Tell HN: Recruiters are lying about remote positions

[nineplay]

I've spent the last several months going though a FAANG interview. A recruiter from the company reached out to me and said they were hiring for remote. I got a hiring manager on board, spent evenings and weekends preparing for the coding and design interviews, and made it to the last step - my application had to go through a hiring committee.

The hiring committee said no, they didn't want remote hires.

I have friends in arguably worse situations. They were recruited for remote positions, accepted the jobs, and are now being told they have to show up onsite. When they pointed out they had been hired as remotes they were met with a collective shrug - the job opening didn't say remote, the agreement they signed didn't say remote. The recruiter was wrong but that's not the company's problem.

I'm not sure what the compensation model for recruiters is, but it seems to encourage bringing in as many candidates as possible over treating them with honesty and respect.

[mabbo]

When I went looking for a fully remote position last year, I was worried that exactly this might happen.

Then I heard that Shopify had literally shut down and sold their offices. It's not actually possible for the company to go back to the office because they don't exist.

So that's where I work now.

[vasco]

+1 On this. Find somewhere that was remote before pandemic or that shifted fully.

I've worked fully remotely for the same company for almost 6 years now. Having worked in an office before, one belief I've formed over the years is that working at a place that doesn't have remote at the core and that has staff that's remote and staff that isn't, would create a two-tier system and I'd be very afraid of trying it.

In fact for a lot of the company history, we've had an office in a location next to the founders, that people were not allowed to use as a work place. You could go there for a day here and there but not as a group and not as a regular activity. There weren't even spots for more than 5 or 6 people at the same time in there, so mostly used to receive mail. This sort of thing won't even be in the minds of a huge corporation that is only doing remote because the pandemic forced them to.

So my advice if you want to go remote, is to find a company that was either fully remote before the pandemic, or a company that has truly embraced it and shifted completely.

edit: seems like there's a bit of attention here, if you're struggling with remote or starting something and you want to exchange some war stories for fun, I'm always up to share some thoughts even though the internet is full of experts on remote nowadays. I've done it as an engineer in a company of 12, later as an engineering manager and more recently being manager of managers and we've surpassed 250 people, so I have thoughts about it from multiple angles. You can figure out how to contact me from my profile.

[mystickphoenix]

Focusing on remote-only, remote-first, remote-from-scratch companies is how I ended up at my current, and literally best company I've ever worked for, gig. Obviously the pool of such companies is smaller than in-person and they tend to have more competition for roles, but my unscientific guess is that pool is growing larger.

Bonus points for those companies because they didn't have to "figure it out" or change upper management corporate culture to go remote.

[bogota]

I am in this process now. Only looking for companies without offices and who will put in my contract that I never have to come in even if they do buy one.

I am beyond sick of my current company pretending like everything is going to go back to normal one day. We have 75% of people working from home although not labeled remote and maybe 25% back in some offices. The CEO pushing that we are an office company has destroyed communication and meant that over the last two years instead of adjusting how we work just pretending like nothing every happened. So now we have terrible communication even within teams and no one who wants to fix it because that would be a waste of time since soon everyone will be in the office. This has been going on for over a year.

Maybe they will fix this but it’s completely destroyed my desire to work for what was once a great company. They have over 1k employees. It’s unbelievable how much time and energy have been wasted because management has refused to accept the current situation. If i had taken this same approach when things changed at this current job or others I would be fired. I need to switch to management.

[eschneider]

Same story here. I was interviewing through much of 2021 and got a _fantastic_ offer from a local startup but I ended up passing because I just didn't believe their remote work promises. Ended up taking a position at a fully remote company and I'm very happy with it.

[victor9000]

Similarly, I focused on companies that were based abroad but hiring in the US. Can't be forced to commute from Seattle to Mexico City.

And if anyone is interested in for real remote work, we're hiring SDE & Sr SDE frontend (React) and backend (Python). See my profile for contact info if interested.

