Today I had a very interesting experience that ties together my two last articles, Nihilism in Clown World Companies and Methylphenidate and Personality Changes. As I am part of a clown-world industry which provides a living, yet very little job security, I casually apply to jobs basically all the time. I send out about a handful of applications every week, often more. Partly I do this because this hardly takes any time on LinkedIn. More importantly, even when I am not actively looking for a job, this helps me keep my interviewing skills sharp while incentivizing me to make sure that my CV is up-to-date. On top, anybody working in the modern workplace should keep in mind that your manager can put the kibosh on your tenure any time, and even if you get a bit of severance pay, sooner or later you will have to look for a new role. Thus, by keeping your job-seeking skills sharp, you at the very least do not have to reacquaint yourself with interview processes and in the best case you are already in an interview process that proceeds nicely when you get told that the number of white men needs to be brought down. On that note, some companies even blatantly announce that they cut jobs only in white countries, but not in India, like Microsoft recently did.

Last week I had an initial recruiter call with a decently-sized tech company. They have over one thousand employees and they love to burn the money of their investors. My initial assessment was that they probably have a solid five years left, given their current trajectory. The open role I had applied for was a decent-enough fit and a position I would consider if I had to leave my current role or just got too fed up with it. After a few days, they got back to me, telling me that the hiring manager would like to speak to me, and asked me to submit some time slots during which I am available. Earlier today, they got back with an invitation, but I had to read that the hiring manager is not actually available. Instead, I could speak to someone who closely works with him. This should be a red flag or at least a yellow flag. Imagine you set up a date with some girl and she tells you that she is not available. However, she offers that you could hang out with her bestie instead. Her bestie is not looking for a new guy to fuck but she knows her really well and could tell her a lot about what it would be like to date her. This would be laughable in private life and it does not make a lot more sense in a business context. At best, I would have to go through an additional interview with that company but at worst this is a sign that they believe that they are “hiring for general fit”, and that it does not matter if you actually meet the people you are going to work with. Some big tech companies do a variation of that, consisting of a general round of interviews and a subsequent “team matching” phase.

I had received the aforementioned message while taking a walk during my lunch break, and my initial thought was that I will just tell them that I do not wish to proceed. As I find typing on the phone tedious, I wanted to take care of that on my laptop later. As it so happened, I had some boring tasks to take care of in the afternoon, so I took some methylphenidate (MPH). As I was working from home, I just pulled out my laptop to quickly respond to them. Interestingly, this was at around the time the effect of MPH starts to kick in. Between opening the lid of my laptop and logging into my web email account, my intention regarding that invitation had changed, and I thought that it would be good experience just to talk to that guy. After all, he works at that company and at the same level as the hiring manager, so at the very least I get to learn a bit more about their processes, or at least how they talk about them, while getting the chance to practice my interviewing skills. Thus, I accepted that invitation.

The above may sound trivial to you, however it is quite significant to me. When I am my non-drugged self, I tend to be a bit impatient. I do not suffer fools gladly, and my tolerance for clown-world-company bullshit is somewhat limited as well. This has served me quite well, or so I think. Yet, on MPH I seem to be significantly more accepting of my environment. Probably this goes back to a key part of my post on personality changes on MPH, i.e. my impulse to create a more exciting environment by going off script. Quite frankly, it can be fun to tell an HR drone that you are not interested. You are normally dealing with women there and some cannot deal with being told that you want to withdraw your application. Suddenly they want to learn what led to that decision or possibly even if there was anything they could do to make you reconsider. The latter is more likely when hiring is difficult and they have to hit their own numbers. Their manager will not be happy if they have people bail during the process as it makes them look really bad.

My thought process on MPH was a lot different compared to before and I even gave that company the benefit of the doubt, i.e. I entertained the possibility that instead of letting me wait another week or two, they simply want to keep me actively engaged in the hiring process and therefore decided to look for somebody else who could speak to me. That is probably a pretty good explanation because if they change their mind about a candidate, they would not waste the time of some manager to speak to you, only to keep up appearances. I still like my uncompromising self that takes a hard stand better but it is quite obvious that my MPH-medicated self is more compatible with mainstream society.