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

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141–150 of 187 posts

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

#141

Whenever I see an unusually obnoxious hiring process, I assume they're hoping that only desperate H1-B's apply, so they can be as abusive as they want to their workforce.

In our case, we are remote first across 50+ countries, so not really in the business of trying to import colleagues to one country or another.

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

#142

I posted this on the Reddit thread too but: Yeah I was through 4 or 5 “steps” before salary was discussed. And I ultimately think that’s why they didn’t move forward. Lesson learned. I wasted quite a bit of applying, doing an initial interview, a second interview with a teammate, doing weird aptitude tests that had me comparing images, a personality test, a coding test while a manager watched, and finally talking to…

We generally discuss salary after we've got through early-stage interviews. By then we have a sense of whether someone might be great at Canonical, and we're trying to figure out where they might fit best. If a candidate has higher salary expectations, then that narrows the list of roles we could consider them for. If you had interviews after the HR interview, then I guarantee you that comp was not the reason not to proceed.

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

#143
post #54

Though I think they should offer salary ranges (it's a legal requirement several places and is also just good practice), asking people to fill out essay questions seems...totally fine? If you want to build an engineering culture which has writing as a core skill, this seems like a really good filter.

Asking me how I did in high school when I graduated over a decade ago is just completely pointless. It is in no way representative of who I am now.

Who you are, and what you have done, are of course two very different things.

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

#144
post #73
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asking me how I did in high school when I graduated over a decade ago is just completely pointless. It is in no way representative of who I am now.

High school is relevant for people don't do much after high school. It shows the level of expectation they have for their candidates.

High school is also a very similar experience for people all over the world, which is not the case for university or work experience. If you are interested in understanding underlying interests, social dynamics and attitudes in a global pool of applications, then you are interested in things which are similar globally even if the connection might not be obvious.

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

#145
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.

To be clear, we are hiring lots of people every month now. We have 10,000-20,000 applications per month, it's just that we have a very high bar, and we are rigorous about it which takes time and effort.

Also, our process doesn't work as well for some roles and some locations, so we continue to evolve it.

But on balance, I am very happy with the growth of our teams and the calibre of our new colleagues.

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

#146
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn't seem a good indication for conscientiousness, integrity, and tact, frankly. Those things are for people. Companies can get fucked. They're a tool, and that's it. I don't practice tact toward a screwdriver. This application process is a joke, and warning other humans that this particular tool likes to waste their time is conscientiousness and integrity. Being kind to the people employed by them is commendabl…

I am sure that is the exact attitude they are looking to filter out. And to be honest I can't think of any employer that is going to want hire an applicant that thinks they can get fucked, or think that what they do is nothing more that work for a "tool".

Exactly. Also, a craftsman would treat their screwdriver with respect and care, too.

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

#147
post #66

These are such inane questions. > What was your first Linux distribution, and why did you start there? "Red Hat Linux, and I started there because I found a CD to install it in the cover of Red Hat Linux For Dummies at my local library." What does that say about my qualifications for the job? I can scarcely imagine. Clearly the questions are prompting for answers that will be evaluated in some vague bullshit way, so…

To be fair, in an in-person interview talking about something like this can be a nice way to settle into the interview and steady any nerves they might have - it's a question that doesn't have a wrong answer and doesn't (or shouldn't) have a "gotcha" attached that the candidate can be afraid of. It can spark a little conversation that could lead to other, more specific topics - but if it doesn't then no worries, it's…

Or, it allows for the conversation to start naturally from that point. "In your written interview, you observed that... can you expand on that?"

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

#149

These are such inane questions. > What was your first Linux distribution, and why did you start there? "Red Hat Linux, and I started there because I found a CD to install it in the cover of Red Hat Linux For Dummies at my local library." What does that say about my qualifications for the job? I can scarcely imagine. Clearly the questions are prompting for answers that will be evaluated in some vague bullshit way, so…

Well, as a start, it is a loaded question But I get it. They're trying to get people that "love linux". It's part of the cultural fit, sure Now think for a bit about hiring for people that "love something" and what does that tell about the professional environment of that company. Wouldn't it be better if they actually hired people that are good at the job? For all the talk about diversity and inclusion, this is a ve…

> Wouldn't it be better if they actually hired people that are good at the job?

The context of this whole conversation is an attempt at automating a process that doesn't take well to automation. This thread isn't about hiring people, it's about building a system that hires people.

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

#150
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is a huge difference from Red Hat, which contributes heavily and is very good at leveraging the resulting control of important projects to their advantage. It's why they keep out-maneuvering Canonical, as far as I can tell.

Red Hat is 20x the size of Canonical, by revenue. We more than hold our own.

Na it's not about the size, it is that every product canonical build's is closed-source and has "mostly" shitty quality...quite the opposite to redhat.
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