No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback • Hacker News Board

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#431

Post by baron816 » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 6:46 AM UTC

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: post #284

baron816 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once left a bad review on Glassdoor after a truly awful interview experience for a startup. The next day they called me up and threatened legal action. Edit: Just for context on the interview—they had me do a take home assignment in Django, which I had never worked in. Was desperate, so I learned Django and completed it in a week. Went onsite and their whole office was a one tiny, dated swelteringly hot room. The i…

What happened next?

A day after I wrote the review, they tried to email me and offer me the job. I was pretty desperate, but not THAT desperate knowing they had only done so because of the review. So I replied, saying I wasn’t interested. The day after that is when the CEO called me to threaten me. They probably couldn’t have done much to me, but still nothing for me to gain from the situation, so I took it down and moved on with my life.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#432

Post by thecatspaw » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 6:54 AM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #415

Iv wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every word you speak, especially to the youth, is a seed. Handle them like they were going to land on fertile ground.

Is this, "grind them up so they won't be competing with you for sunlight" or "don't shit on them, it will only help them grow stronger"?

its "watch out which seeds you throw their way"

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#433

Post by anaphor » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 6:56 AM UTC

Aeolun wrote: post #186

To be honest, reading all the interviewing.io feedback makes it clear that I would never want to use it. It’s literally leetcode with interviews. I don’t think I could do anything with the feedback if it was something like: > ‘you didn’t say that the alghorithm you were using here was using the bayesian-green notation, and you should have used n+1 instead of n++’

I can't believe nobody else pointed this out. And the 2-sum algorithm that one of the responses is clearly mentioning is something you would only know if you had seen the problem before, and it isn't something you would ever use unless you were writing some sort of obscure discrete optimization code.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#434

Post by kamaal » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 7:00 AM UTC

jrandm wrote: post #426

kamaal wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like you have a XY problem. You want people who know Python's standard library, but you think having them implement grep is the way to go about it. This is the classic XY problem. http://xyproblem.info/ If your requirements are to hire some one that can write functional test cases against the Python's standard library. Just ask them to do that. It's as simple as that.

If someone says write a grep-like thing in Python so we can see how you write something like that in Python and someone else submits anything in Perl that's not an XY problem. It's a basic failure to meet clear requirements.

If some one wrote grep in Perl, and they are considered incapable of writing the same in Python. I have now doubts on the evaluation capabilities of the hiring committee.

Software world is huge. You will have learn, forget, relearn and learn new things all the time. You don't change programmers every time a new requirement on a new technology comes along. Which is why if some can write grep in Perl, they can also with a little yak shaving write grep in Python as well. Then in Golang, Java etc. And if some one wrote grep in Scheme, they can also write it in Clojure, or Common Lisp.

Programming languages of a particular style(C, Lisp based, ML family etc) don't change much in semantic features in their categories.

The point of a take home project is to see if a person can get things done.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#435

Post by safety-third » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 7:00 AM UTC

hvidgaard wrote: post #424

safety-third wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't find the article because its hidden behind Google's previously admitted coin flip, brain teasers. An interview only has one question to answer: How long will it take this person to do what I need? Everything after that is you trying to sell the company to the candidate. After you do the interviews, you pick the person who needs the least ramp time. Quietly staring at a person writing on a whiteboard while tak…

I simply have to disagree. The amount of unqualified candidates that have a decent CV and are reasonable to talk to, but completely unable to correctly write a while loop is too damn high. That is what my whiteboard questions filter out. They're super easy stuff such as "I give you as input a list of integers, return the index of the first consecutive pair of numbers that when added is 42 - you can use any language o…

I would not be shocked. I meant it when I said to weed out the charlatans. I certainly do some basic FizzBuzz. I do it over the phone and in-person because sometimes they get a friend to do the phone interview. There is a giant difference between this and the current whiteboard interview fad.

I don't think false negatives are good. How many positions go unfilled for months and years? A lot. At a larger company, it won't take long before they remove the position entirely. They might not be wrong to do so either. Eventually your bus factor goes to zero, and whole teams go away. I have never seen anything beyond FizzBuzz, experience, and conversations be predictive for actual work. Even these only weed out the most outrageous candidates.

I work in the chemical engineering industry. They sort resumes, ask questions, and call references. They don't ask them to do sophomore level process energy and mass balance with multiple components and vapor-liquid equilibria on a whiteboard. Most aren't Professional Engineers either. Junior engineers used to be a crap shoot. Now there are so many graduates compared to junior positions that most companies will only hire people that interned with them.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#436

Post by kstrauser » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 7:06 AM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #418

kstrauser wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in the parent case X might have been "count the unique lines in a file", Y might have been Python because they were interviewing for a Python job, and Z might have been "cat | sort | uniq". What the interviewer wants to know in this example is whether the author understands Python and file IO and data structures. Sure, you'd use the Unix pipeline in a production setting because it's better tested and faster. Bu…

Seems like you have a XY problem. You want people who know Python's standard library, but you think having them implement grep is the way to go about it. This is the classic XY problem. http://xyproblem.info/ If your requirements are to hire some one that can write functional test cases against the Python's standard library. Just ask them to do that. It's as simple as that.

