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Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

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Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#451

Post by jsjohnst »

droithomme wrote: post #445
ricardobeat wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the most cringy part - in the second iteration you'll note he did list UNIX as a skill, but then the recruiter went on about the lack of Linux experience (which he had just replaced)! Like playing whack-a-mole.

Yeah, that's the part that gave the game away when the recruiter did the whack-a-mole move. The recruiter did in fact know exactly what the difference was and he was obstructing the candidate. Who knows why, maybe he feels there are too many asians working at Facebook so he takes it upon himself to play games with applicants who have asian names so they are more likely to give up, but he can still have plausible deni…

> Who knows why, maybe he feels there are too many asians working at Facebook so he takes it upon himself to play games with applicants who have asian names

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence/stupidity"

Hanlon's Razor definitely applies to your theory!

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#452

Post by loeg »

fiddlerwoaroof wrote: post #270
loeg wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually you're wrong about Linux not being included in the certified set. Inspur K-UX, a Linux distro based on RHEL, is a certified UNIX system. As is EulerOS. Interestingly, MacOS is included in the certified UNIX list. Most of its userspace and a lot of its kernel interfaces come from FreeBSD. So in a way, some of FreeBSD is a certified Unix. Curiously enough, Oracle just killed Solaris. AIX is old. Is it dead? La…

Solaris lives on in illumos and derivatives like Joyent's (now a subsidiary of Samsung) SmatOS. Sure these aren't "Solaris", but it would be a shame if the publicity around Oracle's decision were to kill these projects as well.

Of course Oracle can't kill illumos, et al. But these open source projects are not what SCO has licensed as "real UNIX." They are Unix-alikes.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#453

Post by dymk »

pmlnr wrote: post #354
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…

Do not bend. Keep educating people. You done right. If we all give in, the result is 2017: ignorant, arrogant recruiters, not willing to look into what they _should_ understand, since they are looking for speciality positions; and ignorant, arrogant people all around, not willing to learn anything.

> Do not bend

This kind of advice is what will keep him from being an engineer that others want to work with, and from passing the trivial HR screens that big companies have immediately before talking with an engineer.

Soft skills and an ability to explain without condescension are much more important for educating others, rather than doubling down and being pedantic to someone who obviously isn't getting it.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#454

Post by dymk »

spacelizard wrote: post #436
AJRF wrote: post #417

Its weird to see people encourage the guy for this. If you can't bite your tongue in order deal with someone who is clearly not getting it, what else are you going to slam the brakes on progress for? It was in your best interest to just let it go, then clarify in the follow up interview or when it came to a technically adept person. I get the arguments that the HR recruiter was a bit off a buffoon, but at the abstrac…

On the contrary, this was an obvious power play by the recruiter to get the candidate to agree and submit to whatever arbitrary KPI has been passed down by the HR manager, regardless of whether or not it's meaningful. I would not take anything away from this other than that the candidate was probably not a good fit for the position anyway, as they don't seem to gel well with the BS corporate politics. Some do, some d…

> On the contrary, this was an obvious power play by the recruiter

This may seem obvious to you, but it's not to me. Why are you assuming malice on the part of the recruiter?

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#455

Post by forgottenpass »

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…

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 online was inappropriate as well.

Nah. Relax. It was gauche, but not that bad. The responses you get are largely driven by the fact you got egg on the face of a tech Golden Boy. Also, social norms say you shouldn't air private conversations that expose the failings of a (potential, current, or former) employer.

Almost everyone will admit that tech hiring practices are an ongoing dumpster fire and comedy of errors, they just prefer a less dicey context and framing for that conversation.

You're new to the world of applying for jobs and how hiring works in professional contexts. I don't hold this against you. But this does lower my opinion of Facebook. Don't buy into the meme that programmers are dorks and therefore always carry 100% of fault for any social interaction that doesn't go magnificently.

See if your school has a career services office, they can give you a crash course in all the ceremony and fuss around building a resume and getting interviewed.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#456

Post by oculusthrift »

wutbrodo wrote: post #312
oculusthrift wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you're not autistic you just say "yes im an expert in unix" and move on your with your life. it isn't worth it to do anything else.

