How (not) to apply for a software job
benhoyt.com
How (not) to apply for a software job
1–10 of 174 posts
Re: How (not) to apply for a software job
#2Interesting to see that perfect grammar gives you penalties nowadays.
Re: How (not) to apply for a software job
#3Interesting to see that perfect grammar gives you penalties nowadays.
I suppose it's a bimodal distribution: very high effort and very low effort will both have near-perfect grammar, albeit for different reasons. Since the low effort applications dominate in volume, the discriminator learns perfect grammar to be a negative signal.
Law of unintended consequences I guess.
Re: How (not) to apply for a software job
#4Interesting to see that perfect grammar gives you penalties nowadays.
It's not the "perfect grammar" that gets penalized (though ChatGPT grammar isn't really stellar). It's the part where the writing contains "little or nothing from the candidate's experience".
Re: How (not) to apply for a software job
#5Interesting to see that perfect grammar gives you penalties nowadays.
Need to improve the chatgpt prompt in canonical's case. "Include some personalised examples such as *paste author example". Don't have perfect grammar - allow the occasional mistake but not too prominently."
Re: How (not) to apply for a software job
#6Isn't Canonical famous for having one of the worst candidate selection processes?
Also, there's a lot of superstition and nonsense about how to succeed at interviews and job applications.
Re: How (not) to apply for a software job
#7Software engineers using tools like ChatGPT isn't really about trying to game the system. It's more about how out-of-touch the old-school job application process feels. We really just want to make things easier on ourselves. We're in a time where we're all about automating the boring stuff. Why? Because we can. The whole idea of writing a cover letter feels ancient. Honestly, when I'm shooting out a ton of job applications, it's a total drag to whip up a special cover letter for each one. Most of us are just trying to find a gig that matches what we can do and what we want to do. But nope, we gotta jump through all these hoops and write these fancy stories, even if no one's really reading them.
Re: How (not) to apply for a software job
#8Isn't Canonical famous for having one of the worst candidate selection processes? Also, there's a lot of superstition and nonsense about how to succeed at interviews and job applications.
I once applied for a job at Canonical. This was their process (roughly two years ago)...
Thank you for applying for Software Engineer. The application process has several stages:
- Initial screening (done)
- Personal essay (this stage)
- Culture interview
- Standardised aptitude and personality tests
- General interviews
- Recruitment screen
- Technical assessment
- Role-specific interviews
- Hiring manager interview
- Executive interview
The current stage is your personal essay. Please take some time to answer the questions below. We’re looking to get a sense of who you are, what’s important to you, and how you communicate. If you’ve already completed this when applying for another role, please feel free to copy/paste from your previous application.
- Beginning in your high school years, through university and into your career, what have you done that you consider exceptional?
- Why do you want to work for XYZ?
- How are you involved in open source software?
- What are your strengths as a software engineer?
- Describe your experience as a Go software engineer.
- Describe your experience with distributed systems.
Re: How (not) to apply for a software job
#9Interesting to see that perfect grammar gives you penalties nowadays.
At my job I have to write a lot of internal documentation and teaching material for teams to learn from. Since ChatGPT I've changed my writing style slightly because it often could be perceived as written by AI. It is comical that I'm now thinking twice about using certain phrases because they might mirror ChatGPT's writing characteristics. I am now even including different paragraph lengths because everyone is familiar with the way ChatGPT divides content.
Re: How (not) to apply for a software job
#10Interesting to see that perfect grammar gives you penalties nowadays.
It's not the grammar that's giving you penalties though, it's all the chaff that comes with using AI that you don't really want.
Another issue with using AI is that you didn't write it, you're going to struggle to clarify any grandiose claims during an interview. I've come accross only a couple of these CVs before and I have to question what these candidates are expecting to happen. If you're going to write your own bullshit in you CV at least you can (try) to bullshit your way through the interview as well. If you're getting an AI to bullshit for you, you're going to be clueless in an interview.