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Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

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Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#321

Post by avip »

pwdisswordfish wrote: post #294
L_Rahman wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the recruiter had a list of keywords, received a large volume of inbound resumes and filtered for == 'UNIX' and dumped everything else To be fair, I wouldn't expect this kind of 'recruiting by grep' to happen at Facebook of all places either.

Can I use your user to upvote all my comments?

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#322

Post by lsmarigo »

This bit in particular I think did you in:

Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, most people do not have experience with a true UNIX OS, and I would find it hard to believe that such outdated technologies are underpinning Facebook's advanced innovations.

These two sentences could easily be read as

"Hey idiot, no one since 70's era programmers have that experience, also I think you're wrong about this requirement because I know better.

Dripping with condescension, but you're young and smart so understandable that ego can swell. You've down tremendous self-awareness in your post here though, clearly have a bright future!

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#323

Post by wutbrodo »

wallabie wrote: post #219

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.

> is not only embarassing for FB but for the recruiting profession in general.

I don't think the profession has any room to be embarrassed:it seems like a check your dignity at the door type deal. I've dealt with plenty of recruiters as an applicant, an employee being hounded for referrals, and even in just social situations, and I can't think of a single positive thing to say about them.

I'm usually not comfortable with such blanket statements, but it's literally 100% of the ones I've interacted with. I've yet to meet one that knows anything about the jobs they're hiring for, or one that doesn't give you the dirty feeling of being used after a conversation in any capacity with them. The worst was meeting them in social situations when they'd hear I worked for Google: 90% of the time they'd immediately get a predatory gleam in their eye and the tenor of their interactions with me would immediately shift. It was sickeningly transparent.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#324

Post by fizwhiz »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #230
autotune wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook reaches out to me every few months and don't have a degree. I don't have the time or patience to study for their fresh-out-of-cs-grad style interview process though so only go with companies that test for what actually happens on the job vs in a text book, of which there are plenty.

You can't beat the RSUs

(cough) Google (cough)

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#325

Post by efreak »

foota wrote: post #315
feelin_googley wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you are soliciting feedback, I think you can do better than Facebook. You have taken the time at university to learn about the origins of "UNIX" and about portability, but it seems clear to me you do not need to know about these things for this Facebook internship. If you want this knowledge to be acknowledged and valued, if you want to put it into practice, then perhaps Facebook is not the proper place for thi…

"feelin_googley" wouldn't have any motive for encouraging people to work somewhere else, could they? :P (I jest)

Given what (admittedly little) I know about UNIX and the companies/software, I'd think Apple (Darwin) would be a better fit?

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#326

Post by Kluny »

arkadiytehgraet wrote: post #314

I don't understand why you felt necessary to leave out the recruiter name. I personally would really like to know this person and try to avoid her/him by all means possible, saving me (and all the others, who will know him) a ton of time and consequently punishing this recruiter for his incompetence and inability to learn the actual thing he is recruiting for. We (developers) want the recruiting, interviewing and hir…

Doxxing/outing people here is probably against site rules, and if it's not, it's still unprofessional and likely to reflect just as badly on the him as on the recruiter. The recruiter can say to his boss, "shit, I didn't have enough coffee that day!" and be forgiven; Stan won't get the same forgiveness.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#327

Post by wutbrodo »

autotune wrote: post #185
akhilcacharya wrote: post #148

I never went to a elite enough school to be reached out to by Facebook recruiters so maybe there's something I'm missing but I genuinely wonder why someone would be this condescending towards the people helping you get a job.

Facebook reaches out to me every few months and don't have a degree. I don't have the time or patience to study for their fresh-out-of-cs-grad style interview process though so only go with companies that test for what actually happens on the job vs in a text book, of which there are plenty.

Honestly, my best guess for why this kind of interview is used is that it's just an intelligence test. It's worked extremely well for me: I'm very upfront about the fact that I don't expect them to _know_ anything (it would probably be tough for me to do something as simple as Dijkstra's on a whiteboard under time pressure), but that I want to see how they think.

I recently had a guy with an incredibly impressive resume and a couple decades of experience, and I gave him the same interview. He clearly thought he did badly since he couldn't go through the white board coding as smoothly as a recent cs grad would, but in my book he got a 9/10, because he was obviously good at clearly thinking about creative problem solving.

Now I can't speak to whether large companies universally treat these interviews the way I do, but as a sample of one, when I conducted interviews for Google I certainly did.

You shouldn't let your assumptions about the interview process color your decisions so heavily.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#329

Post by amrrs »

jarsin wrote: post #239
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…

How do we know the recruiter is not a chat bot?

>How do we know the recruiter is not a chat bot?

'Thanks for the tutorial' I don't think any chat bot would read the entire thing and maybe sarcastically summarize it as Tutorial

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#330

Post by sevagh »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #162
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.

Facebook hires (or at minimum, interviews) hundreds of PE's a year, there's no way this sort of miscommunication isn't sorted out in the average case. I might be wrong, but as far as I know PE's are recruited to have SysAdmin expertise as well. It's clear that the resume didn't reflect that as well as it should if this was even being asked.

You're right about the full-time PE role but this is an intern role - how much production fire-extinguishing/sysadmin experience could they expect a student to have?
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