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WTF with high school questions?

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Re: WTF with high school questions?

#231
This certainly explains why Ubuntu includes bad design choice after bad design choice. You'd hope they'd learn from mistakes, but the people making mistakes over and over again were barely born the first time they were made.

I'll take Volkerding's memory of history at this point, and his interest in not fixing things that aren't broken. Turns out you don't need to hire all that many people with that approach, AND you end up with a better product.

Re: WTF with high school questions?

#232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canonical's model is to copy Debian testing, change the branding and apply some set of patches to it, then ship it. Every six months or so they pick up the new Debian testing and repeat. Debian is solid. Ubuntu's layer on top is a bit ymmv.

Question: Would I regret switching from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to Debian Bullseye 11.X (and would I have to use Debian 10 to use an LTS version [0])? How many creature comforts does Ubuntu add onto the Debian base? Just based on the vibe I get from debian.org, I feel like my life would involve a lot more yak shaving (which I don't necessarily mind if it teaches me something that will negate future yak shaves). Context: In…

Debian testing will feel very like an Ubuntu install that doesn't crash on you. One package manager instead of N. Occasionally third party repos only package for Ubuntu, though they're likely to work about as well on Debian as they do on Ubuntu anyway.

For a long time Debian refused to bundle closed source firmware with the installer but they've relented on that now.

The holdout I know of is Ubuntu have zfs in the kernel and Debian as a package. That seems to make no difference in practice.

Re: WTF with high school questions?

#233
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And grades or university name makes it easy to rank candidates to present a short list to the actual recruiter.

A short but highly unrepresantative list at that. Too many counter examples irl who had shit grades but were geniuses at actual work to discount.

Agreed. Some people do not work well in a more structured environment (school), and vice-versa.

Re: WTF with high school questions?

#234
post #73
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I got kicked out of English for insubordination" oh, and the blogger gave a smarta* answer to a free-form text question? Yep, insubordination is still there. I'd pass on this candidate too.

Considering he also wrote a blog post criticizing this question, I feel comfortable saying that he already passed on this job. So saying you'd pass on him has "you can't quit, you're fired!" energy to it. Also, I don't agree that this demonstrates insubordination. There can't be insubordination without a subordinate-supervisor relationship. I also don't think this is a "smartass" answer: > This is an irrelevant quest…

I am not questioning his right to not answer, just the wisdom of it.

If he doesnt want the job, why waste eveyones time with this childishness? If he does want the job, why not play ball?

Re: WTF with high school questions?

#235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A larger company would likely separate out "new grads" and give them the stupid high school questions.

Actually it's the opposite in my experience: Small companies don't care because they want someone who can do the work. Large companies' decision makers are much more risk averse. They're looking for a reason not to hire you. If you're a poor employee that makes no difference to the,, they are fine, if they take a risk by hiring you despite you once getting a B in high school spanish in 1837, they're the ones that wil…

Just an observation: what I said in my comment is falsifiable. I'm pretty certain you'd find, if you polled a bunch of job application sites for various-sized companies, that large companies are a lot more likely to separate out new grads and entry-level candidates into a separate funnel from more experienced professionals, with separate candidates and more "basic" questions.

Re: WTF with high school questions?

#236
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering he also wrote a blog post criticizing this question, I feel comfortable saying that he already passed on this job. So saying you'd pass on him has "you can't quit, you're fired!" energy to it. Also, I don't agree that this demonstrates insubordination. There can't be insubordination without a subordinate-supervisor relationship. I also don't think this is a "smartass" answer: > This is an irrelevant quest…

I am not questioning his right to not answer, just the wisdom of it. If he doesnt want the job, why waste eveyones time with this childishness? If he does want the job, why not play ball?

His goal seems to be to effect change. My understanding is that before reaching these questions, he _was_ interested in the job. Explaining to a potential employer that they lost a candidate's interest because of their application questions seems like something they would want to know.

Re: WTF with high school questions?

#237
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. I'll give it a couple hundred years.

Can you define a couple of hundred? Just to be clear I am a language descriptivist, and am looking for a timeline I can hang you on for being wrong. Also to preface, if you pick a timeline older then the phrase “the bees knees”I will think you are irrelevant, and if you can pick a younger phrase but I can show language evolution on top of that, I will also consider you irrelevant.

Just to be safe, make it an even millennium.

Re: WTF with high school questions?

#238

Shopify has an initial round with recruiter called "Life Story interview". You basically start from the beginning, talking about your high school experience, what did you like there and what did you study, your childhood hobbies ...

I wouldn't be too upset with that if it was time bounded to 2 minutes within a standard 30 min recruiter call.

I've heard this story about the Shopify interview several times. It bounced a lot of people who were interested and probably otherwise qualified
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