This has been the case at every “startup” or “tech” company where I’ve worked. Even the “enterprise” company where I worked for almost a decade had noticeably low “random” drug testing for IT. “Low” meaning “I didn’t see or hear of it happening unless someone was obviously out of their minds at work the entire time I was there.”
Where I live (outside the US), virtually no company ever tests for drugs...
Even in the US, a lot of large companies do not test for drugs. This is not to take a cheap jab at banks, but I personally know some investment bankers in NYC, and if some in their group were seriously drug tested they’d probably break the test machines...
I interned at a securities finance company that did drug testing at some point. There were lots of management changes, so the random screen may have been an MBA/finance type who didn’t get it. Notable quality engineers who failed their tests were retained, so I imagine they must have seen the error in their ways.
They did have drug screening as part of the application process. I imagine they lost a lot of quality applicants. I only persisted because I was one of those annoying self-righteous tea totalers at the time.
> According to the etymological dictionaries, the tee- in teetotal is the letter ‹t›, so it is actually t-total, though it was never spelled that way.[4] The word is first recorded in 1832 in a general sense in an American source, and in 1833 in England in the context of abstinence. Since at first it was used in other contexts as an emphasised form of total, the tee- is presumably a reduplication of the first letter of total, much as contemporary idiom today might say "total with a capital T".
I worked at a ‘startup’ in the Healthcare sector that drug tested everyone on initial hire. They were spun off from one of the big US hospitals though. I’m not over exaggerating when I say we lost a huge amount of exceptionally qualified applicants who dropped out of the process or refused to accept the offer specifically due to the drug test requirement.
Yea fuck that, I’d refuse point blank. This is 100% private information. If I behave like I’m high/drunk/stoned at work by all means fire me, but what I do when not at work is my business alone.
Yeah, the tech side of the company was pushing to remove the requirement for as long as I was there. But it was pretty much just a blanket requirement for all employees since most worked in medical facilities where that’s normally required.
At this point in my life, I’d reject it. But it’s hard to say no when being offered twice your current salary and a significantly shorter commute.
