Correct me if I misunderstood.
When developers get rejected by a company after an interview process, he can sue the company?
No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
471–480 of 646 posts
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#472Earlier 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…
Well, I have no trouble giving feedback these days because life's too short not to, but that isn't even an accurate description of the problem.
A prospective job seeker goes on Glassdoor. 100 companies. 99 with only positive and neutral reviews, maybe some negative saying "rejected without feedback". 1 with a rant about how they're disrespectful dicks who are just assholes. "It wasn't the feedback. They weren't even correct and they just told me I wasn't up to their so-called 'standards'. Completely rude in their email correspondence.".
Go on, you read that, you have 99 other places to apply to. What do you actually do?
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#473Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
I made them up.
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#474Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say: they’re guesses, feel free to post better ones. Especially if it changes the conclusion.
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#475I'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.
While working at Adobe, an executive launched the "Red Box" innovation program (that eventually became https://kickbox.org/). The program itself is interesting, but what was MORE interesting is that he was able to pull it off - the whole thing is a legal minefield of epic proportions (1). Normally, if you go to the legal department and ask "can I do this", nobody in their right mind will answer "yes, but"... you'll get an immediate "no way, get out of here, you're crazy".
The trick is to ask legal "I'm doing this, how can I minimize our legal exposure". Not to ask "can we do this". The second question will invariably get you a "no" (if you thought to ask, there must be _some_ risk). The first question will get a lot of grumbling, but if you're in a high-enough position, will eventually lead to useful advice.
(1) The basic idea is that in the early stages, you need to prove traction/market interest for your idea. As such, it needs to show no signs that it's backed by Adobe - it's trivially easy to get a BizzFeudNews article about "Adobe launches ShitDraw Pro" or whatnot; it's very easy to get thousands of people curious & signing up. All this is much harder when you're a John Doe, and don't lean on the brand recognition, but on the intrinsic value of your idea/product. However, this all means is that by design in the early stages you will have company employees, paying with company money, to "launch" services & get people to subscribe while hiding the true entity behind those services. No nefarious motivation behind it, but surely you can see the potential legal challenges.
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#476Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
> 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.
A good lawyer should also tell you how big the risk is that you are avoiding, otherwise their advise is worthless.
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#477Interestingly the only time I've had any meaningful feedback is when I've gone thru an agency and the feedback was given to me post interview by the recruiter.
The feedback was fair and accurate and extremely unlikely to be made up by the recruiter given the content.
I suppose that at once removed they could be more willing to provide feedback as they can always claim that it was the recruiter
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#478Earlier 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'd take the whiteboard interview any day of the week. The instant feedback you get and ability to show how I think and attack a problem is, I believe, far more valuable.
Not to me as an interviewer it's not. All I know from that is that you interview well. I come away having no idea what you'd actually produce in a normal working environment. I have no idea about your ability to build anything. All I know is that you can whiteboard well. That's a valuable skill, sure, but it's a long way from the only one, and can be learned pretty quickly with a supportive team.
Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#479Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally agree. I can’t imagine many people enjoy studying for leetcode type interviews, either, unless they are fresh out of a CS program and already practiced with that stuff.
Do people actually accept such interviews? That seems quite disrespectful to me, tbh. > Oh you've been working in a relevant field for 10 years? Here take this written test first, so we can check how well you can memorize hundreds of random irrelevant algorithms... I'd walk out, unless it was maybe some simpler algorithm that you can actually figure out yourself by thinking for a few minutes.
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Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback
#480Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see this a lot but it seems fairly naive to expect. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with refusing to do them, but to get paid? Has anyone in the history of the world been paid for an interview take home project? Curious how it was set up and what the rate was. Did you have to file taxes? Was it 1099?
I’ve done a trial project which was after an initial (much shorter) code test which was non paid. The trial earned me a couple grand and I got a 1099 alongside my w2 at the end of the years since I was hired full time.
How long was the trial ? can you do it while being employed elsewhere? it could be forbidden by contract to be employed in two places, and you could simply don't have the time for a full time, short, project