Anagh Technologies, the shadiest company I ever worked for

Tonight I wanted to tell the story of the two years I spent working for Anagh Technologies. Someone the other day told me they feel safe around armed guards because they are given background checks.
So I have a story about background checks.
On the one hand, Anagh was probably the shadiest company I’ve ever worked for (which includes Boss Tweed fish and chips in Bellingham where my boss once whispered to me that our illegal fishing practices had actually caused the Arctic Rose disaster which killed 15 fishermen.)
Okay so in 2014 I was living in Seattle working as a web developer. I had recently quit my job at Accretive Technologies which was by certain measures the largest porn company in the world. I’d gotten a couple other jobs, one I was programming those in-car dashboards but their systems just didn’t work and I got so frustrated that I quit after a month. Then I had a good job for a couple months building a Samsung music player which was really just a Samsung branded wrapper around Slack music. But they relocated to California but I couldn’t move there because, basically my girlfriend wouldn’t let me.
I was in a really toxic relationship during this time and I think that it was affecting me. I’d lost my motivation for life in general and I’d formed this sense of entitlement, like I felt companies should be lining up to offer me six figure salaries and I felt like preparing for my interviews was somehow beneath me. I’m not really sure why I was in this perspective during this time.
But it made me desperate when searching for another job, but also at the same time, unwilling to genuinely put the work I needed into making myself attractive to employers.
So Anagh Technologies comes calling, promising to place me somewhere in another city. They pay for all my travel and lodging and everything and also offer a reasonable salary. Then if I get laid off from whatever job they placed me in well they keep paying me during my downtime as they find me a new job. They saw my work experience and pretty much guaranteed me a job.
So at first I took it, then my girlfriend got upset and so I cancelled and told them I wanted out because I couldn’t move away from Seattle. The recruiter got like, super pushy, and actually asked to speak to my girlfriend directly, which I found super abnormal. I’ve never even heard of that where a potential employer or recruiter tries to talk to family members to convince them.
But the thing of it is that I kinda wanted to leave seattle. I kind of wanted to be forced away because I was in the toxic relationship and I didn’t have the courage to just end it on my own so I figured if I left, well she loved her job and her job was very strict about no one working from home.
So I finally convinced her on my own, and gosh thinking back it was such a sad part of my life where I just didn’t have the strength or courage to stand up and do the things I needed to do in either my career or personal life.
Oh the other thing is that in Seattle at this time marijuana had been legal for a while for everyone over 21, and I couldn’t pass a drug test. I told the recruiters at Anagh this and they replied that that was absolutely not a problem. She gave me her personal guarantee that I would never have to take a drug test while working for them.
But then one of the jobs they submitted me to had drug tests clearly listed in their job requirements. So I contacted my recruiter and told her she needed to remove me from that position and she said no, it was fine, I would not need to take a drug test. So I asked her to clarify why the requirements clearly listed it. She told me don’t worry about. Just don’t worry about it.
So after a few weeks and only a small handful of quick, surprisingly painless online virtual interviews, they legit came through on their promise and got me a job at Barclays, the giant British bank, down in “downtown Dallas Texas”.
Then I remember among the other official job-starting documents we were sending back and forth, at one point they sent me a PDF to print and sign. I read through it and it was a statement that I had taken and passed a drug test.
That’s all you need to do to pass is to sign a thing?
But then I kept asking my recruiter for the address of the office and she kept ignoring me. She’d answer all my other questions, but just wouldn’t get me the freaking address. I had been very clear that I needed to be able to use public transportation or a bicycle to get to work and they’d told me that was no problem since Dallas had good public transport.
Finally like two days before I’m set to fly down there they finally give me the address and it’s actually in the middle of nowhere an hour north of Dallas Texas. And an hour in Texas is a long way. They drive fast. Like real fast on huge highways that are actually quite well designed and maintained.
Anyway, I go back to the recruiter, but at this point I’m committed and they agree to pay for my rental car for like two weeks or something.
So I move down to this long-term hotel north of Dallas for several months.
It’s a strain on my relationship with my girlfriend and I keep hoping it’s going to drive us to break up. It almost happened once but… God I was such a coward and just couldn’t follow through and end it.
So her job then made an exception to their no working from home rule, just for her, since they decided it was for “true love”.
So my girlfriend moved to Dallas with me, we got an apartment.
Okay get to the point Kalin.
