Speaking as a capitalist/libertarian, I never understood the concept or the accusations of giving someone a job a favor. I don’t think jobs are favors. You should always be producing more than you get out of it. Otherwise it is bad business.
I am going rule out no-show jobs or fake jobs in general as part of this discussion. That exists but it is just pure corruption just like any other form of it. In my mind, if anyone gives you a job, they should be thanking you more than you thank them as long as you are doing a good job at it.
Well when my 19 year old son, who is in long term recovery from a massively disabling illness, was given a job last summer in an academic library at the university where my wife works, it was a huge favor to me, my wife, and my son. Because the dean knew my wife and son, and our situation, she basically made a job for him and hired him into the position with him having to fill out an application or sit for an interview. So from my point of view it was an incredible favor she did for us.
That is a good example. Is he fulfilling his job duties however? Your son is working and not getting free money. I don’t know the situation but the Dean would be irresponsible if your son wasn’t providing at least as much value as he is getting paid.
My boss is damn lucky to have me. I’m good at it, I’m willing to do extra work that I don’t get paid for, I show up (seriously, that alone puts me ahead of several employees; we’ve had a rough patch with no shows) and yes, I bring more money in than he pays me, of course.
I’m also damn lucky to have a job. I looked for a job for 7 months without getting a single interview. I’d maxed out my food stamp benefits, I’d pulled all but $250 out of my 401k (yeah, I know the tax and penalty hit I took for that, but it was that or be homeless again) and I was literally three weeks away from being evicted for the second time in two years for non-payment of rent.
So, yeah. I do consider it him doing me a favor. He had plenty of applicants and, even with interviews, didn’t really know that I’d be a kickass employee until he took the chance on me. Out of a pool of perfectly qualified applicants - probably better qualified, to be totally honest - he picked me. That’s the part that’s a favor. The *giving *of the job. The keeping of the job is all me.
Jobs as favors happen all the time. I work for a global 50 company. It’s common. Of course, one expects the candidate to deliver, but there could be 3 qualified candidates and strings are pulled to put one of the finalists into the position.
That said, my previous boss did no favors by hiring me.
Gratitude is a feeling. It may not be logical, but feelings don’t ever make sense.
Shortly after I was hired for my post-doc, I found out that my boss had major second-thoughts about me, for a number of reasons. I’ve never been on such a rough emotional roller coaster ride. Those few days he spent deliberating were the worse days of my life.
Fortunately, he bit the bullet and decided to go through with his initial offer (after getting chewed out by one of my references). It was majorly awkward, and in retrospect I should have just walked away and crossed my fingers that someone else would hire me. But also in retrospect, I am grateful that he decided to try me out. He certainly didn’t have to. It wasn’t the best job in the world, but I wouldn’t be where I am now without the break it gave me.
There are only a handful of jobs in which only one possible applicant could fill the position. So the person who was hired is thankful that they were chosen instead of one of the other qualified applicants.
There are a couple hundred applicants for each teaching job where I live. Most of those applicants would do a good job, and most of them need the work. The principal has control over who he/she hires, and that person will probably feel grateful. Why not? Jobs are hard to come by.
Giving someone a job is not an act of altruism. It is assumed that giving them a job is a net positive to the person who gave them the job.
However, one can still consider it a favor in that the job was given to YOU rather than someone else. The favor is that you beat out all the other possible candidates, perhaps for personal rather than logical reasons.
I also have a problem with the belief that all jobs should be a net positive for the employer. What about not-for-profit organizations, churches, and other organizations who are not motivated by profit? Jobs in places like that are seeking the best candidates for the jobs, but they aren’t trying to squeeze out more value from each employee than they are paying them back in compensation.
Reasons to be grateful and net utility are two different things.
If I sell something, I know that the buyer would rather have the item than what they paid me for it. Nonetheless I may be grateful to them for buying from me.
“Grateful” here not meaning that I believe they have acted out of altruism; just that their decision has had a positive effect on my livelihood.
This thread could use a definition of what OP meant by a “favor.”
If you are giving a job to someone based on a personal relationship, knowing that they are incompetent, then yeah, that is corruption. The shareholders and co-workers have good reason to be upset.
