ingo-karkat.de

Are job boards like stepstone.de scraping job ads?

ChatGPT says that it does not collect job ads from company career pages (I couldn't quickly find any policy on their own web site), but I've recently come across two conspicuous ads that hint that this is happening:

Here's one Full Stack Developer offer, seemingly from within this week. However, when checking the company's own career pages, there's only one different job (for a consultant) on offer. The Stepstone job title and full description perfectly matches an old job from 2023, though. That job (in PDF format) is still listed in the company's job archive (which exists for unsolicited applications and to give an impression on the kind of jobs the company has — nice!):

The second job is a Devops Container Engineer, published two weeks ago, and I could be one of the first applicants!

The generic bulleted list and copyright statement (from 2022!) raise some suspicions, though.

On the company's website, I indeed found the job, but it had been posted at the end of 2022 (so the copyright date was right)! Here, it looks like the company is rather sloppy with cleaning up their job ads (which go back to 2021), and don't do much hiring in general — the newest job offering is already four months old.

And the content (with the pecular (and very German) Verbraucherstreitbeilegungsgesetz) indeed had been captured from the job page — the scraper was smart enough to skip the social media and contact links, but failed to omit the imprint and data protection policy.

In their quest to offer as many jobs, sites like Stepstone seem to overshoot the target occasionally, either actively by scraping the web or passively by allowing questionable data feeds. For the companies themselves, it isn't in their interest to peddle expired job offers.

For job seekers, it's important to find the original job offer from the company's website (most companys have those; a few delegate their entire career management to sites like Workwise). In addition to detecting obvious outdated offers like here, this also gives you the full job description — I'm frequently encountering mangled formatting or obvious copy-and-paste errors on job boards (but so far attributed them to human error, not bugs in web scrapers). Unfortunately, Stepstone doesn't provide a direct link to the source job offer (or even the to the company's home page), so Google is your friend here.

·T· Telekom fiber-optic update

Another unannounced visit from a young man from Telekom, again asking me to sign a contract to get broadband Internet. When I retorted that I'd like to stick with my existing signed agreement that I'd just like to get the cable, but don't want to move to Telekom yet (since they don't match the low Vodafone price), he first phoned his supervisor to inquire how this would be handled, then told me that Telekom had stopped offering those without a corresponding contract for Internet. Without such contract, Telekom wouldn't connect my house to the fibre-optic network. What about the existing agreement? He couldn't tell. The contract would have a minimum lifetime of two years, after which I'd be free to change the provider or cancel it. I also inquired about Deutsche Glasfaser, who had also solicited orders. Would they coordinate the digging? He didn't know about them. But he did tell me that two of my direct neighbors had signed a contract (and this time didn't guilt-trip me that it's my fault that they're still waiting).

I stuck my ground, and argued that it's in Telekom's business interest to dig up the ten additional meters (from my neighbor) so that I would become a potential future customer. He couldn't tell what would happen, but I should ask again once the excavators start rolling, and I could still sign a contract then to get connected.

Looking back, I signed the order at 22-Apr-2022, got a confirmation on 25-Apr-2022 (with a projected completion date of 30-Jan-2022 until 31-Dec-2022).
On 22-Nov-2023, I got a postponement notice: Reine Infrastruktur-Anschlüsse, die das Gebäude für eine spätere Nutzung eines Glasfaser-Tarifs vorbereiten sollen, werden hingegen zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt gebaut. [...] Der Auftrag für Ihren Glasfaser-Hausanschluss bleibt bestehen und wird von uns zu einem späteren Zeitpunkt umgesetzt.
On 12-Jul-2024, they mention a new Glasfaser-Portal where I can track my order, and ask Haben Sie sich schon Gedanken über den Montage-Ort für Ihre Glasfaser-Dose gemacht?
On 18-Dec-2024, they happily proclaim Es ist soweit: Herrenberg bekommt Glasfaser!, and planning and scheduling will start in the next weeks and months.
On 05-Feb-2025, I get the first visit encouraging me to sign a contract for Internet.

