabling good things to happen inside of the community is even better. Today you, tomorrow me.

Or you can always opt-in to be an asshole. 

The issue with this approach is that assholes are identified very quickly around here. Because chances are they are not assholes just towards recruiters, but other folks in their network as well. In a “small pond full of crocodiles”, people still heavily rely on people they trust when it comes to recommending other people. Invisible to the horde of assholes, there is this clan of ninjas — good, hardworking, humble people. People of the same moral codex, often in higher positions. Patiently waiting in the shadows for their turn to mercilessly put the final stab with a cold blade into someone’s rejection letter. No matter how good they looked on a paper. This way they are keeping the balance in the pond. 

If you are one of the lucky ones and have this luxury of working in IT, the mantra is simple — don’t diss recruiters (or anyone else really). Faux gamification of your career won’t make you a career. Indulging in this behavior will make you drown in toxicity and spread it further. Being apathetic, especially in these reality sharding times will quickly stigmatize you as a jerk.

Hate to the haters!