u/CloudberryCrystal

Is using an AI resume actually hurting your chances? Got accused of using an AI resume after getting rejected

Been remote since early 2021, did about a year of hybrid in the middle, and I feel like I've had the same argument with the same type of person 40 times now. So let me just get this out.

The "you'll fall behind" thing. The way it always goes is: if you're not in the office you miss the hallway stuff, so you miss context, so you don't get put on the good projects, so you don't get promoted, so your whole career is toast. Ok but every step in that chain is a "might." String five mights together and somehow it's supposed to be a certainty. And it lands hardest on people in their first couple years who don't know yet that promotions get decided in a planning meeting by whoever assigns work, not by whoever was standing near the coffee machine at 3pm.

The "I had a remote guy who did nothing" thing. Yeah, me too. I also had an in-office guy who did nothing, he just did it where we could all watch. A guy who coasts from his couch was going to coast from a desk. That's a hiring problem. Using it as an argument against remote work in general is like saying nobody should get a company car because Dave got a speeding ticket.

The "remote people don't hear about opportunities" thing. Think about what this actually says. It says info about open roles and new projects only reaches people who are physically near the manager. That's not a remote problem, that's a manager who can't be bothered to post in the team channel. Pretty much every "disadvantage" I get told about is really just a lead not communicating and then blaming the person on the other end of it.

I'll be fair about a couple things. Onboarding a new hire, hands-on training, the occasional whiteboard session where four people need to argue over a design, those are honestly worse on a call. Fine. But that gets you "come in Tuesday for the kickoff," not "come in five days a week."

Nobody ever does the math either. 45 minutes each way is 7.5 hours a week. Basically a full extra workday, unpaid, so your manager can swing by and ask how the weekend was. If the collaboration you're getting for that is worth a day of someone's life every week I'd love to see it.

And I'm just going to say the quiet part. The loudest RTO people I've worked with were managers whose main skill was walking around. Take away the walking around and they have to do the harder version of the job, which is set clear goals and actually look at what people produce. Some of them don't want to, so it comes out as "remote employees aren't engaged." No, you just liked being able to see us.

Give me the person who's responsive, ships on time, and shows up when there's a real reason, over the person who's at their desk every day and mediocre. Every decent manager I've had would pick the same.

Anyway. Has anyone here actually been told, out loud, that they didn't get something because they were remote? Or is it always the vague "visibility" comment with nothing behind it? Because I keep hearing about it and never from anyone it happened to.

Nearly 25% of U.S. workers are “functionally unemployed”

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/functional-unemployment-us-labor-market-analysis/