2015-03-25

Recruiter isn't even trying anymore

I got this InMain on LinkedIn today.

March 25, 2015, 1:33 PM
Dear Roger,
Trust this finds you in good health!! I wanted to share a Back End Engineer role with you with one of my direct clients , its a long term contract and location is Mountain View, CA. Here is the short story:

The candidate should be able to quickly adapt to different environment/framework as the project needs.
These are minimum required skills.
Open source backend stack
Web backend frameworks in Java OR C#, OR Python OR Ruby, etc.
Database design and maintenance using SQL and/or NoSQL
Let me know if you think that this would be a fit as per your skills and expertise, if no, maybe you can refer someone !!
Best,
Gargi 
  • Nothing about the company (industry? size? age? product?)
  • The technology stack is essentially "whatever" (but open source! Including C#!)
  • The data stack is essentially "whatever"
  • The role is web AND database design AND dba
I LOL'ed heartily as I marked the InMail as spam.

2015-02-19

Comcast lies

Verbatim transcript of a chat session with Naval. I was having internet connectivity problems. Naval says (s)he resolved them, and then did the standard upsell trick, in which (s)he lied. Then when I noticed the problems weren't resolved, (s)he lied again.

Summary

Lie #1: " you will get additional service at a cheaper cost."

The rep correctly showed my current service is 50m down and basic cable TV for $82 / mo. He said Comcast had an offer where I could get "additional service at a cheaper cost." The "cheaper cost" is $101.99 for first 12 months and then $126.99 from 13-24 months.

Lie #2: "Every thing is totally fine"

At the exact time Naval said "Every thing is totally fine," Comcast was having well-documented problems:

https://downdetector.com/status/comcast-xfinity/san-francisco


Lie #3 (probably): "You will also check this problem on our site also"

The "server upgradation" and service degradation is not listed.


Trancript

Update

I spoke with another rep, Jose, who was great. Excerpts from our chat, mostly for the lulz:

Jose: May I know the issue that our rep lied to you?
Roger: (summary of the above)
Roger: I asked the price
Roger: "This package will cost you only $101.99 for first 12 months, after that it will cost you $126.99 from 13-24 months."
Roger: $101.99 is not actually cheaper than $91.96.
Jose: yes that is correct. Its simple math.

Then this unintentionally hilarious pearl:

Jose: On internet issue they can be corrected by our Internet dept.
Jose: We are cable troubleshooting dept so all of our tools here are for cable TV.
Jose: On broken promises those usually happens on Sales dept.Jose: Here on cable troubleshhoting we dont lie.