I did want to include that I felt really awkward morally at Barclays. My job was building a small loan app for things like iPads and computers or cell phones, so that people could buy things they can’t afford on credit. The idea was that the salesman would have the application all booted up and it would be so quick and smooth to get through that it would happen so fast while the salesman had them in his clutches, that the customer would get done with the whole process before they even had time to think about the mistake they were making.
Funny thing, this was the only job I have ever had where I felt the need to wear a sweatshirt at work. They crank up the A/C in Dallas.
There was once, i think it was Anagh, it may have been another recruiting agency, that placed two people at Barclays and just totally lied about their backgrounds, claiming they had skills they did not. I didn’t catch on at first.
Then there was a guy I interviewed for a position but he was not a good fit. He didn’t even code in the same language as us. But then I got a message from my recruiter asking if I could get him pushed through. I said no and they offered me $1000.
A thousand dollars! Seriously? If you’re going to bribe me and make me put my freaking career at risk, it better be more than a thousand.
So I said no of course and told them that was ridiculous.
The drug test evasion is one thing because my weed habit doesn’t affect my job in any way and should be at least as legal as alcohol anyway.
So I reported the bribe to my boss at Barclays. He ignored me at first and I pushed the issue. So he took me aside and explained that we should not go to HR because it could cause a whole scene and really mess up their delicate relationship with their recruiting agency.
(“recruiting agency” may be wrong term since I worked for Anagh technologies and they basically rented me out for what price I do not know. Not sure what that’s called.)
Thinking back I–I guess it didn’t occur to me that my boss there would try to cover it up when he had no personal stake in it. I should have maybe gone directly to HR. If something like that happens again I think I may bypass my boss and go directly to HR. I’m not sure.
But this town–McKinney TX, I’m thinking. Somewhere around there. They’d been trying to attract tech companies and thought they’d bring in all these software developers and make the area into a mini silicon valley but the plan was failing as the developers like me just didn’t want to live there. So Barclays decided to close up shop.
So then Anagh gives me a few virtual interviews and get me a potential at Sikorsky helicopter factory and development facility up in Connecticut. They fly me up there for literally like four hours, just long enough for me to rent a car, drive to the interview and race back to the airport afterward.
I feel really weird about this place. This is a company that does a lot of military contracts. I was an anarchist, pacifist, anti-war, anti-military, communist (sort of with big caveats), with a website where I talk about all this, and making war for a living just didn’t sit right with me morally. I almost hoped I wouldn’t get the job.
But it also woulda been kind of cool. I would have been building maintenance logging software for helicopters. My code wouldn’t be on the helicopters themselves but would be used by the mechanics to track everything they’re doing. And it was totally within my abilities too.
I arrived through all this intimidating security and they bring me up and show me this wall where on the other side they are working on the president’s helicopter. I’m not allowed in there of course.
But there’s just like an intern or someone to interview me. She’s like “I’m brand new here and don’t really know what I’m doing and everyone who was supposed to interview you is currently working on a big emergency so I’m gonna do the best I can.”
I remember something was wrong with the motion sensors in the meeting room so every five minutes the lights would go out and with no windows that meant pitch black every five minutes so my interviewer had to go fumble around for the light switch each time.
So then I flew back to Texas. Few days later they wanted to give the interview another shot. So I fly up there and do the whole thing over again, meet with the same lady who still seems to be struggling since she’s brand new in both this job and her career in general. She says same thing. Wild coincidence, another emergency, so she’s the only one who can talk to me. So we chitchat about job related stuff and code for forty five minutes or so.
At the end she says something like “I really have no idea what I’m doing here. I told them very clearly that I have no idea what I’m doing and they told me to just do the best I can so my gut says that you know what you’re talking about, you speak clearly, so I’m gonna go ahead and hire you.”
So then I moved up to a hotel in Connecticut so I could be ready to start work the moment the background check went through.
But here’s the issue with the background check: I worked at a porn company. Porn companies don’t have human resource or head office numbers. If they did they would get spammed with horny dudes, angry religious people, pissed off parents and any number of other ranters. So there was no way for Sikorsky to contact my former employer to verify employment.
So I talked to my recruiter and he was like “wait, you used your actual work history in your background check?”
“yeah, of course.”
“No! you don’t use your real work history! Just say you worked for us for the last 8 years. One job is faster to confirm.”
–those aren’t actual quotes. I do remember screenshotting the texts for evidence that he was pressuring me into lying. I just remember him being surprised that I had done the background check legitimately, like I was supposed to know that everyone lies.
