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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

#261
post #257
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People also gotta shit. Should I do a Zoom call while on the toilet? It's a matter of where is your attention. If you're eating you're not fully focused on the other participant you're interacting with and not being fully present for them is rude.

Isn't this a false equivalence? I'll often eat with other people, but I wouldn't take a sh*t with them.

It’s okay, we’re all grownups here. You can say shit without censoring yourself.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#262
post #250

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…

There's a point you may be missing - they're seeking fanatical Canonical fans that share in a common vision. Their lengthy process might mean they don't get your typical fast-flying FAANG engineer, but it does mean they get someone who's a die-hard Canonical fan.

Who's a die-hard canonical fan?

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call that joke antagonizing particularly, though? Or do you mean something separate?

It's certainly antagonizing to me, but maybe that's just because I work for the government and like to think that I do extraordinary work.

Hey, don't worry. Everyone who pays taxes works for the government :-)

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#264

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…

I recently had the misfortune of trying to find a job in a rough hiring market. I was appalled by what I saw. Very few companies move fast. Here’s what I saw on average for a software engineering role: 1. Excruciatingly long application processes, especially when companies required you to use workday for applying (30mins - 2 hours) 2. 2 weeks to hear back from the recruiter 3. 1-2 weeks to schedule a recruiter call 4…

Did you interview at any startups? This sounds like a standard big-tech run around, but IME most companies that take hiring seriously (i.e. more than "churn management") are not this slow.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#265

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…

Well, you see, the potential cost of losing a good candidate is much less than the potential cost of hiring a bad candidate, so every effort should be made to prevent the latter. There's a Joel on Software or Stack Overflow thing on this....

The fatal error here is to believe that the hiring process follows a linear curve, so that the outcome is directly proportional to the effort spent.

When in reality I believe the hiring process follows some kind of logistic curve - after some point you're only getting very, very marginal returns on the extra effort spent.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#266
When I became an engineering leader, it was my turn to design a hiring process. Most other companies similar to mine copied what Google did. That led me to this essay [1] and I realized copying what other big tech companies do probably wasn't right. I didn't have a "I need to pick from several good engineers" problem. I had a "I need to find a good engineer quickly" problem. I really don't know which problem Canonical has.

What I learned is that large tech companies invented modern technical recruiting as a way of choosing between good engineers. Many other companies that don't have this problem then started a recruiting cargo cult of similar practices thinking this is how you found the best people. I don't think a lot of companies have thought critically about their recruiting experience.

1: http://braythwayt.com/posterous/2014/10/04/i-dont-hire-unluc...

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#267
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> So much more hardware and software (esp. media playback) worked out of the box than any other distro at the time SuSE and other mainstream distros worked "out-of-the box" just as well, or better, than the early Ubuntu versions. Fedora, Debian, etc didn't not work because they couldn't, but they were trying to make a point about free software and what that meant, so they took a strict stance on included licensed cod…

I think you shouldn't undersell the impact of Ubuntu shipping with binaries/installers for proprietary drivers, media codecs and things like adobe flash. These were easy enough to install on other distros, but for a noob user Ubuntu was more streamlined.

Of course this wasn't a technical innovation, it was just an exercise in pragmatic legal risk-taking.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you see, the potential cost of losing a good candidate is much less than the potential cost of hiring a bad candidate, so every effort should be made to prevent the latter. There's a Joel on Software or Stack Overflow thing on this....

The fatal error here is to believe that the hiring process follows a linear curve, so that the outcome is directly proportional to the effort spent. When in reality I believe the hiring process follows some kind of logistic curve - after some point you're only getting very, very marginal returns on the extra effort spent.

You may be assuming there is any kind of rational process here, when Mark Shuttleworth thinks it is important to find out what you did in high school.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call that joke antagonizing particularly, though? Or do you mean something separate?

It's certainly antagonizing to me, but maybe that's just because I work for the government and like to think that I do extraordinary work.

Did you work for the Bush administration? If you did, you should probably accept the criticism. If not, well, how is 20 year old criticism of the government any skin off your back?

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#270
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't disagree, but on the other hand: Lloyd's used to be a London pub where merchants would hang out all day, carrying out their business as they ate. Business deals at the highest level are still routinely done over breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I think the problem, as usual, is the power imbalance: they are eating and you are not, in addition to the fact that they have the money and you don't - so it becomes a bi…

Apart from it being over Zoom, the main differentiator is that only one party eats. That’s a clear show of power. What you are talking about is that that both meet over food, which is very different.
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