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

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

#461

Post by throwaway070220 »

oceanghost wrote: post #61
rchaud wrote: post #11

The hiring process is a black box for a reason. The HR department's role is to protect the company first, not the employees, and certainly not prospective employees. If feedback can be interpreted as being discriminatory, or reflective of bad company culture in general, well, word gets around. For much of the time, the reason people don't get the job is that there was someone marginally more qualified/attractive/like…

This. I have done hundreds of interviews, and I used to do a very easy, basic comp sci test. The last question I would ask was, "Tell me about a book, cd or movie that you've read/listened to/watched that was interesting or excited you." The point was to see if the person was engaging with the universe, not to judge their taste or anything else. You'd be surprised how many people get tripped up by this. The worst ans…

Throwaway here, for obvious reasons, but I have to ask: is this a pisstake? I've read this comment about half a dozen times over the past 12 hours or so and I just can't get over it.

Did you seriously grade whether people were "engaging with the universe" (WTF?) based on what their favourite book/CD/movie is and how much they enjoyed it?

Did you seriously dock points from a candidate who obviously didn't care about CDs, movies or books - because he couldn't remember the name of the last record he bought?

Has the thought ever crossed your mind that maybe he engaged with the world in other ways? Perhaps he would hike, or take his kids to soccer, or even play pool and darts on the pub on a Friday. Did you even bother to ask before dismissing this guy as some sort of sub-human degenerate?

Did you actually go home that night and Google Free Bird to see whether or not it was, in fact, an album, and felt a smug sense of superiority when you found out it was actually a longer-than-average single?

More importantly, did you seriously try to convince HR to hire a candidate who was, by your own admission, "not the strongest", because he had "fantastic enthusiasm for literature" and was "quite intelligent" (I'm guessing you based this assertion off of the fact that he read the poetry of Charles Bukowski, and therefore must, like you, be an intellectual).

Mate, I've got some news for you: the reason HR wanted you to stop asking that question most likely had nothing do with the possibility of a religious discrimination case - they either wanted you to stop basing your hiring decisions on batshit insane notions, or stop you making hiring decisions altogether.

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

#462

Post by dcow »

randomdude402 wrote: post #264
reading-at-work wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree that it's an automatic red flag. 8 hours? Yeah that's too long. But I would rather do a 2 hour take-home project than a 2 hour whiteboard coding interview. Edit to add: as far as getting paid, nobody expects to get paid for an onsite interview so I wouldn't expect to get paid for a take home project either. As long as it takes the same amount of time that the coding portion of an onsite interview reasonabl…

I totally agree. People say that a take home project is terrible, but most people I talk to who aren't recent graduates also dread live coding algorithms that will never be used on the job. The place I'm at now asked me if I wanted to come in and code as round one of interviews or code up a little something on my own time for a couple engineers to review. For me, it was a no brainier to code at my comfy desk at home…

Yep! If it’s a question about respect as so many people seem to portray it, then the easy solution is to offer candidates a choice. But personally, I will always prefer working at my pace on my time in my style and having people judge the output once I deem it ready. If I really need/want the job I’ll make the time. What is an extra few hours relative to the new position, team, etc., that you're aiming for? For me it feels infinitely worse to not quite get through a difficult algorithmic problem on a whiteboard only to have the solution obviously materialize during later reflection when you have a clear headspace, and to know you were judged solely on that, than to give it a fair shot on your terms and be passed on because your style/work is not what they're interested in. I'd rather be somewhere that values my actual output.

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

#463

Post by jmnicolas »

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"?

Upvoted for a good laugh !

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

#464

Post by jakobegger »

iagooar wrote: post #395
vector_spaces wrote: post #246

I'm so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of "There's nothing in it for the company but risk". I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". I asked them for a couple quick points on what I could have done better. I had ze…

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.

> In Germany every single lawyer or HR responsible would tell you not to send any reason at all

I can't imagine that this makes any sense.

Let's say you give every interviewee feedback:

- 90% of candidates will be grateful

- 10% of candidates will not like the feedback and start to argue (at this point ignoring emails might make sense to avoid wasting time)

- 0.01% of candidates will actually sue you over it

The lawsuit will probably go nowhere, and in the worst case cost €10.000 in legal fees.

But all the good will from the other people must be worth something! Maybe one of all those people who you gave good feedback refers a friend, and they apply to your company. If you hire that person, you just saved 10.000€ that you don't have to pay a recruiter!

So either all these lawyers are giving bad advise, or maybe my numbers are wrong? I've never heard of a lawsuit where a candidate sued a company as a consequence of interview feedback that they got, so I assume that must be a very rare occurrence.

