Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 187 posts

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

#151

Post by [deleted] »

markshuttle wrote: post #128
raverbashing wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I do want to work with people who are passionate about what we do. It makes for more interesting meetings, more interesting ideas, more interesting software. I love what I do, and I choose to set things up to maximise the chance that the people around me are equally excited about what impact we could have in the world. Life is short, the way I want to use it is to help people who contribute to open source - all…

[deleted]

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

#152

Post by [deleted] »

markshuttle wrote: post #134
corrral wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did, but they still seem to be clearly leading among commercial linux distros, and the software they push keeps getting adopted while Canonical's does not. To me this reads as strategic maneuvering by Red Hat within the Linux ecosystem, and they're doing great at it, from what I can tell. I write that as someone who finds them to have astonishingly poor taste and wishes they would knock it off, so I'm no Red Hat…

Snaps are pretty fantastic for IoT, which is where we started. We have some sucky things to fix for snaps on the desktop, such as astartup performance and permission handling when you want to go outside the sandbox, but we will fix those. If you really care about security and reliability across multiple Linux distros, then containerised software distribution is particularly challenging. But it's a fun technical chall…

[deleted]

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

#153

Post by nix23 »

hedora wrote: post #114
filmgirlcw wrote: post #76

When an almost identical interview questionnaire was posted a few months ago, I was hoping it was some sort of anomaly, or that Canonical would learn from the feedback and alter it. To see something so similar (for a different role) two months later makes it seem far more likely that they have one of the worst hiring pipeline processes I have ever seen. I’m good at these sorts of written/verbal assessments, and even…

Meh. I switched away from Ubuntu years ago, but it still makes me sad to see they're this broken of a company. I guess it explains the plummeting quality of the technical decisions they make.

Bring opensource to the people, but if we create something it has to be closed-source, and of questionable quality :)

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

#154

Post by raverbashing »

markshuttle wrote: post #128
raverbashing wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes, I do want to work with people who are passionate about what we do. It makes for more interesting meetings, more interesting ideas, more interesting software. I love what I do, and I choose to set things up to maximise the chance that the people around me are equally excited about what impact we could have in the world. Life is short, the way I want to use it is to help people who contribute to open source - all…

Thanks for answering this, and it definitely makes a lot of sense. Last paragraph is an interesting tidbit.

My original point was in the sense that passion can also cause a bit of tunnel vision. On the other hand I certainly can't say Canonical isn't innovative.

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

#155

Post by markshuttle »

raverbashing wrote: post #154
markshuttle wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I do want to work with people who are passionate about what we do. It makes for more interesting meetings, more interesting ideas, more interesting software. I love what I do, and I choose to set things up to maximise the chance that the people around me are equally excited about what impact we could have in the world. Life is short, the way I want to use it is to help people who contribute to open source - all…

Thanks for answering this, and it definitely makes a lot of sense. Last paragraph is an interesting tidbit. My original point was in the sense that passion can also cause a bit of tunnel vision. On the other hand I certainly can't say Canonical isn't innovative.

Then we are in agreement :)

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

#156

Post by markshuttle »

nix23 wrote: post #150
markshuttle wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not sure whether you are poorly informed or simply over-generalising.

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

#157

Post by Q3Jhenkh »

markshuttle wrote: post #129
_t4za wrote: 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…

To be clear - every application resume is screened by one of my colleagues or me, and every written interview is read by at least one of us, usually two. I personally screened 40,000 resumes last year, and hired 100+ people into the company. It has been very exciting to see how we are lifting our confidence and aspirations as a result.

Do you think it's normal for the CEO of a 800+ employees company to be reviewing resumes? It sounds like you don't trust the people you hired to do that job, and decided to do the job yourself...

Also, 40,000 resumes screened means an average of more than 100 resumes per day, every day of the year. Again, do you think it's normal for the CEO of a big company to be spending their time doing this?

And finally, don't you think the whole process is biased by the fact that you review the resumes? Let's say you personally approve a resume, don't you think the next people in the company down the line will be in a position of "Well, if the CEO is pushing for this candidate, I better not reject this candidate!". In which case, no matter the numbers of steps to filter out, it's a failure.

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

#158

Post by markshuttle »

dekadetera wrote: post #79

Would not recommend working at Canonical. The CTO is incompetent, and bullies people out of the company if they disagree with him. Suggesting that the hiring process might be discriminatory may get you told that you "must live on fairy island" from where you should "send a postcard" on a company-wide email chain.

That was a regrettable exchange, and contrition was expressed.

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

#159

Post by markshuttle »

the_only_law wrote: post #124
ww520 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 relevant for people don't do much after high school. Odd that Canonical would want such people.

We don't.

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

#160

Post by Q3Jhenkh »

markshuttle wrote: post #131
ww520 wrote: post #68

In return, I would ask them couple questions before going through the process. * What is the salary range? * Who was the person coming up with the interview questions? * What is that person's psychological profile? * What is that person's biggest achievement since high school? * Who are the people working in the team? * What are those people's psychological profile? * What're their education levels? * What're their w…

* What is the salary range? That of course will vary based on role, experience and location. We have hired people from 50+ countries which is remarkable for a company of 800. We tend not to hire in the most expensive locations because we get fantastic talent who live in less polluted, congested and occasionally self-important environments. We do pay competitively; we have hired people out of FAANGs, and we constantly…

> If you are asking about my psychometric profile, I scored 94 on the test we use.

So you're confirming that these "psychometric profiles" can be summarized as a number. Which means it's very easy to automatically apply a filter (reject any candidate with a score lower than 80), and even if there is no automated filter in place, you understand that people with access to this number will immediately be biased because of it? ("I have to review this candidate, but he fared 70 at the psychometric test, where every other candidate fared 90 or more...", and then obviously, during the interview, and after, the reviewer will be biased by that number.)

Post reply on HN