We ranked candidates out of four, and this candidate was a four across the board. Experience in our tech stack, demonstrated competency, passed the lunch test, etc. The team was eager to get them started because we were desperate for more hands on. The team was at one point 6 and we were short handed, but through people resigning we were down to 4, with me taking the role of senior engineer and team lead.

This was an unequivocal HR lied and kept the mirage of "help is coming don't worry!".

Yes there's overhead of us spending time doing the interviewing, but a few hours here and there once a month is enough to keep the charade going. The applications site would go first to HR, then they'd put resumes in front of me. I always wondered why I couldn't just see everyone that applied and why it had to be filtered first; after this event I understood why. I suspect there was plenty more applicants than I was told of.

At my current job, we had a position that an absolutely stellar candidate supposedly ghosted HR on. Same thing; candidate reached out to me asking about next steps, and I was like, "let me check". Went and asked HR, and was told they'd handle the rest, and not to talk to candidates outside of HR-scheduled interviews. Never heard back again.

That was 3 months ago (and 3 months into the position posting), and the position is still unfilled.

Same question - were you and are you continuing to actively interview candidates?

That's the mystery for me, why put the team through a charade that actively harms their productivity?

The only thing I can think of is the candidate disclosed something that would be a legal red flag and can't really divulge that is an issue without threat of a lawsuit. Or something came up in a background check, but I imagine it didn't get to that point if the candidate reached out to you directly.

The "why" is because people quit environments that are toxic, but hold out if there are signs of improvement. People don't want to quit - it's a large investment of time and investment to job hunt. It's annoying as hell. So if you can string together promises:

- We'll hire more people, it's just so hard to find candidates! - We're doing bonuses right after evaluations, but we're doing a new evaluation system that's taking a bit longer than we expected this year - We're just finalizing talking to a customer we'll have them signed next month, we swear

That delays people looking, delays that large investment, and you can extract engineering time with little investment.

If you ran a company that couldn't afford another engineer for a team that desperately needed another engineer, are you going to paint the bleak picture for your team and risk losing those engineers that you have, or lie? If you have morals and say you'd be upfront, great; but that's unfortunately not a universal answer.

Honestly, the weird thing is we don't need another person at all.

Yes, were still interviewing.

Harming productivity only matters for hourly staff (in the minds of bad executives leaders). Salaried folks have to finish the with no matter how long it takes, and it doesn't cost the company more.