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The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

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Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#101
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, they have SEVEN distinct interviews? Meet/greet, general, tech assessment, recruiter, role, manager, senior leader? Holy shit. Wow. That’s insane. What a waste of everybody’s time.

At my current job, I did about the same number of interviews. Not counting an initial 15 minute screening call, I had a 30 minute phone call with two of the engineers on the team, a technical panel interview, and 3 exec interviews. So that's six interviews. I would be working with all of these people directly and I wanted to avoid "broken stair" coworkers I have had in the past. While I found this valuable, I didn't…

If you interviewed 3 executives, I’m assuming your senior leadership yourself. Or, at an actual start-up where the execs are still doing IC tasks. I can see the need for a higher bar in either case.

But for an average developer at an average company? That just sounds insane to me.

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#102
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Canonical founder was recently bemoaning the lack of available talent limiting the growth of the company. The issue really seems to be a ridiculous hiring process limiting the available talent pool and therefore limiting company growth.

I’ve seen quite a few suggest that the “labor shortage” of this past year isn’t actually a shortage, but just people believing they’re worth more. Especially in the tech community; people are just more selective about how much BS they put up with in hiring.

Anytime you hear "labor shortage", remember there is an employer going, "I want someone else to do this for me, but not for that much".

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#103
post #67

I'm surprised no one else has brought up Oxide's process, which has a similar writing-heavy stage as part of the application. See https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xtofg-fMQfZoq8Y3oSAKjEgD... for what they ask for. It's not quite as much as Canonical, but it's still a _lot_ of writing to go through just to apply for a position. I considered applying there during my last job search but I just wasn't enthused about i…

There's merit to the idea of having a writing sample from a candidate. If you want to know that a candidate can communicate effectively, you'll want to both hear them talk and read their writing. That said, I'm not sure whether or not these interview processes were set up with that in mind. If they were, they should also consider that writing can take a long time to produce and so the writing sample should be adjuste…

IME, writing something short and well is significantly harder than writing something long and well.

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A quality response to this sort of questionnaire would take at least an hour Maybe I'm an outlier, but it would take me way longer than that. At least a couple hours.

Honestly, it would take me a few hours too. I just wanted to undercount the projected time, in the event there were “I could do this in X minutes” responses. But yes, it would take me a few hours to do this too.

But then, how many job applications do you do? Maybe Canonical wants to filter out people that apply to hundreds of firms, and only consider those for whom Canonical is on the short list - and a list short enough that a few hours spent on those questions is not a big deal.

(Side note: it's kind of a Proof of Work...)

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#105
post #36

I noticed this last year when I applied for a software engineering job. For that position, the process is: - Initial screening (done) - Personal essay (this stage) - Standardized aptitude and personality tests - Meet and greet with an engineer - General interview(s) - Recruitment screen - Technical assessment - Role-specific interview(s) - Hiring manager interview - Senior leadership interview I highly doubt the init…

> Standardized aptitude and personality tests These are almost always extremely discriminatory when it comes to neurodiverse populations and I'm saddened that Canonical uses the equivalent of phrenology in its hiring process. sigh

> the equivalent of phrenology

I mean, there are plenty of bad tests out there (Meyers Briggs etc.), but good aptitude and personality tests might well be the best (objective, reliable, valid...) tests of aptitude and personality there are, no?

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#107
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? How relevant is your high school experience to your skillset today?

That isn't what I was saying at all. I said "similar to".

I have two complaints there. One is the free internship thing. The second is the focus on one's high school career in the essay section. Two yellow flags makes red, IMO.

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#108
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The day old is fully removed or stops working is the day I stop using reddit entirely. I know it's not the same but there's always https://teddit.net

Reddit looks pretty nice. I am curious- how do they get so much RDT API quota?

*Teddit

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#109
post #58
post #6

Sounds like their application process works. If someone is unwilling to fill out a basic questionnaire they are probably aren't a good candidate. The questions seem reasonable and they aren't asking for you to write a book for each one.

According to their CEO last month, their biggest challenge as a company is that they can't hire enough.

That is just about every company right now.

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#110
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, it would take me a few hours too. I just wanted to undercount the projected time, in the event there were “I could do this in X minutes” responses. But yes, it would take me a few hours to do this too.

But then, how many job applications do you do? Maybe Canonical wants to filter out people that apply to hundreds of firms, and only consider those for whom Canonical is on the short list - and a list short enough that a few hours spent on those questions is not a big deal. (Side note: it's kind of a Proof of Work...)

Not many. But before I embark on this sort of exercise, I damn well better have a salary range.
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