The good jobs have always been reserved for those willing to show up.

The really great people get the job done. Showing up and sitting in meeting is much of the problem.

 

https://www.reuters.com/business/wo...00-corporate-job-cuts-sources-say-2025-10-27/
Amazon targets as many as 30,000 corporate job cuts, sources say

A program begun early this year to bring employees back in the office five days per week, among tech's most stringent, has failed to generate sufficient attrition, said two of the people, citing that as another reason for the size of the layoff. Some of the employees who are not swiping in daily because they live far from corporate offices, or for other reasons, are being told they have voluntarily quit Amazon and must leave without severance, a savings for the company.

 

Should more be done to tackle 'ghost jobs', vacancies that don't exist?

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I think it's the third reason that is most likely:

"We surveyed hiring managers, and found some companies post positions to create a talent pool," she says. "It isn't that they don't want to hire, it's more they're not hiring immediately.

"Others, we found, were inflating numbers and trying to show their company is growing, even if it's not."

Dr Escalera adds that she has also heard examples of companies posting jobs to obtain and sell data.

 

Should more be done to tackle 'ghost jobs', vacancies that don't exist?
View attachment 360743​

I think it's the third reason that is most likely:

It's a mix -- including posting a job for a vacancy and simply neglecting to remove the posting once it's filled (this is adjacent to the first reason).

The overwhelming majority of employers are NOT spending time trying to collect and sell personal information. Of course, the few that are will attempt to do so at scale, and hence represent a disproportionately large fraction of the listing.

The proposed solutions are worse than the problem, in my opinion. The problem, according to the article, is that job seekers are getting their feelings hurt. So, the solution is to add a bunch of unenforceable regulatory burdens on employers that want to hire someone one? Already employers have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages when they decide whether to seek a new hire, so this will just move that decision into the "don't hire" category when it's on the bubble. The article also mentioned that it must be addressed because it skews government statistics. That's a red herring. Gov't statistics are routinely corrected based on estimates of confounding factors.

But there's another motivation for posting ghost jobs that the article didn't mention and that is one that does need to be addressed before any of the others, which is posting positions for the purpose of committing outright fraud, such as telling an applicant that they have passed the initial screening, but before an interview can take place they must pass a comprehensive background check that costs $100. Of course, once the person sends it in, they never hear from the company again. Or, worse, they are strung along by further requests for money to progress down the hiring path.

Needless to say, these activities are already patently illegal under current laws and can't be effectively enforced, so why would anyone think that new laws are going to change that -- realistically, they will largely only negatively impact companies that already don't post ghost jobs.

 

Many years ago, while I was out of work for a while, I did email my resume and cover letter as an application for a posted job that seemed to be a good fit. A year later I started getting emails about a variety of jobs , and I kept getting them for several years. Eventually they stopped,

 

Many years ago, while I was out of work for a while, I did email my resume and cover letter as an application for a posted job that seemed to be a good fit. A year later I started getting emails about a variety of jobs , and I kept getting them for several years. Eventually they stopped,

That's not too surprising, or suspicious.

When we advertised for a position (back when online posting wasn't much of thing), we might get many resumes, mostly mailed, but some e-mailed. Our general policy (very informal, nothing official or in writing, just internal expectations) was that if we reached out to an applicant in any way, we owed them a notification of rejection if we didn't proceed. But we didn't acknowledge receipt of resumes because we just didn't have the resources to do it (we had about ten engineers and the president's wife was a very-part-time office manager). If we took no action, we didn't make any notification. But, we kept the resumes on file and before we advertised for another position we usually reviewed them seeing if there was anyone we wanted to reach out to, though usually a year or more would have gone by, so we might skip that. Later, once we were a bit bigger and had a full-time office manager, we would acknowledge any application/resume that was received in response to a job advertisement, but not ones that were unsolicited.

The norm for larger companies at the time seemed to be to do a quick review of a resume/application and, in most cases, send an Extendo-Bite-Me that said that the applicant wasn't a match for existing openings, but that their resume would be kept on file (typically for year) and they would reach out if a suitable position opened up. This was the approach that we adopted once we had the resources.

What I find frustrating (to the point of being infuriating, actually) is when an employer not only reaches out, but does an in-person interview and then goes silent and won't even respond to queries about the status of the application. That seems to increasingly the norm these days. I find that highly unprofessional.