[Breza]

My wife's employer shut down their office and my employer did the same. It really helps build trust that they're not about to make us go back to an office.

[HeavyStorm]

My remote option is a global team. We have offices at my location, but since management and the rest of the team is spread around the globe, the risk of me needing to show up at the office is minimal.

[User23]

Shopify is an excellent company to work for. Congratulations!

[dorianmariefr]

Would love to follow you on Twitter what’s yours?

[uuyi]

> I'm not sure what the compensation model for recruiters is, but it seems to encourage bringing in as many candidates as possible over treating them with honesty and respect.

From experience dealing with recruiters for the last 25 years they universally lie to both sides to pocket the commission at all costs.

I drove 400 miles once to do an interview for a solution architect position. Got there and the company were recruiting an Oracle DBA. The recruiter had plain up lied because I had some Oracle experience on my CV. They assured me they would ream the recruiter and bought me lunch and gave me an Amazon voucher to cover the fuel and time though which was nice.

[no-s]

I drove to LA once to do an interview the next day after confirming with the in-house recruiter. When I got there they told me they didn’t think I was actually coming because they had already hired someone. Also they didn’t want to pay expenses despite offering to do so in their letter to me.

So I called up a consultant firm I knew in LA and sez, “hey I’m in town interviewing at X for Y, but I don’t like them and I wonder if you got any Y jobs" and they got me a (consultant) job as the technical lead for the job the X company had placed the other DBA at.

Later I had my attorney send a letter with my documentation to X company and settled up for time, expenses, and atty fees.

[md_]

This is probably more true for headhunters than for in-house recruiters.

FAANG mostly (completely?) use in-house.

[gitfan86]

The only good experience I have had with a 3rd party recruiter was when they put the name of the company in the email and I contacted that company directly.

It just doesn't work well to have a non technical person be the middle man between two technical people

[chrisbuc]

I once went for an interview, setup by a recruitment agency, in a town nearby. The job looked great, and it was a step up for my career. It was for a mature company that made software for the oil drilling industry amongst other things.

The interview went well, the coding test was good. Finally, I were just chatting with the CEO, and he asked "So you're ok with spending 2 years on site in Kazakhstan?"

Needless to say we both agreed that it was a wasted interview and that the recruitment agency should have mentioned the Kazakstan bit...

[derelicto]

This is very anecdotal, but I have a friend that interviewed at Google for a Remote SWE position - everything indicated that it was remote: the posting, the recruiter and the hiring manager.

Now they announced RTO, his manager said: "We're excited to have you at the office" - he was really confused about this messaging, so they forced him to apply to work remotely (even if he had been hired as such) denied his application on the grounds that this SWE role that requires a lot of cross regional interaction and virtual meetings - requires "intense collaboration that you can only get in an office". Total BS.

Needless to say he's leaving. This is such a travesty, total misdirection.

[jedberg]

Protip from an old guy: Always get everything in writing. No verbal promises. Make sure everything you discussed is written in the offer. If you discussed 100% remote, make sure the offer says 100% remote. If it doesn't, ask them to add it before you sign.

And then if they go back on it, keep working there, look for a new job, don't go to the office even if they tell you that you have to, and bring up that you have it in writing that it's 100% remote.

And if they fire you anyway, you've got a good basis for a wrongful termination suit, while hopefully working at a new job and/or collecting unemployment.

[asoneth]

Another datapoint for getting it in writing:

I attended and then later worked at a graduate program in a high-demand niche of computer science. When I was a student a company rescinded an offer that had been signed months before and left one of my classmates scrambling at the last minute.

Several years later I taught there and found out the employer was still blocked from participating in the program's recruiting events. Had there been a handshake instead of a written offer it would be unlikely that they would have maintained that block for so long. The written offer was also referenced when communicating with the company in question, students, other programs in our niche, university administration, and especially other recruiters.

Needless to say, no student has had a similar issue since.

[sillysaurusx]

That feel when jedberg is now an old guy.

