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Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

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Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#211

Post by bshanks »

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…

(this comment is a dup of one that i submitted elsewhere in this thread)

As a tutorial for those of us like me who sometimes stumble in situations like this, could someone who found the OP's responses to the recruiter unprofessional please post example phrasing of what the OP should have said? Let's assume the constraint that the OP will refuse to lie (so they won't just change their resume to 'Unix' instead of 'Unix-like').

This is a genuine question; I often can't think of how to phrase things and I think an example would be educational.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#212

Post by Bahamut »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #46
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.

The kid was pretty green (when you apply for internships you usually are), he had no idea that first-line screeners at a big-5 company could be that awful. With age comes experience and low expectations but as an undergraduate you can be excused. You might even demand a minimum standard of discourse, interviews go both ways. Storytime: back then us students were doing a factory tour, we went to Hoechst in Frankfurt (…

It’s not always that bad. I have had pretty pleasant experiences with Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Apple (my current employer). I have also had negative experiences with Google and Amazon as well (the Amazon one puts them squarely in the I-don’t-want-to-ever-interview-with-them-again bucket).

On a more relevant comment, I think the student could have been a little smarter in realizing that the recruiter didn’t seem like he/she understood what was really being asked in the position he/she was recruiting for, but I think a lot of respondents on HN forget that people are sometimes held to account for items put in the resume. I remember when I interviewed at Apple in my last interview search, all 3 of the teams I had onsites with held me to account for items I had put on my resume.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#213

Post by numismatex »

Well, I'm not shocked. You came across as intentionally obtuse. You don't waste a recruiter's time -- they're higher status than you and working for a living. This reflects that. Glad you realized that your condescension and lack of communication skills escalated the situation.

The biggest setback that every IT candidate that I meet is "I'm great, I know X, Y, Z." when the reality is that a great attitude, nice smile and a hard focus on soft skills including selling yourself, building rapport and interpersonal intelligence (aka EQ) will take you much further.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#214

Post by L_Rahman »

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…

Hi, I think you could have massaged the snark in the sentence that says "Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, most people do not have experience with a true UNIX OS" but other than that I think you should walk away thinking that your communication was clear, straight-forward and respectful.

Here's what happened - the recruiter had a list of keywords, received a large volume of inbound resumes and filtered for == 'UNIX' and dumped everything else.

They (and the company they represent) could have done a better job if they'd taken the information given, created an actual human mental model and filtered accordingly but chose to behave like a computer program instead. Their loss - move on and don't feel bad about this.

But I want to point out that like the recruiter you too got stuck in the literal filter. You assumed, I'm guessing correctly, that the hiring team is probably looking for someone with experience working on UNIX-like operating systems.

A bit of advice: When you encounter imperfect systems like this in the future a good practice is to ask yourself if you know what the actual desired outcome is, and give the lossy filter the input it needs to get you to the next round.

Here it would have been simply updating your resume to list UNIX instead offering an explainer. This would get you through the recruiter filter, and during your actual phone screen with someone on the hiring team, you could discuss your UNIX-like experience if asked. If they did want literal UNIX experience, you could apologize for misinterpreting the requirement and move on. No harm done.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#215

Post by aspyrx »

exikyut wrote: post #205
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…

Nobody else has mentioned this so I will: leave an email address in your profile, or dump something sharable in a comment here. (Pretty much everyone here (relevant) can de-base64 (which can be convenient, a la data:text/plain;base64,...) or figure out "gmail@myaccountname".) Best case scenario, someone from FB could say hi. Not officially (that would be a nice miracle), but rather some person working there. Then you…

I've taken to your advice. Thanks!

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#216

Post by numismatex »

Aeolun wrote: post #79
freehunter wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd love to see you defend why the guy is a professional communicator with a good attitude. He's not, but that doesn't matter. You're going to be hard pressed to only ever communicate with professional communicators with good attitudes your whole career. So if you ever want to be taken seriously and have a successful career, you're going to need to learn what battles are worth fighting. Hell, maybe it was even a tes…

> What are your weaknesses? I don't play well with idiots, or nonsensical bullshit.

Well, then you'll end up being that one lack-of-social-skills dev in the basement at many places. Or in your Mom's basement because you can't hold a job. Social skills, interpersonal intelligence (EQ) and the ability to be patient and communicate are higher up the list than your portfolio of coding majesty or IQ.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#217

Post by exikyut »

flukus wrote: post #184
kev009 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lot…

Could we crowd fund a campaign to buy a unix license for linux and end this silliness once and for all?

A very good question, but I'm not sure if it would be useful.

I don't know if this is true or not ("I think I'm right but don't quote me"), but I think that UNIX certification applies to the effective equivalent of "that bunch of files over there". Change the checksum and the certification doesn't apply anymore. Yay.

But it's not the end of the world. The people that want to buy UNIX licenses - Solaris, HP/UX, AIX, z/OS guys, etc - are those steeped in vendor lockin from legacy systems. The number of people still part of that tradition is decreasing; most new tech stacks are built on Linux, and its new mindset.

So, a UNIX cert for Linux would ultimately be 95% geek cred, 4.9% "oh hey, let's go this way" for those from the aforementioned groups who want familiarity, and 0.1% practical in terms of ROI.

Once the personal status quo of each individual in those groups shifts so that UNIX won't pay their bills anymore, those who wants to keep their jobs will switch.

NB. I know this comment is mildly flat in terms of only looking at this from one angle. I don't have any experience or knowledge to comment on the many other interpretations of the issues I've mentioned, replies are welcome to do so.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#218

Post by kstenerud »

Take this as a lesson in people handling. As a rule when dealing with business situations:

- Keep messages simple. Less information to process is better.

- If the response seems strange, start by assuming miscommunication and misunderstanding. Do not respond with more complicated information.

- When in doubt, say what they are expecting to hear and sort it out later when you talk voice or in person.

A more fruitful exchange would be:

Recruiter: We require having UNIX experience. If you have it could you update your resume and resend?

Candidate: Resending with UNIX experience written in.

Recruiter: Thanks! We'll be contacting you shortly.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#219

Post by wallabie »

This sounds so much like those ads that look for "8 years of Swift development experience" despite the fact that Swift only came out 3 or 4 years ago. The fact that a recruiter can 'recruit' for a company like Facebook without having enough knowledge in the area that they're recruiting for is not only embarassing for FB but for the recruiting profession in general.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#220

Post by solatic »

foo101 wrote: post #163
derenrich wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, honestly I would've been similarly frustrated. The recruiter seems like they are being needlessly bureaucratic. Either they are familiar with Unix and thus should know that Unix-like is synonymous with Unix nowadays or they aren't and they should take your word. Maybe you were a little condescending but it happens and rejecting someone on the basis of this exchange seems mad to me. If FB doesn't reverse their dec…

Unix-like systems are not synonymous with Unix systems nowadays. * Solaris, HP-UX and AIX are Unix systems. * FreeBSD and Debian GNU/Linux are Unix-like systems but not Unix systems. When technology people like us are debating over this terminology, I think it makes sense to cut the recruiter some slack.

Do remember that we are talking about internships here.

If I have a task for an intern that requires some shell-scripting, and the intern already understands what it means to pipe commands, I put my hands together in silent thanks.

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