 

Should more be done to tackle 'ghost jobs', vacancies that don't exist?
View attachment 360743​

I think it's the third reason that is most likely:

What really annoyed me and this was decades ago, was the head hunters. They would send people to interviews not like anything in the resume. Things like sending a butcher to a position for a candle stick maker.

Ron

 

What really annoyed me and this was decades ago, was the head hunters. They would send people to interviews not like anything in the resume. Things like sending a butcher to a position for a candle stick maker.

Ron

The head hunters need to fill a quota, after all.

 

What really annoyed me and this was decades ago, was the head hunters. They would send people to interviews not like anything in the resume. Things like sending a butcher to a position for a candle stick maker.

Ron

Yep. And the current job sites are at least as bad. When I was looking about a decade ago I couldn't count the number of responses I got telling me that I was a perfect candidate for jobs as an insurance salesman.

 

To be fair, being a successful insurance salesman is not an easy feat.

 

To be fair, being a successful insurance salesman is not an easy feat.

Agreed. But it's also something that someone that is looking for a position as an ASIC design engineer is not a perfect fit for -- in fact, in many regards, it is one of the worst fits. The typical temperaments and social skills associated with the two do not align very well.

 

To be fair, being a successful insurance salesman is not an easy feat.

They exist. I have one.

 

What one "headhunter" eventually let slip was that nobody wanted to even see a resume of an unemployed engineer. So if an engineer had a good job, why be looking for a different one. I still think that is a nasty attitude.
So I started my own company and hired myself. The pay was poor but the responses started arriving. And I did get a better job with better pay, and made my employer lots of money.

 

 

1. Never outright believe a laid-off employee.

2. She did not once mention Covid.

 

1. Never outright believe a laid-off employee.

2. She did not once mention Covid.

She quit and blaming Covid or 'AI' is lame this late in the game.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/sam-altman-says-quiet-part-165405075.html?guccounter=1

“I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs,” Altman told CNBC-TV18 at the India AI Impact Summit on Thursday.

Gimbel attributed the practice of AI washing to companies passing off diminished margins and revenue from a failure to effectively navigate cautious consumers and geopolitical tensions to AI. WebAI cofounder and CEO David Stout also wrote in a commentary piece for Fortune that tech founders are facing increased pressure to justify exorbitant and continued investment in AI, which is the reason why many have created narratives of AI disrupting labor and the economy through predictions of mass worker displacement.

The current economic conditions, like people just not having the money to buy products/services because of inflation, monetary policies and other factors are what happening IMO.

 

Covid was the reason for the explosive growth in Amazon beginning in 2020 -- basically cash from PPA loans and fear driving online shopping. They hired assuming the gravy train would last forever. Part of their recent problems are a Covid hangover.

 

Covid was the reason for the explosive growth in Amazon beginning in 2020 -- basically cash from PPA loans and fear driving online shopping. They hired assuming the gravy train would last forever. Part of their recent problems are a Covid hangover.

It's 2026, that's a long hangover. I do agree, it's a small part today.

 

I have been laid off a few times, and NEVER was it because of AI or anything like that.
Without exception, the lay-offs were solely for the reason that there were no funds to meet the payroll.
It all gets down to money!
At one job, when the owner explained that there had to be the layoff because of no funds, I asked how he would finish the project. He stated that there was no way, so he was in trouble. I asked if he would be OK if he could sell the project complete, would he be OK, and he said yes, if only he could.
So I volunteered to work and finish the project and wait for pay until it was paid for.
We completed the project and I got paid and he made money on it. He was an honest person indeed.

 

I have been laid off a few times, and NEVER was it because of AI or anything like that.
Without exception, the lay-offs were solely for the reason that there were no funds to meet the payroll.
It all gets down to money!
At one job, when the owner explained that there had to be the layoff because of no funds, I asked how he would finish the project. He stated that there was no way, so he was in trouble. I asked if he would be OK if he could sell the project complete, would he be OK, and he said yes, if only he could.
So I volunteered to work and finish the project and wait for pay until it was paid for.
We completed the project and I got paid and he made money on it. He was an honest person indeed.

Even better is to quit and sell yourself back as a consultant.

I trippled my "salary" that way.