Re: [tlug] Ghosted?

[Raymond Wan <rwan.kyoto@example.com>]

On Tue, Aug 5, 2025 at 12:11 PM Curt J. Sampson <cjs@example.com> wrote:
> On 2025-07-29 16:39 +0100 (Tue), Raymond Wan wrote:
> > Earlier today, a friend here in the UK just said that a job offer that
> > was promised was suddenly taken away.
>
> Was it just "promised" or did he receive an actual offer letter? An oral
> promise is, in practice, worth nothing; assume you don't have an offer
> until you get an actual signed offer letter. (That will have legal force
> and it's easy to prove exactly what it said.)

I didn't ask in detail since it was bad news and asking more doesn't
really help my friend "get over it".

As for the other friend I had mentioned about, I think he did get an
offer and signed.  And it was a major company...not a small office of
10 people.  But they gave some reasons along the lines of
restructuring.  I'm not sure if there's a point in arguing about it.
They could honour the contract and hire you, but then dismiss you
during the initial probation period.  If they don't have the money,
they don't have the money.  Dragging it out by filing complaints, law
suits, etc. isn't helpful to either party.

The good news is that this friend later had a chance to do some kind
of paid internship.  It was short-term, but as a fresh grad, it's a
stepping stone to set himself apart from everyone else.


> > You submit an application and hope it gets looked at.  There are just too
> > many applicants.
>
> Exactly. Employers at this point are often _flooded_ with applications for
> each position, most of which are auto-generated crap. (There are on-line
> services where you can stick in your resume and suchlike and direct it to
> spam applications to hundreds of job openings per day, these days with an
> LLM-written custom cover letter, and the poor HR folks simply can't handle
> it. Of course they can use "AI" to try to sort through this, but we all
> know how well AI works at figuring out things.


Back when I was in Japan, I was talking to a professor from the USA
who was visiting our lab.  I think I had dreams of a faculty position
back then (haha).  He was on the department's search committee of his
university.  And he told me when they open up applications for an
assistant professor position, they would get hundreds (I think he said
~300) applications.  Every applicant had the minimum requirement
(i.e., a PhD and some paper in a relevant research area...and, of
course, glowing reference letters).  How are they to choose?

This was about 15 years ago and before things went nuts recently with LLMs...

Ray