Facebook recruiting and Unix systems • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#131

Post by foo101 » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 2:33 AM UTC

foo101 wrote: post #103

samoright wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think the risk you are talking about in believing a 20 year old is exaggerated? Is it that hard to go back to the manager and ask if "Unix-like" is acceptable although the job description says "Unix"? Or just do a little bit of Googling to figure out if what the candidate is saying could have merit? From my perspective, it appears that the recruiter is the jerk and not the candidate. I have met many compute…

I Googled and I find that the candidate was wrong. The recruiter was right. AIX, Solaris and HP-UX are bonafide Unix systems and there indeed are software developers today who work with them. In any case, it is not very hard to write something like the following in the resume: POSIX, CentOS (Linux), Solaris (Unix), FreeBSD (Unix-like), etc. It is always good to be more specific about your skills in situations like th…

Can the downvoters care to explain what in my comment is incorrect?

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#132

Post by zhanwei » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 2:35 AM UTC

mquander wrote: post #15

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…

Verbatim exchange: Thanks for the quick response and clarifications. Experience with Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems is largely transferrable thanks to the standardization that resulted from the POSIX specification. As a result, the terms "POSIX" and "UNIX-like" by-and-large refer to the same thing. My experiences are in particular with developing software for Linux platforms, which are the most popular o…

The guy writes well. The recruiter is the one with bad attitude. But I would say that a practical communicator knows his audience, and in this case might want to give up explaining POSIX, change his resume, and move on.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#133

Post by rjeli » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 2:36 AM UTC

aspyrx wrote: post #128

Hey folks, I'm the student writing the emails in the post here. Thanks to everyone for their criticisms. While I was initially kind of shocked by the recruiter's response, I've had a lot of time to think about it today and have realized that I was being pretty damn condescending and spoke out of line without regards to the context. It's been a hard lesson learned. I honestly regret the whole exchange, and posting it…

This is ridiculous. Nothing in your responses was rude. The CMU recruiter is dense and underqualified. Don't apologize for taking the time to remain honest in your communications and explain the circumstances.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#134

Post by jcastro » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 2:36 AM UTC

aspyrx wrote: post #128

Hey folks, I'm the student writing the emails in the post here. Thanks to everyone for their criticisms. While I was initially kind of shocked by the recruiter's response, I've had a lot of time to think about it today and have realized that I was being pretty damn condescending and spoke out of line without regards to the context. It's been a hard lesson learned. I honestly regret the whole exchange, and posting it…

Don't sweat it, I think lots of people go through this phase.

Though next time you can skip the pleasantries and go right to the "Actually, it's GNU SLASH Linux."

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#135

Post by samoright » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 2:39 AM UTC

aspyrx wrote: post #128

Hey folks, I'm the student writing the emails in the post here. Thanks to everyone for their criticisms. While I was initially kind of shocked by the recruiter's response, I've had a lot of time to think about it today and have realized that I was being pretty damn condescending and spoke out of line without regards to the context. It's been a hard lesson learned. I honestly regret the whole exchange, and posting it…

Thank you for commenting here!

I am curious. Can you be a little specific and tell us what Linux or Unix experience do you have?

I mean can you specify the Linux distro names and the Unix brand names (AIX, Solaris, etc.) that you have worked with?

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#136

Post by Denzel » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 2:40 AM UTC

mquander wrote: post #15

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…

Verbatim exchange: Thanks for the quick response and clarifications. Experience with Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems is largely transferrable thanks to the standardization that resulted from the POSIX specification. As a result, the terms "POSIX" and "UNIX-like" by-and-large refer to the same thing. My experiences are in particular with developing software for Linux platforms, which are the most popular o…

Stanley might change his tune if he broaden his experiences a bit. A close friend of mine is a 20-something, now, Chief Engineer at a defense contractor working with the big private names and USAF.

He was a hardcore Linux guy before taking this position 5 or so years ago. He'll tell you himself, there's little transfer between deep Linux knowledge and deep Unix knowledge. They're two different beasts.

Trust me, Unix is not limited to programmers from the 1970s, it's very much alive, and it's not outdated. There's a hell of a lot of interesting stuff going on outside of Silicon Valley. I wish I could talk about it.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#137

Post by coderintherye » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 2:40 AM UTC

aspyrx wrote: post #128

Hey folks, I'm the student writing the emails in the post here. Thanks to everyone for their criticisms. While I was initially kind of shocked by the recruiter's response, I've had a lot of time to think about it today and have realized that I was being pretty damn condescending and spoke out of line without regards to the context. It's been a hard lesson learned. I honestly regret the whole exchange, and posting it…

In case you hadn't, please make sure to read foo101's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15188746

Also, good on you for being able to receive criticism, that's a big step in the right direction. In time, you'll likely come to the realization that good communication skills are an important part of almost any role.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#138

Post by adrianpike » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 2:41 AM UTC

acmustudent wrote: post #99

This is the official CMU facebook recruiter. They have done this to multiple people I know, each time they tried to explain and yet this keeps happening.

It's almost as if this is actually intentional on the FB side of things.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#139

Post by Spooky23 » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 2:41 AM UTC

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #119

tw1010 wrote: post #91

In situations like these you really aught to ask yourself what your end-goal with being elitist like that is really trying to serve. In engineering situations usually the purpose is some form of disguised signaling. This is the purpose of most sentences that start with "technically". But when you're talking to a recruiter that kind of move is unlikely to be effective. It's unlikely to affect your application positive…

I disagree. It looks like the recruiter is clueless or maybe even trolling, and applicant was going out of their way to be helpful. They could have just updated their resume, and allowed the recruiter to remain ignorant, but imo that would have been very rude.

If you're looking for someone who has actual high level expertise working on AIX or FreeBSD, having some dude tell you that Linux is the same as Unix or asserting that knowing what POSIX means is equivalent to having production knowledge of AIX/FreeBSD for a production engineering role is not very productive.

The recruiter handled himself professionally and should be commended for not being bullied. Mr. Zhang sounds like a punk, and would probably be better served by pulling the image.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#140

Post by tristor » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 2:41 AM UTC

foo101 wrote: post #103

samoright wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think the risk you are talking about in believing a 20 year old is exaggerated? Is it that hard to go back to the manager and ask if "Unix-like" is acceptable although the job description says "Unix"? Or just do a little bit of Googling to figure out if what the candidate is saying could have merit? From my perspective, it appears that the recruiter is the jerk and not the candidate. I have met many compute…

I Googled and I find that the candidate was wrong. The recruiter was right. AIX, Solaris and HP-UX are bonafide Unix systems and there indeed are software developers today who work with them. In any case, it is not very hard to write something like the following in the resume: POSIX, CentOS (Linux), Solaris (Unix), FreeBSD (Unix-like), etc. It is always good to be more specific about your skills in situations like th…

The reason you're getting downvoted is because you're saying he's incorrect by making a distinction between UNIX (uppercase) and Unix when referring to commercial OSes. There is no such distinction. UNIX is a trademark for the Unix family of operating systems. All of the systems you referenced as a family of Unix systems are certified and therefore can be referred to in the trademarked way as UNIX.

The candidate is incorrect in his belief that nobody uses UNIX (or Unix) in 2017 and he could have been less flippant in his responses to the recruiter, but his technical accuracy is spot on.

Regarding the minimal distinction that exists, FreeBSD is Unix, but not UNIX, because it has never been certified as there is a cost associated but it is directly derived from AT&T Unix in its lineage. Mac OS X which is derived from FreeBSD in turn was certified and is therefore a UNIX, ironically enough.