Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex • Hacker News Board

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#391

Post by kragen » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 2:11 AM UTC

rlpb wrote: post #379

kragen wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have 20.04 installed here (should i confess that publicly?) and the absence of xpdf has been a irritation literally every day for months a more rational person would have compiled xpdf from source obviously

You could probably grab the next version that was published to Debian (3.04-14), throw it into a PPA to build against 20.04 and it would probably work. People have also published this kind of thing as an update in the official repositories in the past in this sort of case where the fix wasn't available at the time of release so it's missing from just one release. I appreciate that this is all a non-trivial exercise f…

i don't really have that excuse

just this evening i compiled qemacs, pcc, and jove from source, in the last case from the debian source package

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#392

Post by usrusr » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 2:19 AM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #262

Alupis wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Strike Ubuntu, insert "Linux", or "desktop Linux". Yeah, there will be a few who'd consider it quite awesome working on it full time and getting paid, and who wouldn't mind doing that Ubuntu-flavored. And it's not far off if they consider themselves attractive enough that they can skip everybody who's idle and looking for a seat to fill, and instead focus on those who are already employed but consider a change.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#393

Post by throwanem » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 2:39 AM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #80

throwanem wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, I didn't call it an informed parody - my one brief brush with academia having sent me fleeing back to industry, very much for keeps. Granted it's not always a bed of roses, but it is much more rewarding, not to mention much less often so petty and so vile.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#394

Post by lawgimenez » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 2:53 AM UTC

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

Not unusual, my current job was just a back and forth email semi-argument with the CEO in less than a week. This has been my longest job tenure in my over 11 years of dev experience.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#395

Post by fineIllregister » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:09 AM UTC

delecti wrote: post #230

bdav2418 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (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.

> our first non-peaceful transition of power

I know what you mean, but the phrasing seems odd given that the US has gone through multiple transfers of power because POTUS was murdered.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#396

Post by nextaccountic » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 4:21 AM UTC

Alupis wrote: post #275

whatshisface wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's a die-hard canonical fan?

Who's a die-hard Mozilla fan? People who love Ubuntu, tend to love Ubuntu. A very long hiring process pretty much ensures the only ones still waiting around are the ones who really want to work at Canonical.

I was extremely passionate about Ubuntu some 15 years ago. I would receive live CD-roms and distribute them in my campus, and teach people to install Ubuntu. Would show up things like Beryl or whatever weird stuff you could do with Linux at the time. Organized free software meetups too.

Today? I couldn't care less about whatever Canonical is up to. I don't know if the tipping point was when they put ads in the frigging desktop or if it was just a slow but persistent decline in quality

It seems to me that Canonical doesn't care about desktop anymore (does anyone remember bug #1?) but is focused all in on servers. Which I suppose pays the bills, but resulted in Canonical burning an immense amount of goodwill the last decade+

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#397

Post by 5350-uiop-1130 » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 5:16 AM UTC

jjgreen wrote: post #345

Direct link to Mark Shuttleworth's response in that thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/recruitinghell/comments/15kj845/can... [actually submitted in the usual manner, but marked as a dupe]

> I did enjoy your post. It has just the right amount of snark, but plenty of substance too, so well played, it's a good read.

> And yes, we make mistakes occasionally, none of us are perfect.

> To be successful and get an offer, you will need to be both outstanding, and a little bit lucky. That's life.

haha. it comes across kind of salty to me.

never going to use ubuntu again.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#398

Post by Biganon » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 5:30 AM UTC

Don't forget to read Mark Shuttleworth's answers in the comments. That's the first time he's used his reddit account in 7 years.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#399

Post by vlz » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 5:36 AM UTC

unpopular42 wrote: post #96

> 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?

You are correct if you read this as a claim about the people ("the people must be biased because they all have ethnicity x"). But it was probably meant as a claim about biased institutions/processes („processes/institutions which put only people in important positions which are all alike must be biased“) I think the the claim is not that ethnicity defined the bias but that some bias must be present to produce the homogeneity.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#400

Post by aulin » Thu, Aug 10, 2023, 6:12 AM UTC

deaddodo wrote: post #278

forgetfulness wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both looked dated back then, but Fedora Core 3 more so. Besides a slightly less clunky selection for theming, the game changer was the installer and the willingness to chuck the Free Software purity, back when the FSF was at the height of its influence and the terrible that was setting up Linux made it inaccessible to even CompSci students, let alone the general public. The delivery of Live CDs (I believe initially t…

> Both looked dated back then, but Fedora Core 3 more so. That's a matter of preference. Regardless, the Humanity theme is much closer to what standard GNOME looked like back then. Which goes against the original point that they were especially polished. > Besides a slightly less clunky selection for theming, the game changer was the installer and the willingness to chuck the Free Software purity, back when the FSF w…

I'm not completely convinced about the free discs argument.

I grew up in a modest family, small village (3k people), 14k modem, and yet every (all the two of them) newsstand had at least two biweekly Linux magazines. They cost something like 5€ (or whatever currency we had at the time) and they always had either 2 linux installer cd or one installer and one cd with some cool software to try.

And they had serious quality articles too. I still remember one where they described in detail how they built a DIY magnetic tunneling microscope and used it to recover some data from an hard drive.

By the time Ubuntu free cds came out I already had a big collection of Linux installers, none of them downloaded on my own.

Agreed about the rest. They've always been poisonous towards upstreams and probably contributed to set back the famous year of the Linux Desktop by diluting the efforts in dead-end projects instead of working with upstream towards a common goal.