My wife got a new notebook (her old one is physically falling apart after four years), and although she's been using Ubuntu for more than a decade by now (on three HP notebooks so far), we decided to keep the original Windows installation if there's ever a need for running Windows software (ugh), and as disk space is becoming less of a concern. So, this was the first Windows initialization I've monitored in a long time.

Not much has changed — it still is slow and requires several reboots 😬. But I was surprised so see obvious quality issues in the installer (which is not brand new): Both wrong German grammar (Es könnte eine Weile dauertn) and wrong HTML escaping (&).

·T· PSA: Beware of Telekom fiber-optic Internet contracts!

This is nothing new, but don't trust the salespeople, verify everything, get it in writing, and don't sign anything on the spot. They try to scam you on the phone (it happened to me 15 years ago: offered to upgrade my DSL connection at no additional cost, but the actual price on the first bill was €5 more per month. (Since then I've always asked them what I'm currently paying; they don't know.) I think because the people they employ are not Telekom employees, but subcontractors that get a commission for each contract they sign, they're incentivized to cajole, tell half-truths, and fearmonger. They don't care about your long-term relationship with the company they represent, or its public image. I don't blame them (they're just doing their job); it's the (in fact, all) companies that have decided to outsource this part of their business that are at fault.

I had ordered a fibre-optic connection in Apr-2022 (almost three years ago now; that's the speed of digitalization in Germany 🥲). A couple of months ago, someone already tried to make me also sign a contract (I just want the cables to be laid, so that I have the option to sign up, as I'm currently satisfied with my broadband cable, and it's the cheapest option). That person already made it very easy to misunderstand him that I had to sign in order to get fiber-optic. After insisting and pointing out my contract, he tried to sell me on the benefits of their service, but I knew my current price and he couldn't offer a better deal. (A Vodafone marketer had once at least tried to match my current price for the first year, using all sorts of shady bonuses and discounts.)

Today two young gentlemen stood in front of my door and outright urged me to sign a contract.

1. Telekom is the exclusive network operator of my area (and according to them this includes Vodafone), and therefore the only way to obtain fiber-optic.
2. The existing copper cables (and they confirmed that this includes my broadband connection) will be decommissioned in the future.
3. The fiber termination point will be installed free of charge only now, if I sign up later this incurs hundreds of Euros. (My contract includes the termination point.)
4. When I pointed that out, they spread fear and doubt by asking who I'd signed this with. It might have been an apprentice colleague who didn't know all the facts and details.
5. Their best offer is €5 more than what I currently pay, but hey, you own this house, so you can surely afford it. (When I mentioned that in fact I'm currently unemployed, they instead offered me a job peddling these contracts, just like them. LOL)
6. The upgrade in my area only starts once a sufficient number of contracts has been reached, so your stinginess prevents your neighbors from getting faster Internet.

It's easy for me with my background in IT to counter their outrageous claims and cajoling, but I can see how they can easily scare and pressure many people into signing. At least they remained friendly throughout the conversation. When they realized that I wouldn't budge, they tried to exploit me being price-conscious and asked about my power and gas utilities, and that they have a combined offer that would save me 100€ per month. They're salesmen, through and through.

Fun fact: I only switched to Unitymedia (now Vodafone) because when I built the house, Telekom wouldn't simply migrate my existing contract to the new address, and insisted on a new contract with a higher price. They also almost missed the date to connect their plain old copper phone line before the hole in the street was closed.

PS: Unitymedia aggressively tried to upsell me to their small-business contract for many years, both via cold calls and paper mail advertisements, even though I clearly expressed no interest. This fortunately stopped after the Vodafone takeover.

Last year, I've cycled 4176 km, jogged 195 thousand steps, and walked (recording only started in December) 31 thousand steps. I'm proud of myself!😊

• news archive:
• 2024
• 2022
• 2019
• 2018
• 2013
• 2012
• 2011
• 2010
• 2009
• 2008
• 2007
• 2006
• very old stuff