If you give a job to someone based on a personal relationship, and they are highly competent… that seems to me that it’s just good business. Even a competent worker can cause problems if their personal life and their attitude gets in the way of their job, and selecting someone I know and like helps reduce the number of “unknowns” I am dealing with. Obviously, other people are going to be upset that they were not included for consideration, or that they wasted their time applying for an opening when the outcome was predetermined. I’ve heard some businesses will publish all job openings, even if there is zero chance of an outsider being selected, just as a CYA “formality” to make the lawyers happy.
I’m always of two minds when it comes to employment issues. If I am the applicant, obviously I want the broadest and fairest possible hiring practices. If am the employer, I want the most arbitrary and selective hiring process because it’s my money and I’ll hire people I want to work with. So I think a lot of it has to do with perspective.
It’s a favor because there are so few jobs and so many applicants, most of whom can do the job. Reverse the situation so that there is a labor shortage and it stops being a favor.
One thing I find especially irritating is that conservatives tend to assume that everyone without a job is lazy or incompetent and is living a life of ease–with food stamps, welfare, an occasional pick up job. Read the column by arch-conservative Ross Douthat in yesterday’s NY Times to see this attitude in spades.
Can they mostly do the job at the same level of competence? If so, then sure, it’s a favor. If not, and the hirer deliberately selects someone who’s not the most competent, then it’s a favor. But if they select the most competent person to do the job from among the hundreds of applicants, how is that a favor?
I applied this summer for a program to which something like 8% of the people who applied got in. It was a tremendous program, one of the best academic experiences of my life. Did the folks reviewing applications do me a favor by selecting me?
I think an economist would say that, any time two people (or institutions) engage in a transaction (money for goods, money for services, goods for a different kind of goods), it’s supposedly a net positive for both parties, in the sense that they’ve both gained something of more value to them than before the transaction—otherwise they wouldn’t have made the trade.
If I trade my bologna sandwich for your peanut butter and jelly, it’s because we’re both happier with the other sandwich than with our own.
In addition to what others have pointed out about giving a job to one person rather than another, there’s also the fact that there is risk involved in giving someone a job. You don’t always know ahead of time how much that person will be producing for you; you’re taking a chance on them being worth hiring.
There’s risk involved in accepting a job, too. You don’t know whether the employer will engage with you honestly and fairly and respectfully. If the job turns out to be a dud, you get a period on your resume that’s a little difficult to explain–and the more often that happens, the harder it is to explain.
Let’s turn it around. I’m doing an afterschool club soon in which I teach magic tricks, in exchange for a stipend. Nobody else at my school is qualified to teach this club. Am I doing the school a favor by accepting the job?
I don’t think so. I’m getting what I want–the stipend, and they’re getting what they want–a magic club. This isn’t a “favors” relationship, it’s a quid pro quo relationship.
But if you really, really wanted that job because you love teaching magic to kids and the stipend was the difference between keeping your apartment or going homeless, and eight other equally qualified applicants were vying for it as well, then being given the job does feel like being granted a favour.
It’s a “favor” in the sense that if I refer you to a company I work for, it places your resume closer to the top of the pile than if you had gone through normal channels. Also, to a certain extent I am vouching for your ability to do the job. Your performance is a reflection on me as the person who referred you.
I’ve interviewed a shitload of people for all levels of corporate positions from adimins and office managers to analysts to mid and senior level management. Trust me when I say most can’t do the job. Even with people I’ve managed, it’s tough to find people who really know what they are doing and don’t have to be watched closely or told exactly what to do.
See, I always hate this characterization. Sure, there are a lot of right wing wackos who think that anyone who ever took a day off from work is a lazy drug addict. But that doesn’t address the actual legitimate economic theories. Namely that in economics there is no free lunch. So when you tax employers or people to pay for social safety nets, you are taking away money that could have been used for purchasing goods and services and hiring employees. You also create a disincentive. Why work for $500 a week if I can get $405 a week just doing nothing? Plus those social safety nets also cut into spending that could have been used on building infrastructure like roads and rail.
