Two quick points as background:
- It stinks to have a job offer rescinded. I’ve had it happen once; a contracting agency made me an offer to work a contract at Northern States Power, back when that still existed. In the two weeks that followed, NSP re-aligned its priorities. The agency rescinded my offer; there was no job to put me in. It was worse than a pain in the ass in my case; I had given notice at the job I had (which I hated), and I had a mortgage and three kids to feed.
- I’m always amused to hear that businesses “recruit on college campuses” – partly because I went to a college that nobody ever recruited at (at the time) unless you were a nursing or computer science major. I always figured “wouldn’t that be nice?”, but never thought that much of it.
“I can’t deal with that kind of management,” Zhang said, recalling the whole process of interviewing over the phone in October, flying out to Minnesota in early November, learning about the job, and preparing to move. “Don’t tell a whole class that they’re super special, awesome, and perfect for the job if you’re gonna treat us simply as another expense.”
Mr. Zhang: Sorry you got laid off before you even started. But let’s try to get two things straight, here:
First: this may be in conflict with what Target’s recruiting staff, to say nothing of the professors at whatever $40K a year degree mill you just finished attending, told you – but you’re not super special, awesome and perfect. You are units of talent – or, give your age, potential talent – that a company will measure against its needs.
Second: all management are like that. Oh, they don’t all rescind job offers – but every last one of them measures expenses against bottom line.
And “an expense” is exactly what you are. At best, you’re an “investment” subject to return on investment calculations, just like you learned in business school. That Target sometimes does that clumsily? You could have asked anyone in the Twin Cities IT market about that…
Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and get back to it. Or whine to the City Pages. It’s your call.
I worked for Target for nearly a decade. It was a great experience, but you always knew that the axe could fall at any time. There was a saying in the field organization about working for the ol’ bullseye: the day you’re hired, the bullet’s fired. Your job is to avoid the bullet. This dude wouldn’t have made it.
Your employer doesn’t love you. Neither does your government.
You don’t have the job until you have the offer and sign the contract. Living your life any other way is crazy. If the company needs you so badly that they’re expecting you to sell your house and move before you get all the paperwork and you agree, you’re doing it wrong.
I’m actually glad that the story about Target behaving like this is getting out. I should give pause to other candidates and I fully approve of getting information on practices like this out there. Sure, Target’s direction might have changed and they might have valid reasons to make that change, but the more people who know how Target behaves the better and the fewer who will fall for this. Yes, it’ll make Target’s recruiting life harder, but they deserve it given how they behave.
MBerg: The important thing going for you is your ability to learn new programming languages. A large majority of the population can’t do that. In today’s world, you need specialized skills to be one of the super-productive professionals capable of exploiting intelligent machines. I suspect in a generation or two, we will have made intelligent machines easier to use, so that less talented people will be able to do the same. The same thing happened with previous technology revolutions. At first they increase inequality because only a clever few can exploit the new technology. Only when the general public can make use of the new technology will inequality be reduced. How easy to program a robot? How easy to manipulate a database?
You’re doing the right thing to keep yourself amongst the technical elite, and you’ll be well compensated for it. Forgive me if I hope that the period where we need highly skilled workers such as yourself to use our new intelligent machines is short. For every one of you there are 10 people who are only 80% as smart who could make a middle class wage if intelligent machines were easier to use.
For every one of you there are 10 people who are only 80% as smart who could make a middle class wage if intelligent machines were easier to use.
By the time those “intelligent machines” are easier to use, the 80% won’t be required to use them as AI will have advanced enough to replace them.
Humans have unique talents for creating things humans want. But it’s tough to beat machines for mass production of things they do want.
Well, better this than move him here and then let the bullet hit him, I think. I had a couple of cases during my last job search where after I’d started interviewing, the employer defined the position out of existence. I just figured I’d dodged that proverbial bullet. Better it happen now than when I moved to take a position.
And Target? Well, if this is representative of their long term planning and public relations, they’ve got bigger problems than whether a few people they’d given offers are ticked at them, and whether other job seekers just hit “cancel” before submitting an application.
And it’s widespread, to be blunt. I’ve had a few layoffs in my time, and in only one case did the former employer continue under the same name. In the other cases, a layoff was simply a corporate suicide, and that became clear within a couple of years when the facility where I worked was closed or sold.
Mr./ Ms. Zhang:
Let it be put in words you can understand: “It’s not fair, it’s not fair, it’s not fair, …”
Now, when you get home, lay on the ground, kick your heels into the flooring as fast and as hard as you can and scream that mantra as loud and as long as you can until your mom helps you up, buckles you into your car seat and takes you to McDonald’s and then to the MOA’s Camp Snoopy (or whatever it’s called nowadays).
Works every time …
When I worked for Target a decade ago, the store executives were always very tight lipped about aspects of their job, most especially compensation. One thing that was common knowledge among us hourly staff (and therefore suspect) was that new execs had about a 50% attrition rate in the 1st year (or was it 6 months). Either way, the company chews up and spits out a lot of young people early in their career.
Pingback: LIVE AT FIVESEVEN: 01.14.15 : The Other McCain
Perhaps I am going astray here, but it would be interesting to see what happens with those cast aside by Target–the ones Smith writes about. I remember a few years back meeting people working in the grocery store who had been employed in data storage. Upper management acts as if people ought to spring back from the humiliations of life, but I dare suggest that this is not the reality.
And again, it strikes me that the gentleman in question is one of the lucky ones who got out before going through the meat grinder.