I agree with you, but in my experience that’s also a recipe for misery. If management is determined to get rid of you, they will find a way. And you’ll be stuck on awful do-nothing projects in the meantime.

Admittedly it’s much nicer to do that while being remote though. Just saying that it feels better to work at a place where management has your back.

[dvtrn]

What are your recommendations for those of us who work in "at-will" states, where it's common to see "Offer letter is not a contract" in the offer emails, contracts are often eschewed except for certain key roles, and where employers have a much easier time changing parameters of your employment? (No I'm not uprooting the family and moving, either)

[pc86]

This works if they try to get you to come in right away, but things change and the company is allowed to change a remote position to an in-office position. It can even happen soon after hiring (but is obviously much more suspect). The company changing its mind !== wrongful termination.

[behohippy]

That's brutal. We're on the other side of it right now trying to get exec and HR to actually commit to something so we can hire remote. We had multiple good people in the pipeline who we had to pass on, because they won't actually say if they'll demand these people move to Toronto (one of the worst housing markets in the world) as soon as they sign the papers. It's like we're supposed to surprise them with that?

[qbasic_forever]

> I'm not sure what the compensation model for recruiters is, but it seems to encourage bringing in as many candidates as possible over treating them with honesty and respect.

This is exactly how it works, recruiters don't get paid unless they get a candidate hired. Despite all the words they write and say to you, they only care about getting you and the hiring manager to say yes and _everything_ else doesn't matter or is immaterial to them.

Unfortunately it's nothing new to see recruiters being less than honest. In their defense, right now is a weird time with many companies who were firmly in the remote only culture now backtracking and reopening again. It could be the case when this position opened things were much different with its requirements.

But ultimately never trust a thing a recruiter says unless it is signed in writing from your hiring manager/HR of the company. Never believe anything they say about compensation, the future of the company or your position, etc. Never.

[hammock]

OP experience makes me think some kind of added process like Letter of Agreement or Letter of Intent from the initial outreach that says “assuming you pass all the rounds, we will hire you to a remote position at a salary to be determined but between the range of x-y, etc.” could be helpful.

It’s not a contract but a precursor and some lighter level of commitment. Common in enterprise sales scenarios but not in mid level job searches.

[brazzledazzle]

At the end of the day it's a sales position and just like any sales people they can have a flexible relationship with the truth.

[23B1]

This depends a lot on their incentive structures - the other side of this coin is that many recruiters are simply full-time employees, who get measured more on their time-to-hire.

Unless we're talking about freelancer/indie recruiters, of course.

[calvinmorrison]

> This is exactly how it works, recruiters don't get paid unless they get a candidate hired.

Not exactly. I mean yes - exactly. But they also typically have riders on the contract. Firstly, our recruiters do not get the same cut if the new hire doesn't pan out. Also recruiters I have worked with in the past tend to get a percent of the salary number. That helps as the recruiter is really trying to get you the highest number.

So yes, and no.

[y-c-o-m-b]

Amazon is doing this. I went through the process and the recruiter tried to manipulate me into "assigning a local office" otherwise it has to go through "an approval process". I told him put it through the approval then or I walk. He also tried car-salesman tactics of trying to get me to accept a lower total comp package. I stood firmly at the top of my range and after days of trying to convince me otherwise, they finally caved.

They're also holding back-to-the-office meetings where they want local individuals to come in a few times a week and remote individuals to come in on a somewhat regular frequency (e.g. once a month). I told them to shove it, I'm not coming in, ever. I don't need their money that badly. I'd rather slash my salary in half and work somewhere that's not trying to screw me over at every turn. I think after 3-6 months I'm quitting anyway.

EDIT: I should mention I just started at the company and it's already pissing me off. Thankfully my old cushy job will take me back any time.

[ShakataGaNai]

Ask the people you're talking to where the teammates are, the expectations of return to office. Ask them in the very first call. Either they'll be offended because they probably have nefarious plans (dodged a huge time waste), or they'll happily explain how their team is spread across 4 timezones and could never return to the office since there isn't one.

