The issue is that people get fired and sometimes even humiliated over minor deceptions (like "playing" with dates) while companies routinely protect managers who do much worse things that actually hurt people-- things like promising good reviews and writing bad ones, abusing process for retaliatory or deceptive purposes, and hiring multiple people for the same leadership role at the same time. "Rules are for the proles" is what seems to be the corporate attitude in at least 75% of companies.
It's a power relationship. They can lie and get away with it because they have the gold (cf. "golden rule" as "those with the gold make the rules") but you are screwed if you get caught in even a small one. It's important to know how the game works and what risks you're taking, and my strategy is not to lie. But I don't believe that people who pursue other strategies and cheat harmlessly at an unfair game are awful or unethical people.
You happen to see this only in what you call "power relationship". I happen to see it like this: people, e.g. software developers, with the same experience and background attributing themselves as "architects", blowing up their programming experience by years and languages they have never seen. You call this harmless cheating because they kill nobody. It's not harmless because it distorts the reality we all operate in and it confirms the power-relationship-rule. (what age are you talking about anyway? I'm 46, I could tell you about ageism, but telling I'm born in '76 only confirms the ageisms in place)
To react also on the "crab mentality" remark in another post: If the emperor says that crabs older the 1 year of age should be cooked and all crabs start to lie about their age and put others forward as being older (the ones who don't lie) the real ugly face of this mentality becomes clear.
Without commenting one way or another on the larger discussion, I do have something to say about this:
I happen to see it like this: people, e.g. software developers, with the same experience and background attributing themselves as "architects", blowing up their programming experience by years and languages they have never seen.
Inflated resumes are the natural response to inflated requirements. You can't require 5 years of experience in a technology that's only 4 years old. You can't require 5 years of experience in a dozen different things. I won't speculate on the reasons behind these inflated requirements, but they are definitely inflated.
Also, you can't take a set of requirements and carbon copy it for all of your positions. The difference between a junior position and a senior position should be more than just a year of experience. Likewise, the requirements for positions like architect, developer, and tester should not be identical except for "architecting", "developing", and "testing".
In the end, though, you should view job postings and resumes as a very weak filter. People are going to lie, from small tweaks to outright falsifications, and you're going to have to use other means to weed the liars out. Interviews, training, and probation are going to be your tools here, and no amount of inflated requirements or expectations of "professional honesty" are going to change that.
What a disgusting response. "Someone else may or may not have done something worse at some point, so anything I do is ok."
By the way, you may want to Google for Scott Thompson. He was a CEO of Yahoo, until they found out that he had lied on his resume. It isn't just "the proles" who get into trouble because of dishonesty.
P.S. I don't consider it wrong to leave jobs off your resume if you feel like they are not important or they don't show you in a good light. But making up stuff that did not happen, or refusing to answer a direct question crosses the line, and I think we both know that.
I don't know anyone, even in HR, who expects a resume to show the whole truth.. But Jesus, are we at a point where we don't expect to only show the truth?
Michael says playing with dates isn't dishonest. Bullshit. It's incredibly easy to "play" with the dates (e.g., lie) to hide the fact you're fired from every job you've ever had within the year and it takes you six months to find new employment.
Half this thread is people saying "Don't lie, because that makes you a liar, and nobody likes liars." and the other half is people saying "Just because I lie on my resume doesn't mean I'm a liar because this one time a company did something bad to me so that makes this unrelated occurrence totally okay."
Michael says playing with dates isn't dishonest. Bullshit. It's incredibly easy to "play" with the dates (e.g., lie) to hide the fact you're fired from every job you've ever had within the year and it takes you six months to find new employment.
Let's say that I fire someone, and I absolutely can't afford a severance package, leaving him out in the cold. Let's also say that the following are the options:
A. He changes dates to make himself more employable. (I'd probably offer a term in severance to give him the ability to do this, but let's assume I forget.) This is annoying, but doesn't really hurt me.
B. He spreads a lie about me that ruins my reputation. Perhaps he makes up a bogus sexual harassment claim and pays other disgruntled ex-employees off to corroborate it. Now I have to deal with a frivolous lawsuit he made up to clear his name, and it may hurt my reputation.
C. He can't find another job, because of the damage that the spell of unemployment does to his reputation, and after his money runs out, he butchers his entire family in a murder-suicide. My name is in the papers as that of the guy who fired him a year before it happened.
Out of these three choices, I'm going to say that A is the one I dislike the least. I'm probably not his biggest fan given that I had to fire him, but I'd prefer the arrangement that minimizes harm to him and to me.
In the real world, people do nasty shit when the stakes are high or when they're desperate. I wish it weren't that way, but it is. Maybe you want to live in a world where people with damaged careers live with the damage. I want to live in a world where people who need to escape their past (even though I hope I'm never in that category) can do so without resorting to more drastic actions.
Half this thread is people saying "Don't lie, because that makes you a liar, and nobody likes liars." and the other half is people saying "Just because I lie on my resume doesn't mean I'm a liar because this one time a company did something bad to me so that makes this unrelated occurrence totally okay."
I don't lie on my resume. Ever. I've never needed to. But I have more pity than disgust toward people who have to reinvent their histories because they have no other options.
I don't think option A ever hurts the former employer, or at least only in the rarest of circumstances.
If I apply for a job and it's down to me and Candidate X, both of which have n years of experience in software development, I am going to be pissed if he gets the job because I'm an honest person and he's "padded" his resume for every job to where he now has n+2 years of experience.
I think the reason this gets such a visceral reaction from folks on my side of the argument is that there's no way to know how often this happens (my guess is truthfully that it happens more often than not, even just the "padding" of a month or two to hide or lessen stretches of unemployment).
Let's say that I fire someone, and I absolutely can't afford a severance package, leaving him out in the cold. Let's also say that the following are the options:
Um, you think that people are forced to "butcher [their] entire family in a murder-suicide" because they get fired? Do you grasp the fact that the government gives unemployment benefits for months at a time? Here's this for an "alternative": stop being a giant douchebag and tell the truth on your resume.
[edit: I'm not implying that you personally lied on your resume, I am using the abstract "you"/"your" in keeping with the example.]
It's a power relationship. They can lie and get away with it because they have the gold (cf. "golden rule" as "those with the gold make the rules") but you are screwed if you get caught in even a small one. It's important to know how the game works and what risks you're taking, and my strategy is not to lie. But I don't believe that people who pursue other strategies and cheat harmlessly at an unfair game are awful or unethical people.