Coronavirus Sars-CoV-2/Covid-19 Megathread

[The Brain]

Surely a vaccine mandate is a possibility in the future? Then you lose him anyway. Sounds too risky. Plus the comment about ridiculous politics makes me doubt his ability to separate his political views from his work situation.

[Tamas]

Yeah the specific vaccination issue aside he sounds like high maintenance.

[Richard Hakluyt]

You are going to end up with Democrat businesses and Republican businesses 

The guy sounds irritating though.

[Grey Fox]

I just interviewed a developer. We are rather desperate for good developers right now, the labor market is insanely tight and we are absolutely constrained by our ability to scale our human resources.

Guy has great credentials, a lot of the certifications we are looking for, and looks technically excellent.

I ask him why he is leaving his current job, and he tells me

1. His co-workers are great, but management keeps putting out newsletters that include "ridiculous" politics.
2. The company has announced a vaccine mandate, and he refuses to provide information about his health to his employers.

I am kind of torn here. I need people really, really badly. We don't have any kind of mandate, and we are nearly completely remote work anyway. I would suspect that about 90% of our employees are very progressive/liberal, but I know a couple are not. But nobody talks about politics really at all, for the most part. It just isn't something we do.

And while we are remote, we do have twice a year or so get togethers. And we do ask our employees to simply tell us whether they are vaccinated, and we let everyone know that, so THEY can make informed choices about whether or not they want to come into the office, or attend a meeting. Mostly nobody actually cares - we have 1 manager who is not, but literally everyone else is, and most everyone is just like "Whatever - I am vaccinated".

I am not sure I want to hire someone who seems so charged up about this that he is talking about it with me literally 10 minutes into a job interview. On the other hand, it seems a bit unfair to assume this would even be an issue.

I don't think you should. Doesn't sound it would be fun for a long time to hire a fulltime culture war warrior. Probably thinks Hitler did nothing wrong too.

[Eddie Teach]

I don't think you should let his politics influence your decision.

[Caliga]

My thing is not that he's anti-vaxx, but that he thought nothing of bringing this up early in a job interview.  Doesn't seem like a very smart strategy to me.

[celedhring]

It's definitely a red flag (in the sense that he seems to be a bit quarrelsome, rather than his politics themselves), but I wouldn't give up on him so soon, given your needs. Are you having a follow-up interview with him? You could probe him further.

[garbon]

My thing is not that he's anti-vaxx, but that he thought nothing of bringing this up early in a job interview.  Doesn't seem like a very smart strategy to me.

[Jacob]

Yeah the market for developers is really tight right now.

Re: the guy... my immediate instinct is hard no. My second thought is "maybe it's not that big a deal and can be managed constructively and maybe I'm being unfair due to politics." My third thought is that typically when someone is intense and weird about something that indicates "difficulties getting along" we decline making an offer, regardless of the content or direction of their weird intensity.

So I think the determining factor is to what degree are your reservations about what you infer about the content of his politics and to what degree are they due to how he's brought them up?

If you have another interview with him, you could drill into it a bit as well, discussing how people are vaccinated and how people disclose their status for the team get-togethers just as you described. How does he feel about that?

[Barrister]

My advice to Berkut would be that since it touches on "political" issues I would avoid having this kind of discussion in writing - even on Languish.

[Jacob]

My advice to Berkut would be that since it touches on "political" issues I would avoid having this kind of discussion in writing - even on Languish.

Are "political issues" a protected category in hiring?

[garbon]

My advice to Berkut would be that since it touches on "political" issues I would avoid having this kind of discussion in writing - even on Languish.

Are "political issues" a protected category in hiring?

I think it will depend state by state.

[Barrister]

My advice to Berkut would be that since it touches on "political" issues I would avoid having this kind of discussion in writing - even on Languish.

Are "political issues" a protected category in hiring?

Huh - political beliefs are not in fact protected under the Alberta Human Rights Code.

It's going to depend on the various jurisdictions that Berkut works under.  I still think my advice is sound however.


Interesting - "political belief or conviction" IS a protected grounds under the BC human rights code.

[DGuller]

You don't have to do anything illegal to have a legal pain in the ass.  You just have to open yourself up to an annoyance that would be cheaper to settle out of.

[DGuller]

The die is cast, I'm getting a booster later today.  Hopefully the weekend will be a long enough time to weather any side effects.