It was an innocuous advert. Charming even.
https://www.dice.com/job-detail/085467cc-609d-4f93-b687-e1ded9b4b8a6
Job Description: IT – ADMIN – Internet / Web Engineer – Project Lead position with the State of SC, Department of Administration
***Only W2 resumes are accepted
Work Location: Role is 100% Remote
Candidate location: No SC residency required. Open to nationwide candidates.
The Department of Administration (Admin) is seeking a senior web developer. Developers in this position work within the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), with particular emphasis on developing/coding websites. Will work with a CMS such as Drupal and WordPress and use, develop, or modify advanced features and modules.
As part of my ongoing expose of messed up recruiting practices in the world of software application development, (In my case Drupal) I applied for this job to find out more details.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Like most developers out there I’m not taking a vacation this year. Even if I could afford it, I would be ashamed to write about it when I consider all my excellent fellow American devs that are staying home this summer because the entire Tech industry has been decimated by the twin wolves of “economic downturn” and “corporate restructure”.
I ended up with a list of 6 different companies who advertised for the role. All of them asserted that the role would not include health insurance benefits but would be what they refer to as “W2 contract role”. This is hard to take. When I asked the reason, the universal answer was that it was a remote position. No job security. No permanent hire. No health benefits, but they take taxes out.
This highlights a disturbing trend in the American Public Sector. Governments are sourcing their tech labor from 3rd party employee vendors with no oversight, and I have no insight as to why.
The implications for most American developers are staggering. Questions filled my mind like “Why would Drupal and WordPress developers be excluded intentionally from health insurance benefits, while seemingly, all other employees working for this US State have them?” Another: “Does the State Government of South Carolina even know that their tech workers have to pay for their own health insurance, and do they give a fig?”
Still another: “Which recruiting company is contracted to or is actually connected to the State of South Carolina?”
What a bloody mess. These recruiting companies leverage platforms like LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, Indeed, and others to hoover up applications and resumes.
I wanted more facts, and reached out to the State of SC, Department of Administration through their LinkedIn Page, but they declined to comment so far.
To further derail my faith in bureaucracy, I scanned the South Carolina State Job Board, only to find that there was no listing for the position.
I’m a pretty rational guy, but this situation makes my head spin. No amount of political correctness can correct this politically. This job is so secret even the State of South Carolina can not locate it.
I would hate to think that the entire recruiting process for Drupal Developers is fraught with fraud. I would not want to speculate, when It’s not even my State. Who is really making the choices here? Who decides what resumes to bring to the customer?
The recruiters that I dealt with did not know much about what developers need.
In the Drupal community, much talk lately has been uttered about Drupal’s reputation. In my opinion the biggest blocker to widespread Drupal adoption is the current US tech recruiting business paradigm. These dishonest recruiters are the arbiters of quality by virtue of their overreaching power to salt the market with devs they deem worthy.
Our taxes at work?
The methodology used by these recruiters is basic pattern matching against resume keywords. The practice is devastating for Drupal’s reputation because a lot of people have figured out how to game their system of keyword matching. This results in a lot of people being hired as Drupal developers who are excellent at putting keywords in resumes and not so good at the Drupal way in my opinion.
This situation is repugnant to me. In my opinion the recruitment companies who engage in this do not serve the interests of any State or Federal government section. In general, recruitment companies do not make a large per capita profit, but rather must maintain a fast and steady turnover of Drupal and WordPress developers to make a decent wage. Therefore, they serve their own interests before those of the people whom said governments serve.
With 3 out of 4 devs in the US not knowing where their next job will come from, it seems quite cruel to essentially turn what was once a dependable source of employment with job security into a night at the casino where the house always wins.
As long as the US Public Sector patronizes this flavor of tech recruiter, these recruiters will continue to drive down wages for American tech workers, and make it harder for them to obtain health insurance. These middlemen don’t care about America or its dream, they only care about money. Their practice simply takes advantage of loopholes in the existing, albeit scanty labor laws, regardless of the spirit of those laws.
If you see Catherine Jeffcoat, ask her if she is taking a vacation this year, and if she knows a good place to find a Drupal job.
