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Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

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Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#31

Post by znpy »

dcminter wrote: post #8
bradley13 wrote: post #6

Insane. I don't change jobs often (last time was 15 years ago), but the last two both worked pretty much the same: application, weeding interview, serious interview, decision. I've also sat on the other side, and we ran it the same way. I can imagine a huge company throwing a third interview in there, because HR has to justify its existence, but more than that is abusive and - more importantly - useless. Actually cou…

On paper Canonical is a company I'd rather enjoy working for. I love the product (despite its flaws) and have a lot of relevant experience. I wouldn't even object to the long interview process as such. Written materials? Sure! I'd love to see the bar raised on developers' writing skills! Why not. But man, that High School question? The implicit agism and the shere fuck-you irrelevance of my circumstances 35 years ago…

> The implicit agism and the shere fuck-you irrelevance of my circumstances 35 years ago just stops me in my tracks every time.

> Are you hiring me or 16-year-old me? Well then.

i wonder what is preventing you from just lying. like, how are they going to confirm or deny what you're saying ?

Frankly it seems like a way to have something they can use to reject you with something that's hard to debate against.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#34

Post by pohuing »

hcks wrote: post #18
weinzierl wrote: post #10

This is from a very long time ago, but if you dig deep enough you can still find this gem. From memory, and not the precise wording: The Canonical jobs page used to say you should only apply if you have accomplished something extraordinary in your life. If you haven't you should apply here , where here liked to the US government website. EDIT: I misremembered the site, it was not on canonical.com but http://markshutt…

Huge red flag. What extraordinary thing did Canonical accomplish by the way? Making a Debian distro for first year uni students?

It's also not true and gp corrected themselves

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#36

Post by jherskovic »

rwmj wrote: post #19
bettercallsalad wrote: post #4

While this is pretty outrageous process wise, it’s not unheard of that many non-FAANG companies follow some of these “standardized” approach such as meeting with some “talent advisor” and filling out some automated forms in the form of testing your “behavioral” side. Truth is many tech (and non-tech) companies are so bloated in their Human Resources departments, it’s beyond even point of productivity saturation.

Part of the problem is that for any job you'll be inundated with completely inappropriate candidates (like, people who literally cannot use a computer for positions as Linux programmers), and you have to somehow exclude those in as automated way as possible. This is not to defend the Canonical hiring process which sounds weird and inappropriate, and potentially illegal.

Yup. If you have name recognition, even in a niche field, you'll be inundated with nonsensical resumes and/or desperate people. We get hundreds of applications per position, and many of them are downright nonsensical. No, we can't sponsor a visa for a developer from a different country for an entry-level analyst position. We're a hospital.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#37

Post by 3littlefish »

Second this experience absolutely! A couple of years ago I had a similar experience. I was so annoyed having burnt a ton of time going through a number of rounds, submitted an essay, and then giving an extensive presentation only to get a cold, bland, automated rejection email. Terrible interview experience and enough for me to put peers off applying to the company if they asked me. Ironically they are still advertising to fill that same job two years later.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#38

Post by dcminter »

znpy wrote: post #31
dcminter wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On paper Canonical is a company I'd rather enjoy working for. I love the product (despite its flaws) and have a lot of relevant experience. I wouldn't even object to the long interview process as such. Written materials? Sure! I'd love to see the bar raised on developers' writing skills! Why not. But man, that High School question? The implicit agism and the shere fuck-you irrelevance of my circumstances 35 years ago…

> The implicit agism and the shere fuck-you irrelevance of my circumstances 35 years ago just stops me in my tracks every time. > Are you hiring me or 16-year-old me? Well then. i wonder what is preventing you from just lying. like, how are they going to confirm or deny what you're saying ? Frankly it seems like a way to have something they can use to reject you with something that's hard to debate against.

> i wonder what is preventing you from just lying...

Integrity? Also the self-interest of not wanting to work with liars and yes-men.

Basically the same reason I don't lie during the rest of an interview process.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#40

Post by dagw »

hcks wrote: post #18
weinzierl wrote: post #10

This is from a very long time ago, but if you dig deep enough you can still find this gem. From memory, and not the precise wording: The Canonical jobs page used to say you should only apply if you have accomplished something extraordinary in your life. If you haven't you should apply here , where here liked to the US government website. EDIT: I misremembered the site, it was not on canonical.com but http://markshutt…

Huge red flag. What extraordinary thing did Canonical accomplish by the way? Making a Debian distro for first year uni students?

What extraordinary thing did Canonical accomplish by the way

I'm not sure you remember what the Linux landscape looked like when Ubuntu was first released, but it was a pretty huge deal at the time. So much more hardware and software (esp. media playback) worked out of the box than any other distro at the time. USB and wireless networking just worked. The desktop they provided was was really nice and well configured as well with most defaults working the way most people expecting them to. Plus the pretty amazing fact that they would send you an install CD, for free, basically anywhere in the world. Back when downloading 700 MB over the internet was an impossibility for most people, this was a seriously huge deal for getting Linux into the hands of people. You could take that free CD, pop it into almost any computers, just accept all the defaults and be pretty sure to have a working Linux desktop at the end. At the time, that was a huge accomplishment.

We can all have opinions about the choices Canonical has made over the years and what they have become, but let's not pretend that they weren't one of the biggest and most significant drivers of Linux on the desktop back in the day.

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