He may have assumed that at some point someone in the hiring pipeline would _not_ be an idiot (or in your words, "would be autistic") and may notice his false claim. Especially for a college student applying for an internship, it's a little much to expect him to know exactly where lying on your resume is appropriate. (At some point he said "I have experience in Linux and UNIX" and the moron on the other end still ref…

I think it's silly and demeaning to think of college students as being that naive. I was one very recently and believe it or not we aren't that way. Especially ones who study engineering at top schools like CMU.

Everyday I talk to someone who isn't informed about one subject or another. It should be a common skill for people to put their selves in the other person's shoes and explain it at their level. When a non-cs person asks me about what exactly my job is I don't start going into details about Hadoop and Spark etc, I talk at a level they could understand about data.

As far as the autism comment, it was a little offensive but I meant it in terms of ability to read the social situation, not cs knowledge.

I may be a little harsh here, because everyone makes mistakes, especially in college. And there is nothing wrong with that. I've done embarrassing things with recruiters too, believe me. I just want to make sure people realize it's a mistake and learn from it.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#457

Post by akhilcacharya »

sevagh wrote: post #330
akhilcacharya wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's definitely plausible! I met a guy who had gotten a PE intern offer from FB. He said he had an systems internship at a trading company where he did automation and and infrastructure.

I wouldn't know for certain but I'd think they'd be looking for experience with scripting languages and deployment systems as well.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#458

Post by throwaway76543 »

grecy wrote: post #402
smnscu wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, don't fucking apply to this kind of company. They have BILLIONS of dollars in the bank (let that sink in for a moment) and the technical recruiters are paid well anyway, there is absolutely no reason for them to not give at least a timid shit about the quality of the people who are the first line of interaction with potential employees. I interviewed at Google 3 times and I'm currently going through th…

I was also thinking along the same lines for unpaid internships. Companies have billions in the bank, make tens of billions profit each year, and have "staff" working who they don't pay a cent to. The fact there are no laws against that is evil.

Facebook interns are paid, and paid quite well.

It is, in fact, illegal to not pay an intern in the state of California if the intern performs beneficial work.

Your entire rant is predicated on untrue assumptions.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#459

Post by L_Rahman »

falsedan wrote: post #431
oneplane wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, since you asked... Your statement is a mismatch between the comment about the lossy filter, and the actual email conversation, which clearly shows the lossy filter in all its glory.

My statement is about condescendingly calling humans doing their job 'lossy filters', and challenging the deeply-ugly assumption that they should have bowed to the candidate's correctness. The recruiter wanted to advance the candidate through the pipeline; they told them exactly what they needed to do to proceed; the candidate didn't think it was necessary to modify their position to conform with the requirements, in…

We are all lossy filters because the world makes infinite demands on our time and attention and we have finite amounts of it give.

I didn't write this as an indictment of the recruiter.

How could I when I have no knowledge of their constraints, their past experiences or the incentives that guide their behavior? In all likelihood, they're behaving in a way that's perfectly consistent with their environment.

What I can do is form a reasonable guess of what the desired outcome is - the recruiter wants to move a qualified candidate into the applicant pool, the applicant wants a shot at interviewing, and Facebook wants someone who has experience in working with UNIX or UNIX-like systems.

Structuring the response so that everyone gets the outcome they want, as an acknowledgment of the constraints, and not as a criticism of the recruiter makes everybody win.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#460

Post by grecy »

throwaway76543 wrote: post #458
grecy wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also thinking along the same lines for unpaid internships. Companies have billions in the bank, make tens of billions profit each year, and have "staff" working who they don't pay a cent to. The fact there are no laws against that is evil.

Facebook interns are paid, and paid quite well. It is, in fact, illegal to not pay an intern in the state of California if the intern performs beneficial work. Your entire rant is predicated on untrue assumptions.

Why do I continually hear the term "unpaid intern".

I believe there is more to the US than just California, right?

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