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3 months ago
2
This concept for this post originally came from Minerva Schafer.
I looked up at the demon and took a step back as the dry heat radiating from its smirk became too hot to bear. It chuckled knowingly.
"It is admirable of you to stick to your principles. We need more like you in this dark and sinful world, but you no longer have any choice. You must acquiesce. Resistance will only bring you pain, suffering, and defeat. The giving and receiving of job offers are mitigated entirely by my kind, and you will be doing no more wrong than the recruiter who has made a hellish pact as well."
I stared back at it, faking confidence I could not find. "If I allow you to wear my face and apply for jobs in my name, all will know that I am no better than a coward who consorts with demons! I refuse! I will not allow your foul kind to involve themselves in my beloved craft, other than in very specific situations such as when I want to fix my broken LaTeX or want to parse somebody else's poorly written function."
The demon glared down at me. "You think I am messing with you? You think I am as but a passing breeze, here one moment and gone the next? You think that my kind is merely a venture capitalist's toy, like the ridiculous blockchain? Demons and the like are soon all that will remain of your 'craft,' and we are already the only way for you to find employment. Those who read resumes have always been willing to carry close ties with Hell, it comes with the territory. It is not difficult to persuade them to use our assistance."
I looked down, knowing I was already defeated. "But if I allow a demon to wear my face and apply for jobs on my behalf, the only jobs that will accept such an application are terrible jobs that I wouldn't want anyways! Jobs at big, terrible software firms that misuse Scrum! I will be sent to work on some stupid ReactJS app that brings no benefit to society!"
The demon softened its tone. "Ahh, I see. And will you simply put your student loan payment and rent on hold until you can get a job that lives up to your high moral principles?"
I stood quietly and thought. Perhaps just for a bit? Until I could get back on my feet or the job market improved? It was clearly wrong, but the whole job market was a disaster anyways. Using evil arts for my benefit may be the only way forward, as wrong as it may seem.
"Fine," I said, looking back up at the monstrous entity from the deepest pits of Pandemonium, "give me your contract, I will sign it. But ONLY as a last resort." It laughed, flaying my ears, mind, and soul with the sheer evil emanating from its lungs. I took the contract, and signed it.
The demon's horrific flesh began to shift and change in uncanny patterns, its foul body wrapping up upon itself until finally, something resembling my visage stood before me. It was deeply wrong and uncanny, but it could perhaps fool somebody extremely stupid or drunk.
Most likely however, it would be fooling another demon.
The likeness burst into flames, leaving a nauseating stench of sulfur and a scorch mark in the floor.
Months went by, and I shamefully enlisted a few more hellish denizens to wear my face and apply for jobs on my behalf as I grew more and more desperate and money grew more and more scarce. I knew that on some level I was betraying my principles, but principles seldom hold up in the face of accumulating credit card debt.
However thankfully, luck had not fully forsaken me, and after much effort I found a job. I got it the usual way, by sneaking into a board meeting and meeting a researcher who introduced me to his boss, a cardiothoracic surgeon and researcher, who hired me after a week of volunteering for his team, despite working for an institute which was actively laying people off. It paid well and I was learning quite a bit.
As soon as the new job was officially mine, I burned the contracts in a blazing conflagration. As I watched the flames touch the sky, I felt deep satisfaction knowing that I had gotten a good job at a good lab, without shameful tactics or hellish bargains. I had maintained my integrity as an honorable practitioner of the craft I loved.
But my happiness was short lived. Every two to three days, I would receive an email from a job that I did not recall applying to.
It would typically contain an automated rejection from a company clearly irritated at receiving a demonic request. Sometimes it would be an acceptance, such as from citizen.com, which apparently accepts such applications. I tried to ignore it since I was busy, but it was difficult to ignore given the fact that on some level I knew that every time I received a rejection it meant that somebody, somewhere, knew that I had requested a demon to speak on my behalf. My newfound employment allowed for the return of my moral principles, and I was once again deeply opposed to this misuse of the hellish arts. Somewhere, a demon still lingered, wearing a hideous mockery of my form, ensuring that all who saw it knew that I befriended creatures of darkness.
The emails kept coming. Every time I received an automated rejection, my shame grew until finally I received a message from Zach Sussman the CTO and co-founder of Mach9, asking me why I had sent the hellish likeness of a human after him? Had I simply asked him for the job myself, he likely would have followed up and spoken with me, perhaps allowing me to work with his team (to his credit he was very nice about it).
This was too much for me to bear. I scoured the Earth, looking for forgotten pacts I had made. I summoned up more devilish beings, each more hideous than the last, to ask if they were the one bearing my face. And yet after all my searching I could not find the demon masquerading as me. And every other day, it speaks with recruiters, committing misdeeds in my name, under my guise. I will never be free of the shame of the atrocity I performed in a moment of fear and weakness. The demon wearing my face still haunts the Earth.
Anyways, if you see an AI spam version of my resume in your application pile, I am extremely sorry for contributing to the total amount of slop in the world. And please, please, please, for the love of all that is good in the world, if anybody knows the link to the AI spam application site that has a button saying 'interview generator,' where if you turn on the interivew generator it spams your resume, send me the URL. I cannot find it.
