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Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

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Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#51

Post by kchoudhu »

storrgie wrote: post #4

It would be good to know if this was an internal or external recruiter. If the organization has contracted this out to another organization, then it should minimally reflect on Facebook and have maximum, laughable effect, on the contracted organization. From what I've experienced with Facebook recruitment, they dragnet linkedin pretty hard and have at-least a 5-step process for interviewing that is designed to be imp…

> then it should minimally reflect on Facebook.

If a business hires cutrate idiots to source candidates for the largest investment expense it has[1], I guarantee you that it will cut costs elsewhere as well.

[1] Yes, people are an investment. At a quarter of a million dollars a pop for proper coding talent, multiplied by however many coders the company has, people are the largest expense Facebook has.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#52

Post by flukus »

storrgie wrote: post #4

It would be good to know if this was an internal or external recruiter. If the organization has contracted this out to another organization, then it should minimally reflect on Facebook and have maximum, laughable effect, on the contracted organization. From what I've experienced with Facebook recruitment, they dragnet linkedin pretty hard and have at-least a 5-step process for interviewing that is designed to be imp…

> It would be good to know if this was an internal or external recruiter. If the organization has contracted this out to another organization, then it should minimally reflect on Facebook and have maximum, laughable effect, on the contracted organization.

This is a large part of why they contract it out and they shouldn't get a free pass on it. If $company contract out customer support (very common) we don't say "sure I was on hold for 7 hours, but the support was contracted out, so it doesn't reflect on $company".

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#53

Post by foobaw »

This is a tricky exchange. Both sides could've done better. To be honest though, a company like Facebook gets so many resumes that these mistakes are inevitable. Not saying it's acceptable, but it's just the nature of recruiting.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#54

Post by JackFr »

kichik wrote: post #47
JackFr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - the recruiter is not doing their job. They are marking time in a role and collecting a paycheck, but decidedly not doing their job.

And yet that's the hand you've been dealt. You can be right, or you can get the job.

I'm not disagreeing with your main point -- no one gets into the club by arguing with the bouncer.

My point is that the recruiter is a collossal screw-up, and its imprecise to describe what they did as 'doing their job'. Unless their job is to alienate qualified applicants.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#55

Post by cushychicken »

flukus wrote: post #42
mquander wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure he could have done a better job communicating to the recruiter. You could tell he was slightly irritated, and maybe somehow he could have figured out a different framing that the recruiter would understand. (But note that at the end, he changed his strategy and said simply that he had experience with Linux and UNIX, and the recruiter still didn't care. It really isn't clear whether there was any approach tha…

> He did like a 75% good job. I'd say a 75% good job for a fresh grad is a really good score. Explaining technical jargon to the computer illiterate is not really something you can learn at school.

>Explaining technical jargon to the computer illiterate is not really something you can learn at school

...but, yet, probably should be.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#56

Post by kichik »

JackFr wrote: post #54
kichik wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet that's the hand you've been dealt. You can be right, or you can get the job.

I'm not disagreeing with your main point -- no one gets into the club by arguing with the bouncer. My point is that the recruiter is a collossal screw-up, and its imprecise to describe what they did as 'doing their job'. Unless their job is to alienate qualified applicants.

There's no argument there. I would actually like to learn more about Facebook's recruiter situation to understand how this can happen. That's definitely something you want to avoid in your own company.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#57

Post by f1notformula1 »

gargarplex wrote: post #31
jdavis703 wrote: post #9

This is not the right attitude to bring in to the workplace. You'll have a range of people from executives, to clients to co-workers in other departments who don't know what UNIX, APIs and POSIX are. If you can't communicate technical matters nicely then you have not yet developed the right attitude for a professional working environment. It's the same thing with doctors when they create metaphors to explain complica…

There is an extremely fine line between speaking the layperson's terminology and lying. Wrong: "Yep, I have UNIX experience!" Right: "These days, the phrases 'UNIX' and 'UNIX-like systems' are used interchangeably. Please double check this with your hiring manager to confirm that we're on the same page."

