Not really a similar story, but the OP brought it to mind.
I once applied for a position as a software developer. It said “Java and RPG.”
I hadn’t done any Java in about 4.5 years at the time. And I’d never so much as touched RPG.
When they asked if I’d done any Java programming, I responded that it had been a few years, but I’d be “brushing up” on it. I wasn’t completely new to it.
But I said since I’d never touched RPG, I had been studying that in preparation for the interview.
And the interviewer looked at me funny and said “why?”
I explained that it was in the job description for the position I’d applied to. And he basically facepalmed, exasperated at whichever department was responsible for the job listings.
I’ve worked there for almost 8 years now and haven’t done so much as a single line of RPG.
Then there was the time I applied to a job listing for a Python developer. I showed up and they asked if I had any C# experience. I told them I’d never touched C#, but am a quick study. They said they were migrating away from Python to C#. Said it as if I shouldn’t have applied if I didn’t have C# experience. But I don’t know by what logic they expected me to have been able to intuit that given that the job listing said nothing about C#. Just Python.
Basically, I’ve never applied to a job that didn’t have glaring inaccuracies in the listing.
This isn’t even specific to that field. A lot of nurses in my graduating class (2020 of all years) wanted to go into ICU (really sick patients, but 1-2 at a time) and got catfished into medsurg (waitressing narcotics to 8-10 angry boomers at a time). Occasionally they would get halfway catfished into stepdown (a middle-ground) or telemetry (cardiac stepdown). The only reason it didn’t happen to me is because my chosen specialty is pretty undesirable to most nurses to begin with.
I’ve learned the basics of 15 different database, coding, web design languages over the course of many different tech jobs … because my job description would just randomly expand into something new within 2 months.
And of course, I had to teach myself all this, with only one exception of an actual competent manager who actually properly trained me.
Nothing is ever documented, or the documentation is wrong.
One job I had as a data analyst for the executive level of a logistics company. The person I was replacing had coded some extremely high level reports wrong and was double counting some categories such that total, global revenue for the company was overestimated by about 30%
I fixed it and explained the fix.
Not a single executive of this world wide logistics company seemed to notice.
Not really a similar story, but the OP brought it to mind.
I once applied for a position as a software developer. It said “Java and RPG.”
I hadn’t done any Java in about 4.5 years at the time. And I’d never so much as touched RPG.
When they asked if I’d done any Java programming, I responded that it had been a few years, but I’d be “brushing up” on it. I wasn’t completely new to it.
But I said since I’d never touched RPG, I had been studying that in preparation for the interview.
And the interviewer looked at me funny and said “why?”
I explained that it was in the job description for the position I’d applied to. And he basically facepalmed, exasperated at whichever department was responsible for the job listings.
I’ve worked there for almost 8 years now and haven’t done so much as a single line of RPG.
Then there was the time I applied to a job listing for a Python developer. I showed up and they asked if I had any C# experience. I told them I’d never touched C#, but am a quick study. They said they were migrating away from Python to C#. Said it as if I shouldn’t have applied if I didn’t have C# experience. But I don’t know by what logic they expected me to have been able to intuit that given that the job listing said nothing about C#. Just Python.
Basically, I’ve never applied to a job that didn’t have glaring inaccuracies in the listing.
This isn’t even specific to that field. A lot of nurses in my graduating class (2020 of all years) wanted to go into ICU (really sick patients, but 1-2 at a time) and got catfished into medsurg (waitressing narcotics to 8-10 angry boomers at a time). Occasionally they would get halfway catfished into stepdown (a middle-ground) or telemetry (cardiac stepdown). The only reason it didn’t happen to me is because my chosen specialty is pretty undesirable to most nurses to begin with.
Same experience here.
I’ve learned the basics of 15 different database, coding, web design languages over the course of many different tech jobs … because my job description would just randomly expand into something new within 2 months.
And of course, I had to teach myself all this, with only one exception of an actual competent manager who actually properly trained me.
Nothing is ever documented, or the documentation is wrong.
One job I had as a data analyst for the executive level of a logistics company. The person I was replacing had coded some extremely high level reports wrong and was double counting some categories such that total, global revenue for the company was overestimated by about 30%
I fixed it and explained the fix.
Not a single executive of this world wide logistics company seemed to notice.