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

Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 460 posts

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#71

Post by ghaff »

rightbyte wrote: post #65
spacebanana7 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Randomness in interviews is underrated because it offsets these over-selection effects. I'd love to see the results for a company where every applicant that passed basic screening tests was given a 1% chance of an offer; with additional probability weight awarded for performance in interviews.

I believe most recruiting processes are worse than chance so skip the weights. Roll a dice, pick someone, fact check the resume for scammers, done.

I honestly don't think it's that bad. But if one or two (for a sanity check) qualified people look at resumes and have a 30 minute conversation/technical weeding out question with a candidate, you're probably getting into diminishing returns past that. (Though you probably also lean heavily on referrals and "pedigree" given that you're not really trying to get some non-obvious signal in the interview process.)

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#73

Post by ghaff »

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.

When I applied for a government job many years ago, I had to take a number of standardized tests of various kinds.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#74

Post by Balgair »

What a winnowing process! The only people that make it through really aren't the people you'd want to make it through. No one with a lick of other opportunities would take a job there. If hiring is a market-like process, then these guys have priced themselves right out of it.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#75

Post by ghaff »

rwmj wrote: post #33

Did anyone think it's a bit weird that they don't give you a laptop? Are you supposed to buy your own hardware or something?

It is a bit weird although honestly not really a big deal. I have a work laptop but I use my own computers 99% of the time.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#76

Post by jlokier »

rwmj wrote: post #33

Did anyone think it's a bit weird that they don't give you a laptop? Are you supposed to buy your own hardware or something?

I don't think it's weird.

At my last contract job the company supplied the laptop we had to use, and that made me sigh before it even arrived. It was restrictive, with its controlled accounts and restrictions on what software could be used, which meant I couldn't use the best tools I know well. The software we could use was poor quality. It had very poor battery life and it also meant I needed to carry two laptops everywhere with me in practice, the other being my own. After all there was no way I'd consider it safe to put my personal files and personal projects on the work-controlled laptop.

I much prefer to use my own laptop for work when possible. Just one to carry around and it's a good machine, worth the expense. Two jobs ago was like that, and it was a much nicer way to work.

I do understand why each job had their way of doing things though. The more recent contract involved access to proprietary code they didn't want to get out and potentially sensitive patient data. When the contract ended I couldn't login to the laptop any more.

Whereas the older job was all open source development, with a matching culture, so we were encouraged to use whatever tools worked best and keep publishing our work, and issues with work and personal files on the same device weren't a problem.

That said, despite proprietary work being the usual case, in 20 years all work I've done has been using my own devices except for that one recent contract, so I found getting a work-supplied laptop to be unusual.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#78

Post by rightbyte »

ghaff wrote: post #71
rightbyte wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe most recruiting processes are worse than chance so skip the weights. Roll a dice, pick someone, fact check the resume for scammers, done.

I honestly don't think it's that bad. But if one or two (for a sanity check) qualified people look at resumes and have a 30 minute conversation/technical weeding out question with a candidate, you're probably getting into diminishing returns past that. (Though you probably also lean heavily on referrals and "pedigree" given that you're not really trying to get some non-obvious signal in the interview process.)

Sure I agree. I was abit hyberbolic, but not much, if you account for all the bad processes.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#79

Post by loloquwowndueo »

joncrane wrote: post #54
loloquwowndueo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are supposed to bring your device. If you don’t have one you can get a loan to buy one and pay it off by paycheque deductions. Once hired, you do get a “laptop refresh bonus” every 3 years, the problem being that it’s a bonus and so is subject to income tax, plus in some jurisdictions you can’t tax deduct computer purchases unless you are self-employed, so the purchasing power of the laptop refresh allowance is b…

Do they at least pay really really well so the laptop is just a tiny percentage of your annual compensation?

The cost of a well-specced business laptop would be between 1% and 5% total pre-tax yearly compensation for engineers (variable depending on skills, location, seniority and the fact that I need to fudge the data a bit to avoid disclosing actual salaries which I obviously cannot do ;) ).

It doesn’t feel tiny-tiny to me.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#80

Post by lapcat »

throwanem wrote: post #15
kramerger wrote: post #2

Here is the funny part: If you somehow land a job at these companies, you will notice that recent hires (your new colleague) are not particularly good at their work but they are experts in gaming the system.

I can't imagine how it would be otherwise! The process described in that Reddit post reads like a parody of tenure-track searches in academia.

> The process described in that Reddit post reads like a parody of tenure-track searches in academia.

Tenure-track hiring is nothing like that. Is it rigorous? Yes. Do they take dumb formalized tests? No. Rather, they typically present their research to the faculty.

Post reply on HN