Agreed there's a fine line. I somehow find myself a little further along the spectrum - Perhaps I'm jaded from dealing with too many recruiters who are trying to check boxes.

If I really thought this job was worth my time, I would've updated my resume to say UNIX and Linux, and then clarified during the first interview with a technical person.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#58

Post by sithadmin »

pacman128 wrote: post #38
noncoml wrote: post #23

True story, I once got an email from a recruiter asking for someone with experience in C, C+ and C++. No idea if it was a typo for C# or the recruiter thought, we have C and C++, why not add C+ in there to increase our hits. I found it amusing, but didn't start an argument..

Years ago I had a recruiter pull a list of questions from their technical guy to ask. The first question was something about constructors in C. I carefully explained that the question made no sense for C but would for C++. They insisted the question was correct, so I told them what the answer would be in C++. They also asked me about if I had experience with the EMACS editor, but spelled out the letter E-M-A-C-S. Why…

Regarding the Emacs question - could be a weedout/profiling question. I've asked recruiters in the past to screen candidates for familiarity with certain tools as a shortcut for identifying candidates with higher aptitude for what I'm hiring for.

For instance, when I'm hiring a vSphere admin, and I ask my recruiters to put anybody that wasn't immediately familiar with RVTools (among other things) at the bottom of the resume pile. It's a dead simple and ubiquitous utility for vSphere admins, and is a pretty good shortcut for eliminating people with too little experience or too hands-off experience from contention. Sure, it might end up accidentally selecting against what would otherwise be good candidates, but in general I've found it helps accelerate forced ranking of candidates.

That's probably a bit more directly applicable to the role than your Emacs question, but they might be trying to feel out what 'kind' of a developer you could be. Those that favor Emacs, Vim etc tend to be rather different than those that use Visual Studio, etc.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#59

Post by obstacle1 »

deathanatos wrote: post #34
eridius wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A professional communicator tailors their communication to their audience. Stanley's initial explanation was pretty good, but since the recruiter didn't seem to understand it, Stanley should have adjusted his approach instead of doubling down.

I'm not sure how much more clear poor Stanley can get: > Recruiter: We're looking for students with experience work on Linux and Unix > Stanley: I have experience working on Linux and UNIX > Recruiter: Your email and resume say Unix-like, which is not exactly UNIX. The recruiter, by the end of this exchange has been given the explanation of why "UNIX-like" is the correct term, why it is being used, and why it is rele…

The recruiter's response isn't irrational. Very clear instructions are being given: put UNIX and Linux on your resume. Not tell me via e-mail. Then candidate goes ahead and 'educates' the recruiter, and puts something other than UNIX (UNIX-like) on the resume. i.e., does not follow instructions.

Clear no hire.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#60

Post by kev009 »

throwaway2016a wrote: post #12

Somewhat on topic. Does anyone use actual Unix? Is it even something you can install anymore?

You can basically buy the right to call yourself UNIX today from The Open Group. The most extreme example of this is z/OS, but Mac OS is also UNIX.

As for a singular product it was always kind of muddy. There was early UNIX, Research UNIX, BSD and then System III and System V as products from AT&T. The last product that was "pure" UNIX was System V Release 4. You could buy it into the 90s for 3B2s and PCs. It had lots of derivatives that used it as the port base like Solaris, Interactive UNIX, UnixWare etc and the code was also widely incorporated into other port bases (AIX, IRIX, etc) that predate or incorporated lots of different code like OSF/1. IIRC Novell came to own this "pure" UNIX and then sold it to SCO.

I would say any of the BSDs are UNIX today, but that caused a pretty big legal gaffe between AT&T and BSDi in the early '90s and limited adoption at a critical point. OpenBSD to me seems like the spiritual Research UNIX continuation.

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