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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

#181

Post by bluGill »

tristor wrote: post #139
EatingWithForks wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's especially rich that HR people think you're wasting /their/ time when they make you an insultingly low offer after extensive interviewing, especially considering there's a massive skills gap between tech workers and HR folks (who are a dime a dozen). I agree with everything up until this portion. I think HR can be a very difficult job, in a way that's quite similar to say security positions. If an HR p…

My comment wasn't saying that HR wasn't important or that their job was easy, it's saying that it doesn't require skills which are hard to acquire in the labor market. If we use credentials as a corollary for skills (which, ironically, is understating my case), then there are a vastly higher number of available persons in the labor market with the necessary credentials/skills to be in an HR role than to be in a techn…

> Digging ditches is a lot harder than writing code all day in an air-conditioned office

Not it isn't. I haven't dug ditches, but I've done other physical labor. At the end of the day your body is exhausted, but your mind is still sharp and ready for more. By contrast when programming all day your mind is exhausted, but your body is ready for more. Different types of hard, but both are very hard in their own way.

Actually most ditch digging these days is done with a machine. I don't know how hard that is, but I assume it moves more to the repetitive mental work side.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#182

Post by TrackerFF »

caboteria wrote: post #39

Their focus on high-school looks like a thinly-veiled strategy for weeding out anyone who is old enough that they no longer remember the details of their high school education.

Where I'm from the only companies that give a shit about HS grades are the elite finance and consulting firms - pretty unheard of otherwise.

Why they care? I've heard a couple of explanations:

- Like with the standardized test (cough IQ test cough) obsession, they kind of subscribe to the racehorse theory, namely that some individuals are just born smart and have excelled all their lives. They don't just want hard working individuals, they want hard working and smart individuals.

- It shows a constant progression. They want people that have excelled all their lives, and not those with random spurs of excellence

And of course, just another weeding function.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#183

Post by bluGill »

hashtag-til wrote: post #114
fluoridation wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you not try to negotiate up?

Sure, they bumped it a bit to try convincing me, but still less. I guess they wanted me some proof I wasn't moving _because_ of the money, or some other BS companies try to tell themselves...

If I didn't want to work for money there are plenty of charitable causes I believe in that need help, why would I work for you?

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#184

Post by icedistilled »

convolvatron wrote: post #129
itronitron wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, they're hiring process is biased towards people that love talking about themselves over and over again.

and oddly, even though I'm probably the best at going on and on about things that I find interesting, no one seems to want to want to hire me. I don't think this is the full picture.

"Going on an on about things" one finds interesting is not the same as marketing oneself.

I don't know if this is what you're referring to by the phrase 'going on and on' but the phrase makes me think of my coworker who talks in circles about any topic, providing many words but little info. And the circles usually incorporate personal anecdotes. He hasn't realized people tune out immediately.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#185

Post by wcunning »

I recently went through this for a job posting that changed after I started the process and then had the weirdest, least coherent interviews I'd ever sat through. They didn't have any idea who they wanted or a scope for the role (building out a new business line in safety critical software) and despite multiple interviewers telling me that I passed their round, I wasn't selected. In the end, I think that was better for my long term mental health, given how unprepared they were for that position, but it was a clear sign of an organization without a super clear direction.

Combining that whole thing with the recent decisions around Snaps vs Flatpak, their interaction with LXD, and their general user hostility, I'm glad that I am not tied to their products in a meaningful way, and I've gone back to Fedora for my home systems. Really sad that they can't capitalize on the IBM murder of open source stable distros, but I've really never had major complaints with Fedora and I can always go back to OpenSUSE if I need to, given their recent renaissance.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#186

Post by tristor »

bluGill wrote: post #181
tristor wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment wasn't saying that HR wasn't important or that their job was easy, it's saying that it doesn't require skills which are hard to acquire in the labor market. If we use credentials as a corollary for skills (which, ironically, is understating my case), then there are a vastly higher number of available persons in the labor market with the necessary credentials/skills to be in an HR role than to be in a techn…

> Digging ditches is a lot harder than writing code all day in an air-conditioned office Not it isn't. I haven't dug ditches, but I've done other physical labor. At the end of the day your body is exhausted, but your mind is still sharp and ready for more. By contrast when programming all day your mind is exhausted, but your body is ready for more. Different types of hard, but both are very hard in their own way. Act…

I have dug ditches, I've also written software. Digging ditches is harder. I also explicitly was referring to doing it manually, not with a machine. There's some philosophical conversation to be had here with the satisfaction of work with tangible outcomes vs intangible outcomes, but that wasn't the point of my comment, it was about supply/demand. You can get unskilled day laborers to dig ditches, you cannot get unskilled day laborers to write software.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#187

Post by dv_dt »

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.

Whatever other faults the Canonical process has, BYOD sort of makes sense to me from a dogfooding perspective with a company carrying a major desktop Linux offering.

Would look for a budget or have it reflected in their offer analysis though.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#188

Post by deaddodo »

ghaff wrote: post #173
_zoltan_ wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be a deal breaker for me. 0 respect.

Because Shuttleworth in particular or because someone at a company took someone out to a meal? The latter seems perfectly normal and I've been in that situation a number of times. Obviously you ought to have the opportunity to eat but having especially a more casual conversation over a meal just doesn't seem odd to me.

It doesn't sound like they had a shared meal, but that he ate his dinner during a pre-allocated meeting time via zoom/google meet/etc.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#189

Post by ghaff »

KptMarchewa wrote: post #177
ghaff wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Shuttleworth in particular or because someone at a company took someone out to a meal? The latter seems perfectly normal and I've been in that situation a number of times. Obviously you ought to have the opportunity to eat but having especially a more casual conversation over a meal just doesn't seem odd to me.

> Because Shuttleworth in particular or because someone at a company took someone out to a meal? It sounds more like situation where he was eating on zoom with mic on, while the second person just talked.

In that case, it's entirely possible I misunderstood the situation.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#190

Post by setgree »

_zoltan_ wrote: post #168
ghaff wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't seem that odd? I imagine he has a pretty busy schedule.

This would be a deal breaker for me. 0 respect.

In my dream world we would normalize things like eating on a zoom call. People gotta eat, it’s no big deal. Maybe if they’re audibly slurping soup that’s a problem in terms of noise, but that would also be a problem during a boardroom meeting.

(I once got in a lot of trouble for having a bowl of cereal while I was a silent participant in a call with a client at a fintech company, so I understand that attitudes like yours are common.)

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