Sadly "remote" is just a buzzword to a lot of people. But on the flip side a lot of companies are truly serious about it.

[WorldMaker]

So far that has been my experience with a handful of FAANG interviews the last couple of years: I get a recruiter coming to me talking about 100% remote positions. I get to phone interviews, ask the people I'm actually interviewing with what their thoughts on remote work are and am honest that I'd be most interested in 100% remote myself (but I am flexible on it). Most of those stopped at the phone interview because it was generally clear the recruiter telling me that 100% remote options were on the table had me interviewing with 100% "can't wait to get back to the office" teams.

[vmception]

I have a couple friends obsessed with the “digital nomad” term and are swayed by things and jobs with terms like remote or digital nomad

That crowd is almost incapable of just applying for jobs that have always been remote, if the job description doesn't lead with that in the title. Many software startups and the development consultancies they rely on have been this way for many years.

So instead they get led on by things catering to the remote and digital nomad industry than just having a job that already had supported the lifestyle they wanted!

[snorkel]

Good advice, and should also ask if the team was mostly WFH before Covid because old habits die hard.

[calvinmorrison]

At my last role, I got all the way to the "signing your hiring paperwork" to find out that vaccines were mandatory for all new hires. Seeing as that's 30% of the workforce or so who isn't, and this being a senior level position, and a year more after they were first available (meaning, anyone who wanted to get a vaccine - probably would have already)... you'd think they'd bring that up day one.

I about flipped shit on the recruiter.

[sdoering]

> [...] the job opening didn't say remote, the agreement they signed didn't say remote.

I don't understand. Do people sign a contract that states something differently than they were being told verbally before?

Imho what isn't in writing doesn't exist. Especially when it comes to "promises" from potential employers.

For example I would not trust a promised raise in 12 months when nothing was done in writing. Even with the best of employers I would not agree to anything if they didn't agree to writing it down.

[marcosdumay]

> Do people sign a contract that states something differently than they were being told verbally before?

Yes. All the time.

And verbal agreements are valid contracts too, if you can prove they exist (but good luck in that).

Anyway, this particular case looks more like the OP believed on the promises of a 3rd party (the recruiter), so it's not actually a contract.

[SpicyLemonZest]

That's a pretty hard standard to hold. I've never had a company promise a particular desk to me in writing, but I trust that if they show me their nice office space and verbally tell me that's where I'll be sitting they won't put me on a folding table in the broom closet.

[makecheck]

I’m sure there are talented recruiters but generally I’m lucky if they connect any dots properly. Things like: “I see you have years of experience on X, here’s an opening in Y”, or “I found your resume <that clearly states objectives, including where I would work>, here’s a job in $faraway_city!”.

In other words, they barely seem to read resumes or anything else so if they totally screw up key details of the position, that is probably par for the course.

(Insert rant about losing StackOverflow Developer Stories, which actually allowed explicit tagging of things like preferred tech which made matching really easy.)

[underhill]

Same thing happened with me @ Apple last year. Went through 4 or so interviews with the expectation that it was a remote role. Then the day before the big remote "onsite" I was told they actually wanted someone in-person. So I removed myself from the process. I'll chalk it up to 2021 being a confusing time for everyone - but I felt pretty burned by it.

[angarg12]

My advice for those people is: don't go to the office. Simply work remotely as it was agreed and let the managers make a move.

Considering how insanely difficult it is to hire right now, I predict most of times they will do nothing. However this might sour your relationship with your manager so you might want to consider looking internally for someone who supports remote work, or look for another company that's more honest and transparent.

[dudul]

I would also recommend starting interviewing after the first request to get back into the office.

[jdhn]

You definitely need to name the company that did this.

[omgmajk]

A friend of mine went to an interview after a recruiter called him and said it was hybrid (up to one day at the office every two weeks and rest remote) but at the interview when it was done, they said that he needed to be at the office a minimum of four days a week. I feel like this is sort of common these days.

