GAMA-1 Technologies is yet another company to blacklist. Even if you aren’t a member of the Software Contractor’s Guild, I’m going to share this with you. What makes it worse is the fact these guys are government contractors and most gigs require clearance so they should be held to a higher standard than Indian firms. Obviously the GAO doesn’t police contractors well.
A casual reader who doesn’t work in IT might read this blog, not this post, but the entire blog, and think I’m racist. They would be wrong. I have Indian friends. Not that it is any of your business, but I have both gay and black friends as well. Yes, I’ve written about Indian firms before. If you work in IT and your resume is in any online database, you know I’m not being racist when I say large Indian firms are scum. You didn’t even have to post your resume to one of the job boards for it to be in an online database the bottom feeders use.
Thank God GeekStorage has SpamExperts! Roughly 70% of the Indian bulk spammers are automatically in their blacklist. I only see them when I log into SpamExperts every few days to flush the spam.
Fake Job Openings
This isn’t about Indian firms though they engage in this practice to gather resumes. We are talking about fake job openings. What makes this worse is “matching software” on job boards actually pushes fake openings at highly skilled people. Most notable of these is ZipRecruiter. Don’t ever let your resume get into their database connected to an email address you actually look at!
This particular fake job opening was pushed at me via ZipRecruiter. I try to only log in there one or twice a month at most. Since they got connected with Indeed, they are just shit. They might have pushed this one to the email for that account, I don’t know. I just bulk delete things at that email address. This fake job opening would have never turned up in any of my searches. No, they didn’t do me a favor.
90% of the gigs that I take come through three pimps. Most of them come through one. I’m at a stage in my career where I can be picky. Most days of the year my military grade flip phone is set to Do Not Disturb so only people in my contact list get through. I only change that when there is a health issue with someone in the family and legitimate calls could come from strange numbers.
I gotta say my flip phone must not have a limit as to how many numbers I can block because during those windows when it is not in Do Not Disturb mode, I get a lot of non-English speaking calls about low wage work for John Deere and CAT. Those gigs have been open for 8 and 6 years respectively because they are looking to pay less for 100% on-site work than any qualified person would charge for 100% remote work.
Complete Disregard For Human Dignity
According to Forbes 1 in 7 job postings are fake. This confirms three things. The first is that MBAs are completely void of ethics. That many companies, especially large ones with Indian controlled Vendor Management Systems, have complete disregard for human dignity. Third is that nobody should waste time customizing a resume or cover letter.
Another Forbes article found that 81% of recruiters knowingly post fake job openings. Oh, Forbes isn’t the only place reporting on the epidemic of fake job postings. There are now Reddit communities identifying companies to blacklist.
There is even a community maintained list of companies posting fake jobs. You can now blacklist every company you find on there and dramatically ease your job search efforts.
Lots of people are tagging Dice for fake jobs now. Until they got connected with LinkedIn, Dice used to be a place you could trust. Not so today. They don’t even take down jobs marked as remote that are 100% on-site anymore. They at least used to do that.
Reason for Blacklist
ZipRecruiter pushed this fake job at me on that landing page when you login. I found it funny they referred to FORTRAN 90 as Legacy. Obviously they don’t know what Legacy FORTRAN is! If you had to use FORTRAN Coding Sheets, then you know what Legacy FORTRAN is.
Most fake jobs just take your resume and mine your identity. This one had one of those online calendars to schedule a phone call. Yeah, always avoid any recruiter that uses an online calendar where you have to schedule a call. Dead giveaway positions aren’t real and that you don’t matter. Had phone call on June 3, 2026. Was told HR was finalizing the job req and it should be out in a couple of days.
No, they couldn’t tell me what operating system any of this was on. Kind of important. If you really are going to have someone “port” FORTRAN 90 from an OS to C++ on Windows that’s a completely different job than porting to Linux. If the FORTRAN 90 code was running on OpenVMS it is going to use many system service calls that simply don’t exist on any of the lesser platforms.
As of Friday, June 26, 2026 HR still hadn’t finalized the job req or determined a dollar amount yet recruiter claims it is a real position. This is why you blacklist them.
Definition of a Real Position
- Post opening and gather resumes today
- Interview tomorrow
- Hire the very next day
If your opening doesn’t fit that definition, it isn’t real.