I mean, we're probably not going to ask someone to solve a brand new problem as part of a take-home project. We're intentionally not trying to be tricky, but to cover well-known territory so there's plenty of prior art and examples to fall back on. As another case, if you were hiring as a frontend dev, we might ask you to write a simple interactive web page using vanilla JavaScript and not jquery or such. It's awesome that you know React! Great, you'll fit right in! But first, can you use the stuff built into the browser without loading an extra library? Or put another way, are you capable of extending web frameworks if the need arises and not just using them?

You're kind of right about it being the XY problem, except it's where the misdirected candidate is trying to solve "how do I do thing X" when the real problem is "write a simple program in Y so we can know if you know Y". We aim to be very explicit about the project's requirements so that none of this is a surprise afterward.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#437

Post by SanderMak » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 7:06 AM UTC

At my current company we do a full Pull Request review of the take-home assignment. After the interview, the review comments are shared with the candidate. We're based in Europe, so that might make a difference in terms of expectations around litigation.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#438

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 7:10 AM UTC

hvidgaard wrote: post #417

iagooar wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany every single lawyer or HR responsible would tell you not to send any reason at all, just a generic response. This has to do with how law is structured here: giving feedback gives an attack surface to candidates that could sue you for the feedback you gave (because they do not agree with it). So this is it, companies do not do this because they're evil, they do this because nobody wants legal consequences.

I don't understand this. If I select a candidate of three to offer a job, then as long as I'm not discriminating the others for things such as sexuality, gender, age, ect. then the person we feel is the best fit is just that. What we believe is the best candidate - no amount of arguing in a court is going to change that.

Germany is not as egalitarian as the US when it comes to preventing discrimination for job applicants.

Normally, in Germany, in your resume you should have a photo and specify your birthday/age and nationality, especially important when applying at traditional engineering companies. This opens you up for a lot of silent discrimination.

So, if they reject you for being the wrong age, nationality or skin color (yes that happens, a former German manager explicitly told HR he doesn't want Indian candidates on his team) or for speaking German with a strange accent, they definitely don't want this information getting back to you as you can sue them for that so the only feedback you're gonna get is the legally safe copy-paste "unfortunately, we're looking for a candidate that better suits our needs".

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#439

Post by hvidgaard » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 7:14 AM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #438

hvidgaard wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. If I select a candidate of three to offer a job, then as long as I'm not discriminating the others for things such as sexuality, gender, age, ect. then the person we feel is the best fit is just that. What we believe is the best candidate - no amount of arguing in a court is going to change that.

Germany is not as egalitarian as the US when it comes to preventing discrimination for job applicants. Normally, in Germany, in your resume you should have a photo and specify your birthday/age and nationality, especially important when applying at traditional engineering companies. This opens you up for a lot of silent discrimination. So, if they reject you for being the wrong age, nationality or skin color (yes tha…

I'm not from the US, but Denmark and we basically have the same laws. You don't tell them you don't want them because they're Indian, that shouldn't be a factor anyway, but because they're not the best fit due to skill/social/experience/whatever legally matters.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#440

Post by hvidgaard » Fri, Feb 07, 2020, 7:17 AM UTC

safety-third wrote: post #435

hvidgaard wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply have to disagree. The amount of unqualified candidates that have a decent CV and are reasonable to talk to, but completely unable to correctly write a while loop is too damn high. That is what my whiteboard questions filter out. They're super easy stuff such as "I give you as input a list of integers, return the index of the first consecutive pair of numbers that when added is 42 - you can use any language o…

I would not be shocked. I meant it when I said to weed out the charlatans. I certainly do some basic FizzBuzz. I do it over the phone and in-person because sometimes they get a friend to do the phone interview. There is a giant difference between this and the current whiteboard interview fad. I don't think false negatives are good. How many positions go unfilled for months and years? A lot. At a larger company, it wo…

> I don't think false negatives are good. How many positions go unfilled for months and years? A lot. At a larger company, it won't take long before they remove the position entirely. They might not be wrong to do so either. Eventually your bus factor goes to zero, and whole teams go away.

I'd rather that happen, than hire unqualified people. Hire and then fire someone is damn expensive - months of salary and a lot of hours wasted. If you don't get them out of the door fast enough, the damage they can do with incompetency is even greater.