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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

#221

Post by thayne »

TrackerFF wrote: post #175

Having previously worked at a place where it took minimum 3 months to hire someone (but often 6-12), I'd be amazed if Canonical actually ever gets to hire their first choices. What happened was this: By the time the first pick hires had been cleared, they had gotten another job. Same with second pick. Maybe even third, too. Most people don't have the luxury or will to just sit and twiddle their thumbs for months and…

It certainly doesn't help that many companies never inform you if you don't get a position, so if a candidate doesn't get a response quickly, they are likely to assume they were rejected.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#222

Post by yard2010 »

Invictus0 wrote: post #213
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current job was less than a week between my application and signing the final offer. Day 1: I send in an application. Day 2: My future manager writes back "Hey, do you have any work examples in obscure language I used for 10 minutes in my EE classes ?". I respond "No, nobody has work examples in obscure language ." Later that day, same manager emails me again, asking the same question, in slightly different words.…

This is so unusual it borders on unbelievable

In my last job search I had like 1 case like this out of 30-40. Might be my numbers though

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#223

Post by KineticLensman »

TrackerFF wrote: post #175

Having previously worked at a place where it took minimum 3 months to hire someone (but often 6-12), I'd be amazed if Canonical actually ever gets to hire their first choices. What happened was this: By the time the first pick hires had been cleared, they had gotten another job. Same with second pick. Maybe even third, too. Most people don't have the luxury or will to just sit and twiddle their thumbs for months and…

A lot can happen in three months.

My wife interviewed years ago for a UK govt research agency. They took three months to respond but did eventually set up an on-site interview. She went along anyway. HR met her at the gate and took her to the office of the person who owned the opportunity. When they arrived and there was no-one at his desk it turned out that he had died two months earlier and that the HR drone hadn't known. Needless to say the interview was cancelled.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#224

Post by IshKebab »

wodenokoto wrote: post #105
hcks wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

With fear of creating another Putnam moment on HN what exactly did you do that is so much greater than Ubuntu?

He didn't say he did do something incredible. Mark Shuttleworth did.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#225

Post by prmoustache »

vetinari wrote: post #161
boomboomsubban wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what planet is the Arch Linux install process the same as the Ubuntu install process. That is not what they said, the desktop was plain GNOME and that experience was the same as any other distro running plain GNOME. What set them apart was the installer and the rest of their post.

But the desktop was not plain GNOME. It was polished GNOME. They were but of the jokes at the time for the color theme chosen, but it had polish that plain GNOME didn't. That is valid even today; just the choice of default font is huge. Ubuntu font vs Cantarell? They are not even in the same league.

There was zero polishing appart from different background color and theme accent in their early releases. It was just a debian with package versions similar to SID with debian's experimental installer.

What they really did well and made them known very well is they would ship you cdrom for free while for other distros you either had to buy them from a store, download it or buy a linux computer paper magazine that came with cdrom install of a different distro every month.

That was a big deal when very few people had access to fast internet connections.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#226

Post by IshKebab »

tristor wrote: post #120
hashtag-til wrote: post #110

(A bit off-topic, but to give another example of where convoluted hiring processes get you to...) Last year, I did 8 interviews (including 4 technical assessments and quizzes) to get an offer from AMD (in Germany) as a software engineer. For completeness, they reached out to me. I wasn't really looking at the time. When I got the offer, salary+bonus was less than what I had at the time (a lot less now) living in a si…

Hardware companies simply don't pay as much as software companies in industry. I don't fully understand the reasons, because hardware is often more difficult to deal with than software. That said, I have found that there has been a rash of companies / recruiters reaching out to relatively senior people making offers that wouldn't have been acceptable a decade ago, much less in 2023. I recently had one reach out to me…

Hasn't been my experience. I switched from software (C++ compiler & profiler development) to silicon verification and got a decent pay rise (in the UK).

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#227

Post by pharrington »

rbanffy wrote: post #174
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.

Shuttleworth is a very hands-on manager, which is both a blessing, if you like his style, or a curse, if you don't.

That sounds like a euphemism for "micromanager".

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#228

Post by bgirard »

Invictus0 wrote: post #213
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My current job was less than a week between my application and signing the final offer. Day 1: I send in an application. Day 2: My future manager writes back "Hey, do you have any work examples in obscure language I used for 10 minutes in my EE classes ?". I respond "No, nobody has work examples in obscure language ." Later that day, same manager emails me again, asking the same question, in slightly different words.…

This is so unusual it borders on unbelievable

I've had interviews with startups that will use a quick interview turn around time as a selling feature to close candidates.

I've also interviewed at Two Sigma where I was flown in onsite and by the last interview they had already reviewed most of my feedback and told me that they were going to extend an offer. I got the sense that if I wasn't using a 3rd party recruiter with rules they might have handed me an offer before I left offsite. But it was great having the chance to talk to my would-be manager knowing I would likely have the offer to discuss my role while I was still onsite.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#229

Post by squidsoup »

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.

They do pay for a laptop upgrade every three (iirc) years however.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#230

Post by delecti »

bdav2418 wrote: post #180
ubermonkey wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if Mark wrote that in 2004, he was dunking on an administration that was widely believed to be the worst ever. (Obviously, we had NO idea what was coming.)

> (Obviously, we had NO idea what was coming.) Yeah, those drone strikes from the Obama administration were pretty bad.

Obama certainly could have done a better job at stopping them (and done better at many other things as well), but those drone strikes started under Bush2, along with the rest of the mostly disastrous "war on terror". Given we experienced our first non-peaceful transition of power, it's absurd to pretend anything else in US history compares.
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