Long History of Fake Job Openings
This has always been a scam. I started in the early 1980s. To simply gather resumes head hunters would opt to purchase resumes submitted to job fairs. The Technical Recruiter Network (TRN was a thing back then) would host 1-4 job fairs each year. They would have a full page ad in the Chicago Tribune and provide a Tribune mail box for people who could not attend the job fair to submit their resume. This was okay. It was above board.
They also stuffed in resumes from past job fairs because they guaranteed X resumes when head hunters purchased. One head hunter found that out the hard way. He called me about a computer operations position saying he just got my resume from the job fair. I had to tell him I had been a computer programmer for the past 6 years so that must have been a resume from when I was still in college.
This wasn’t screwing the job seeker so it was okay. It was above board.
Contingent Offers
Capgemini was, and probably still is, notorious for making “contingent offers.” I’m certain there are other companies engaging this shitty practice as well. It doesn’t work as well today as it used to. Before airlines were deregulated it cost real money to fly. In the 1980s we didn’t have all of these corporate housing companies either. To take a gig out of state you lived in a hotel or you had to fully relocate. Today the vast majority of us want remote work. Any company with competent management will allow technical people to work remote. Shit management teams won’t.
Are all contingent offers a shitty practice only a bottom feeder would engage in? No. Contingent upon you passing a drug test and background check is all well and good. No reason to blacklist a company for that because it is a real job that wants alert, sober, non-felons in the workplace.
Government Contract Bidding
Likewise, I get emails and phone calls from companies bidding on government contracts. If they demand I remain “available to start” for the length of the bid I turn them down. Most just want to declare you as part of the team for the bid fully intending to use someone else. Indian firms would just stuff your resume in, at least these people call to ask. The Indian firms get bounced because the agency with the contract will randomly contact N people from “the team” to ask if they’ve ever heard of this company. That’s why these other people call, to make sure you know their name.
The final sliver of these government contract bidders will make you sign a contingent offer. It clearly states the offer is contingent on them winning the contract. Offer only bars you from allowing yourself to be submitted as part of some other bidding team. Agreement will state that you must leave any employment you currently have and start the project if they win. This is all up front.
I’ve been in IT four decades. Not one of the firms who made such an offer ever called back to say they won. Most of these firms will bid on every government contract hoping to get one. The smart ones have someone with two different bids in their briefcase. On the day of the deadline that someone paces around in front of the desk of the person asking incessantly if anyone else has submitted a bid. They have to tell them how many bids. At the last minute, with no other bidders, said person pulls out the really high bid.
Market Lock
Capgemini and a few others used to engage in market lock. This involved fake job openings. Some account rep would hear that XYZ company had a project coming up needing niche skill A. The Sunday Chicago Tribune jobs section would suddenly be filled with ads for niche skill A by the bottom feeding firms. Capgemini would then bring everyone in who had skill A and make them a contingent offer.
They hoped the candidates were all young and dumb because you also had to sign a non-compete agreement stating you would not allow any other firm to present you to any Capgemini client. In the fine print it defined any business with a phone number as their client. The final kick to the crotch is that XYZ company didn’t even have Capgemini on their vendor list. For no money down you were now taken out of play and if they got enough of niche skill A signed, they could force XYZ company to do business with them.
I don’t remember the names of the other companies who engaged in this shitty practice. Most don’t exist anymore. Capgemini is definitely one you want to blacklist.
Market lock is much more difficult to achieve today. In the 1980s there were tons of different computer systems and software packages. People couldn’t easily work out of state unless they had a relative with a big house near the client.
Today’s Fake Job Epidemic
Make no mistake, it’s an epidemic. It used to cost real money to post a fake job ad in the Chicago Tribune. Even if you had an advertising contract with them, it wasn’t free. Today fake jobs get posted online for free. Sure some sites charge money, but now that they “share openings” the free fake job openings posted on LinkedIn and Facebook contaminate what used to be legitimate sites.
This epidemic is so bad states are passing laws making it illegal. Technically it is illegal today. It’s wire fraud. The FBI just hasn’t bothered to investigate and arrest those knowingly posting fake openings. Companies posting fake job openings to seem more prosperous than they are so people purchase their stock meets the criteria for wire fraud.
You gotta believe it’s an epidemic if even Kentucky is passing a law about this.
