C.D. Reimer

Another job search issue came up this week with employers asking for social media passwords to view and asses a job applicant’s private behavior outside of work. I haven’t ran into this issue while looking for my next work assignment in Silicon Valley, which may be a non-issue for most tech workers. My biggest annoyance—besides spending three hours filling out the HR paperwork for each job—is peeing in a cup for a drug test. I did see on my last background check authorization form that a social media search will be conducted. If I asked to reveal my social media passwords, I would say no for two obvious reasons.

Most Silicon Valley companies have a policy that employees should never volunteer and/or ask for passwords, which can be grounds for immediate termination. As PC technician I had the root password if I needed to access the computer. I often had to stop users from giving me their passwords and remind them what the policy was. If a company demands that I reveal my passwords before I get the job, how can they reasonably expect me to uphold their password policy?

I have the opposite problem when it comes to social media passwords: my anonymous alter ego has only an email address and a LinkedIn account. That’s it. A Google search turns up nothing but emails sent to various technical Usenet group in the 1990’s. Facebook, nada. Twitter, nada. Blogs, nada. NOTHING! My anonymous alter ego is so boring that Clark Kent looks sexy and exciting in comparison.

None of my employers or coworkers know that I’m a programmer and a writer working under a variation of my legal name for my own content producing business with a family of websites. A background research company will have to dig deep into the Google search results to establish an a tenuous connection between my anonymous alter ego and my public business persona. (When LinkedIn suggested that my business account should “link” my personal account, I deleted the business account.) As far as everyone is concern in the big blue room, I’m just a boring guy who likes to read books and watch movies.

Someday I expect not to get  a job because my Internet presence fell into the bit bucket in the 1990’s. When that day does happen, I’ll be ready to move full time into my content producing business.

When I first started working in Silicon Valley as a PC technician 15 years ago, you often got the job with a firm handshake after filling out the application and H.R. forms. The paperwork got longer and longer over years, especially the non-disclosure agreements and employee manuals. Then I noticed a new wrinkle in this process: drug testing. Now you get the job with a firm shake off after peeing into a plastic cup.

Was drug testing Silicon Valley tech workers becoming a future trend?

The first time I ever took a drug test was for a new assignment at a Fortune 500 company from a contracting agency that I was already working for. I wasn’t worried about not passing a drug test since I never used drugs. (If I was being tested 15 years ago when I had a roommate with a medical marijuana prescription, where the second hand smoke caused me to have sinus headaches and infections, I would have something to worry about.) Taking a drug test after spending three hours to fill out  the forms was more of a nuisance than anything else.

I drove down to the testing center near Good Samaritan Hospital in San Jose, drunk four bottles of water, and waited in the car until I was ready to pee. After entering the testing center, presenting the form and my driver’s license, and waiting a short while, I was escorted into a room to empty out my pockets, wash my hands and take the plastic cup into the restroom. A black-and-white sign across the back of the toilet said “DO NOT FLUSH” and the flush handle was locked in place. Despite my strenuous effort to move things along, I only peed enough to fill up to the minimum line on the plastic cup. The nurse took my offering at the ivory throne away. I filled up my pockets and sat down in the waiting area.

The report came back 15 minutes later that I was clean as a whistle.

The assignment at the Fortune 500 company went on hiatus with no prospects for more work. The two contracting agencies that usually alternated to provide me with work had nothing. After updating my resume on the job search websites, I was contacted the next day by a contracting agency I worked for seven years ago for identical work at the same pay rate. The recruiter forwarded my resume to the account manager, who decided to hire me on the spot without interviewing me. Three hours after I finished filling out all the forms, an email popped in saying that I needed to take a drug test.

After turning in my badge and equipment, my former coworker told me that drug testing was a fact of life in Silicon Valley. Not sure how that could be with all the pothead programmers running loose in the valley. I went over to the testing center to give another offering at the ivory throne with a firm shake off.