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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

#91

Post by ghaff »

linuxftw wrote: post #45
eschneider wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah...I applied when I was job hunting at the beginning of the year and I hard stopped on the high school question. I've got over 30 years of relevant experience and if that's what they're asking, I'm obviously not the sort of person they're looking for. Implicit ageism describes it well. Was it age discrimination? I wouldn't go that far based on what I saw, but they either don't want older/experienced people or the…

Same exact thing happened to me. I'm not writing an essay about my high school life, that's ridiculous. I don't do asymmetrical interviews. I'll consider a take in coding test in lieu of something else (or a very trivial one), but a written essay means I'm spending time and they are not. A phone or face to face interview requires an actual investment in their time, and doesn't treat my time as completely disposable.

If your job involves communication in some form, it's reasonable to want to see an example--though I'd generally be pretty open to seeing previously written or recorded examples rather than something created specifically for the interview process.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#92

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

arachnid92 wrote: post #32
ylyn wrote: post #24

I interviewed at Canonical, doing all of the written stuff, and got an offer. But in the end I turned them down because their compensation wasn't competitive.

Same here. And they’re a BYOD shop too, which I found strange.

Considering the underpowered equipment that often gets issued as standard hardware by IT departments, I wouldn't be that unhappy about BYOD.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#93

Post by red-iron-pine »

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.

A lot of the back of the envelope math points to new hire failure rates of around 50%, where failure is if the candidate is still there in 18 months.

Only about 19% would be considered "successful" hires.

Also only about 11% were not successful due to purely lacking technical skills. like I'm sure we all have stories about a noob that doesn't know how to do something basic like ssh with a key or something, but in many cases that's not the issue.

https://sowelo.eu/unsuccessful-recruitment/

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#94

Post by hluska »

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…

It’s time for me to leave Ubuntu behind for good. I can’t support anyone who is this much of an asshole.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#96

Post by unpopular42 »

> exactly how unbiased is it when every person I interviewed with was exactly my demographic? (White, female, American/western European)

Please could someone explain how is this, claiming that someone's race and ethnicity defines their bias, not in itself racist?

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#97

Post by red-iron-pine »

hpcjoe wrote: post #56
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…

I just went through this process. Got autorejected after the personality/IQ test thing. My essay was 13 pages. As for notable things I've done, I worked on an experiment in undergrad, which won the PI (small group) the Nobel in physics in the late 90s, writing computer software for experiment control. That and getting a PhD in physics from a student of a student of a different Nobel laureate. I founded and ran my own…

> The company reviews (not interviews) on glassdoor tell me the same story. Its like their employees have written a collective "WTF", and management is completely impervious, blissfully clueless, as to how broken, how disfunctional, their processes are

They know, and it's been discussed often.

They want young motived people who they can pay sub-par wages and convince to work long hours. 30 year veterans would rock the boat and demand too much money, and dip when it's clear the middle mgmt are clowns.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#99

Post by dpkirchner »

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's weird but I think there could be a significant benefit for a company that makes an operating system that users are installing themselves. This policy means their staff will use a diverse set of hardware, some brand new, some old, some home-built. That leads to natural dogfooding and might result in a better product.

* autocorrect manualfixes

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#100

Post by tribaal »

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?

The argument I saw brought up when I was working at Canonical (before the weird hiring process thing, n.b.) made some sense:

They explicitly wanted you to buy a laptop in your country using what's available to you so as to artificially widen the laptops with good ubuntu support: the reasoning was that you being a Canonical employee means you're more likely to help get the bugs fixed.

In practice however I don't think the diversity of laptops in the company was that great, we ended up with the same bunch of thinkpads and dells you'd expect from any random group of nerds (with a few exotics thrown in perhaps, but not many).

One requirement was to use Ubuntu on your laptop. I think they relaxed that over the years, even if working on not-ubuntu would definitely get you looks and comments at get togethers.

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