Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canonicals Interview Process

dustri.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 82 posts

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#31

Post by loloquwowndueo »

pydry wrote: post #21
arp242 wrote: post #15

This seems to be the canonical Canonical interview process – I've heard several stories like this over the years. It's always the same: interview process is overly long and a bit ridiculous, but things go relatively well. And then at the final stage Shuttleworth shows up to be a dick with a bizarre focus on high school, after which it's rejected.

Judging by Ubuntu's declining quality over the last few years, this selection process doesn't seem to be working too well.

Internally, toxic culture has resulted in large turnaround which is biased to the most experienced people in the company (those smart and valuable enough to realize they don’t have to put up with the crap and can do better elsewhere). It doesn’t matter how brilliant the new hires are, there’s no way to replace the lost institutional knowledge and experience when an old-timer leaves.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#32

Post by pdpi »

politelemon wrote: post #25
elteto wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these Steve Jobs wannabe's somehow always overshoot yet also entirely fall short.

I wouldn't hold Jobs up as a paragon to aim for. Falling short sounds like a good thing here

That's the point, though: Jobs was a very successful asshole, and people get their "becauses" and "despites" mixed up. The Jobs wannabes overshoot on the "despites" and keep falling short on the "becauses".

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#33

Post by aucisson_masque »

The interview process says a lot about a company.

Honestly, I would have run away at the very beginning with this weird focus on high school.

If you can't be professional in your recruitment process, it's a big red flag.

Assuming everything is true, he did actually dodge a bullet.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#34

Post by loloquwowndueo »

> I got three "strong yes", eight "yes", and a single "no" from Mark Shuttleworth

Mark interviews are always the last in the process but since they’re the only ones that carry an automatic fail despite all other interviewer scores, they should be done first.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#35

Post by firstplacelast »

bananapub wrote: post #8

I am fascinated at how this has actually lasted so long without imploding the place - did Mark stop being a cheapskate on salary so people will tolerate this process? Or is it just banking on their good name and mostly getting to work on free software?

Maybe the reality is most jobs aren't that hard once you have some baseline skills? While I don't love this interview process, I'm certain there are plenty of great people filtered out of the standard interview process in big tech.

If everyone is using the same criteria, they are all competing for the same group of candidates. Using other processes, no matter how whack-a-doodle, will give you a completely different pool to select from.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#36

Post by duskwuff »

vkaku wrote: post #9

These days, the effort required for company-specific long essay applications hardly seems justified. With Generative AI readily available, it’s easy to tailor essays to appeal to particular—even narcissistic—preferences, unless someone genuinely enjoys the writing process. As a result, the whole system has devolved into a “garbage in, garbage out” exercise. What began as a meaningful way to assess candidates has larg…

I agree, but for a different reason (and one which isn't recent, either). Essay questions on job applications are most effective at selecting for candidates who are adept at telling stories about themselves. It doesn't necessarily give you candidates who are more knowledgeable or better at their jobs.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#37

Post by kiitos »

theletterf wrote: post #24

Most of the folks I know that work or have worked at Canonical are smart and deeply humble, even worryingly so. I say "worryingly" in the sense that their hiring process seems to weed out people who could speak up, question authority or otherwise show hints of critical thinking. Not my cup of tea.

Most of the folks that I've worked with, who have previously worked at Canonical, have been categorically unimpressive. "Senior" engineers with limited, even naive, understanding of the technologies and tools they're working with, and who are totally uninterested in feedback from, or collaboration with, any of their peers.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#38

Post by AnotherGoodName »

Similar experiences. I figured there's no way they wouldn't take me to the next round given my background. Answered GPA question honestly and got the auto rejected email in minutes.

Really weird as someone who's worked at a staff+ level at multiple FAANGs with over 20 years experience. Apparently my GPA from over 20 years ago isn't high enough for Canonical.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#39

Post by kiitos »

loloquwowndueo wrote: post #34

> I got three "strong yes", eight "yes", and a single "no" from Mark Shuttleworth Mark interviews are always the last in the process but since they’re the only ones that carry an automatic fail despite all other interviewer scores, they should be done first.

An interview process that allows a single individual to have absolute veto power over multiple prior interview evaluators is, pretty obviously, broken.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#40

Post by michaelt »

artyom wrote: post #5

I had the same experience. The interview process was super long and nowhere near completion, got through a few phases, got rejected with no explanation in the middle of it. The "psychometric assessments" were specially dumb and I started questioning if I wanted to work at Canonical at that time anyway. There's places where HR and processes as a whole look like just incompetency. And other places where the amount of p…

> 32,000 open positions?

Honestly, I very much doubt a company with ~1200 employees has 32,000 open positions.

More likely it's HR reposting the same 20 job ads every day to keep them at the top of the linkedin news feed or some nonsense like that.

Post reply on HN