[jghn]

It is, but it's worth giving companies the benefit of the doubt here. A lot of companies are actively changing their policies. At my day job we're transitioning from full remote to hybrid, and the rules on hybrid are themselves in flux. It'd be real easy for a candidate to get mixed messages if they entered the hiring funnel now. Yes, the company should be up front about the circumstances, but I could see how it would happen.

And yes, other companies are just malicious.

[joezydeco]

I've literally had recruiters email me job descriptions with "remote" in the email header and the document inside says "hybrid".

None of these people actually read the crap they shovel onward.

[thenerdhead]

Recruiters and hiring teams are hardly ever on the same page. Always get your information straight from the company, not a third party that is enticed to land interviews for higher chance of converting to landing a candidate.

I do think the bait and switch of offering employees who entered the workforce full time employment and then asking them to come into the office two years later is disgusting. There's something bigger going on with how fast this has been swept under the rug.

If you're reading this and want to be fully remote, don't settle for anything less. People have been doing remote work for decades at this point and contributing more than most people do in an office. If you prefer to work at an office then do whatever suits you.

[diehunde]

If you get to the point you get an offer, always make sure to get that in the contract. I was working remotely for a company that went through some re-org and ended up with a different manager who wasn't very excited about having remote team members. Unfortunately for him it was part of my contract so he couldn't force me to relocate.

[dspillett]

> the agreement they signed didn't say remote

While the recruiter lying is the cause of the problem, there are several points during the process when they could have confirmed the relevant job details. Just before signing the agreement is the last such opportunity.

> but that's not the company's problem

If it causes enough problems, such as people not signing when offered because they have read the agreement or people leaving without notice during probationary periods (in most legal jurisdictions these periods work both ways) because of the divide in expectations, it will become the company's problem, and they'll stop using those recruiters.

Unfortunately some are desperate enough for work that they'll just go with it until finding something else, so there may not be enough signal to insight change that way. Especially given that there are apparently very few recruiters who don't act in similar ways.

> but it seems to encourage bringing in as many candidates as possible over treating them with honesty and respect

That is exactly how it works.

If it is any consolation they often lie to the employers too, though that isn't quite as easy to get away with due to the differing power dynamic.

[ravenstine]

Yes, this happened to me with my last position.

Overall, they weren't one of the worst third party recruiters I've dealt with (though I shouldn't have dealt with them at all), but they told me in the first few calls that the position was "fully remote". This was only half-true. It turned out that the employer wanted me to come in 1 to 2 times a week. That was during late-pandemic, so who knows whether that would have been changed to not being remote.

Maybe it was miscommunication, but there's no way I can know that. An honest or competent recruiter would have sorted out those facts.

IMO, do whatever you can to bypass recruiters. Networking, doing presentations, and even just finding the emails of those who are really in charge of hiring, have a much greater payoff with modest effort than dealing with recruiters, particularly of the third-party kind. I believe this is particularly true for junior developers. If you are junior developers, expect most recruiters who reach out to you to be scum of the earth who will drop you like a hot potato if a single employer doesn't end up hiring you. They will tell you that you have "all the skills" and are "perfect" for a position and then they'll ghost you just as fast. Don't take it personally. Those people suck.

[jrd259]

My Amazon team (based out of Toronto) is hiring remotely. I know the hiring manager won't change their mind because I am the manager.

[donretag]

Judging by the recruiting emails I receive, FAANG companies are definitely not interested in remote employees. I get 2-3 emails a week from Amazon, and they always list an office, but hint at remote possibilities. I suspect it is Amazon that is doing the bait-n-switch.

I am having somewhat of an opposite problem. I actually want a hybrid position, but LinkedIn, which is sadly the best place to do an active job search, will advertise a position as local, but it is actually remote. Roles will appear when filtering on-site, but the job description will definitely specify remote. The companies are not even local. LinkedIn will add these positions in local searches.