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

#465

Post by tristanperry »

kamaal wrote: post #335
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're dissecting it at that close a level, it's probably not a company you'd want to work for anyway. At least how I judge take home tests (for a simple backend CRUD app spec), I'm definitely not disqualifying based on surface level details like that. I don't even bother running it on my machine most of the time. What I'm looking for that it doesn't have obvious SQL injections (I've seen this a depressing number…

There are plenty of things in what you wrote. For example, My assignment was to build a command line app. The spec given said nothing about how bad inputs should be handled. How should they be handled? No Op? Throw exception? Friendly error messages? How? Note how the evaluation changes from one person to other, you could be someone who expects an exception to be printed, I could be someone who expects an exception t…

I'm obviously not rhinoceraptor, but a lot of what they said seems correct to me (speaking as someone who's interviewed others a lot, but never used at-home code assignments as part of the process).

_Some form_ of error handling and validation should be demonstrated, because that's a standard part of any program.

Equally SQL injection is _always_ important. That's not a 'hidden' judgement criteria. It's a fundamental security issue that should be protected against.

Again, I'm not rhinoceraptor, but the gist of their post seems correct. If I was reviewing some code and it had no error handling, no validation, lots of god classes and methods and was susceptible to the most common form of web-based security flaw, that is probably a sign that the candidate isn't suitable for the position.

Good, constructive feedback should then be provided.

>> Note how the evaluation changes from one person to other, you could be someone who expects an exception to be printed, I could be someone who expects an exception to be the wrong way, and would rather prefer a No Op.

I agree completely. Any good interviewer/code reviewer should be fine with someone using exceptions even if they prefer no ops.

If an interviewer did complain loads about that (without specifying how bad input should be handled), they are a bad interviewer.

>> The candidate could implement your spec 100% and yet get rejected.

But adding "The application should not be simple to hack" probably isn't something a company should need to add to the spec?

>> In 24 hours? What are you hiring for really? And why that kind of tearing hurry?

24 hours? really? Yes I understand your frustration, that's no-where near enough (assuming you mean a company asks for the solution back the day after requesting it).

If it was me, I'd assume that such a company doesn't value work-life balance and pass on them :)

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

#466

Post by dkersten »

martius wrote: post #46

I wonder if one has ever been successful in using the data access and protection laws (such as GDPR) to request access to his file and interview feedback.

I’m not sure if it’s ever been tested, but I’ve been told that the company I work for does require notes and such to be recorded in a way to make this possible and the company lawyers have said that he’s a candidate can do GDPR data requests to get their interview data and that it must be honoured. So it’s my understanding, at least if it’s a company in the EU, that they just legally comply.

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

#467

Post by crististm »

jakobegger wrote: post #464
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.

> In Germany every single lawyer or HR responsible would tell you not to send any reason at all I can't imagine that this makes any sense. Let's say you give every interviewee feedback: - 90% of candidates will be grateful - 10% of candidates will not like the feedback and start to argue (at this point ignoring emails might make sense to avoid wasting time) - 0.01% of candidates will actually sue you over it The laws…

where did you get those figures?

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

#468

Post by fhars »

kamaal wrote: post #324
vector_spaces wrote: post #246

I'm so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of "There's nothing in it for the company but risk". I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". I asked them for a couple quick points on what I could have done better. I had ze…

>>I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". Looks like this is a common pattern with take home projects. I faced a very similar problem a few weeks back. Though they called me for the interview. The general approach is to take some ones overn…

They may have failed you for a useless use of cat http://porkmail.org/era/unix/award.html#uucaletter

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

#469

Post by desas »

jakobegger wrote: post #464
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.

> In Germany every single lawyer or HR responsible would tell you not to send any reason at all I can't imagine that this makes any sense. Let's say you give every interviewee feedback: - 90% of candidates will be grateful - 10% of candidates will not like the feedback and start to argue (at this point ignoring emails might make sense to avoid wasting time) - 0.01% of candidates will actually sue you over it The laws…

The lawyers are correctly suggesting how to minimise legal risk, it's up to HR and the company if they feel like the risk is worth it.

The lawyer isn't likely to get upside of giving feedback, they will likely get the downside of the company gets involved in legal stuff.

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

#470

Post by fhars »

ErikAugust wrote: post #410
bagacrap wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

our style guide dictates ++bulletsDodged;

Well, bulletsDodged++ and ++bulletsDodged mean different things in most languages. It ain't just a matter of style. :)

Like C++ gives you the current value of C and then increments it for some future use.
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