“no one cares about background checks. It’s just a formality. You can put your buddie’s number down and if he answers and confirms your employment you’re good. That’s all a background check actually is. It’s not a real security system. It’s just a way for employers to feel better about who they hire.”
“Even at a helicopter factory with government contracts with armed guards that build the president’s helicopter? They just call the number and call it good?”
“Yeah, we’ve placed lots of people at Sikorsky that way.”
(bear in mind I’m pulling all this from memory that’s years old. I’m not checking my screenshots or anything.)
So my recruiter got frustrated and I kind of didn’t want to work there anyway for moral reasons but also because the cost of housing was really high there despite being away from the city with nothing really to do.
So Anagh got me another couple few interviews as I sat for almost a month in that Connecticut hotel room, re-watching every episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and just being unhappy about everything. Started getting anxiety up there, just a little.
Then suddenly I had a job at BNY Mellon in Pittsburgh!
Bam, they got me here a few days later and I started almost immediately.
I knew they expected me to lie on my background check this time, but if I remember correctly, I did make them go through the process of pressuring me into it, you know, for the screenshots. And they were right. It went through in like a day.
Freaking ridiculous to lie on a background check when you have nothing to hide, simply because it’s faster than doing it legitimately. And that’s just standard practice at Anagh and who knows how many other agencies.
So now I was in downtown Pittsburgh. Finally, a city job like I was used to in Seattle where I could take public transport and walk to restaurants.
But those ten months in Texas… like I don’t know, I was only there for 10 months but somehow I still kinda sort of feel like I’m a Texan now.
Oh yeah, Anagh got me to lie on my resume. It wasn’t a huge lie, but I had some angular experience but it was entirely in personal projects that I’d done at home. Anagh convinced me to lie and say it had been professional experience that I was paid for. I got screenshots of them pressuring me into this too.
I hope I still have these screenshots. I hope I’m not exaggerating how much they pressured me 🙂
Being an anti-capitalist at the time, I felt uncomfortable working at a huge billion dollar bank working on software used by the executives to make billion dollar decisions. I felt like a traitor to my anarchist roots.
But something weird happened: they really started to grow on me. They weren’t the evil bankers from the movies that I thought they’d be.
Sure they were boring, it was like, all anyone wanted to talk about was their wife and kids. Super boring but like, somehow really sweet and not at all the embodiment of greed that I thought it would be. I started listening to books about economics and money on Audible and long story short I’m no longer anti-capitalist.
So after my contract ran out, BNY offered me a real position and I took it immediately. Anagh was clearly a company that would get me in trouble in the long run. You can only roll so long with shady characters before you yourself get screwed.
But what I hadn’t thought through was the background check and the drug test.
Oops.
They didn’t tell me anything about the drug test until like three or four days before. I was in a panic. I talked to my boss, said I’d smoked some weed and I couldn’t pass. He looked up cleansers and told me he couldn’t do anything for me. Just cleanse and hope for the best. I talked to HR. HR said the same thing. Guzzle a cleanser.
So that’s what I did. I read the instructions over and over and did exactly as it said. I remember my bladder was about to burst and my pee came out neon-green, like a bright, like Slurm from Futurama.
But I passed. I’m not sure if the cleanser really worked or either my boss or my HR rep fudged the results for me. I have no idea. (I had a friend once who was a hiring manager years earlier and he would, if he liked a candidate who failed a drug test would routinely just forge the result and tell them they passed. No one checks for that stuff because it’s just distant insurance companies that force these policies. No one actually cares.)
So that’s the advantage of being open and honest: your boss trusts you and might just pull some strings for you.
But then the background check. Didn’t stop to think about that either. Anagh certainly wasn’t going to lie for me a second time now that I’d abandoned them. So I decided to come clean and just do the second background check legit. This time I had all the info from the attempt with Sikorsky so I knew how to push it through.
The porn company was tricky. I actually had to call their customer service number. The operator didn’t believe me. She straight up accused me of lying, that I was just some horny dude trying to fuck with her. I do remember those poor operators had to deal with some nonsense. So I rattled off the names of people who had worked there and thank god I remembered the name of the head of HR.
So after my legit background check went through I waited nervously for that call from HR where they would ask me why my first background check looked nothing like the recent one. But that call never came. They just never bothered to cross reference them.
So then i worked another five years at BNY Mellon and honestly, it was the best job I ever had until they laid me off and I got my current one. And really, I don’t remember any sort of shady behavior at BNY Mellon. That was refreshing.