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Canonicals Interview Process

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61–70 of 82 posts

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using a 3rd person possessive pronoun like this isn't unusual or "promoting woke", it's English.

Thanks. I rarely saw this usage before, hence the question

It's more common in less personal, more formal contexts. Another place you might see this in addition to hiring notes is police reports. It's fine English in any context though, just convention driven.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#62
post #58

Canonical brought us some interesting concepts, like cloud-init, and it's been my first choice for cloud-images, but this toxic culture of them motivates me to choose a better image. Or just something like Nixos.

just because it is ubiquitous doesn't make it good. I spent my fair share in cloud-init land and it absolutely sucks. The complete state flow is a mess with exceptions all over the place.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#63

> 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.

> since they’re the only ones that carry an automatic fail despite all other interviewer scores, they should be done first.

That would be impossible since there is only one Mark but a multitude of people who can conduct the previous interviews.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#64

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.

They all talk about Mark and make fun of him behind his back. Most won't say something to him to his face because he let's them know they would lose their jobs. Your paycheck requires you can't speak up. Take the cash or leave.

I thought that was business as usual everywhere, especially in companies where employees are encouraged to speak up. Yes, of course you can speak up, and this makes it ever so easy to judge you or throw you out.

Do your own time. Take your paycheck. Don't rock the boat.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#65
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks. I rarely saw this usage before, hence the question

It's been standard conversational English since the 1300s.

Thanks. Somehow when I was learning English, the instruction was to use she/her to refer to an unknown third person, so did I when writing essays in a college here. That's why it felt strange when I saw they/their for 3rd person.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#66
I interviewed in November 2022. Sounds unchanged, with the essay (24-pages) and bizarre focus on my early life.

Progressed pretty far into the process. 94% on intelligence assessment and positive on the behavioral. Then in a call with HR, I was was told a COVID vaccine was required. I said I was unwilling to take an mRNA vaccine. Rejected by email after that. (I did get Novavax a couple of months later when it became available in my area).

Overall, my impression was negative. Success at Canonical means you fit into a narrow model, subject yourself to unwarranted character judgments, and don't have an opinion about much.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#67

> Their application was a duplicate with the same email address, Why do people use "they" and "their" for a single person? Is this the requirement for not misgendering someone?

When handling hiring notes, I do this to clearly separate my point from the gender of the candidate.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#68
post #14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unusual to be interviewed by someone more than three levels above the position you are applying for. At a small company, you might well be interviewed by all of your teammates, your prospective manager, the HR person and the owner/president/CEO... in the course of one day. At a large company, an IC might not even see their supervisor's manager's director's vice-president until they had been working for six mont…

>It is unusual to be interviewed by someone more than three levels above the position you are applying for. This happened to me, and it was by far my worst interview ever. Early on in my career right after graduating I got interviewed for a Jr. Sysadmin position at a high frequency trading firm of approx ~1000 employees. The first few behavioral interviews they repeated the exact same questions, including some soft l…

Had a similar experience with a VP recently... not >3 levels up, but still. "I could visibly tell he was upset he even had to talk to me." feels close to home.

I made time during a family emergency, and attended a call on US west coast time while living in EU (was supposed to be 9PM for me but they pushed it to 10PM right before due to recruiter messing up the invite and having it off by a week).

He didn't ask any relevant questions. He didn't seem interested. He just looked like he was doing a favor to someone that asked him to give me a shot. Original call was supposed to be 1h, then after reschedule it was 30m, but he thanked me for my time after 20 minutes. Ofc I got rejected after, even though the people before had good opinions of me.

All in all, if you're doing hiring, at least try to look interested. phew.

Re: Canonicals Interview Process

#69

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 p…

the FAANG-esque process is extremely stupid, but it is entirely dependent on 1) getting a referral / passing a phone screen and then 2) passing the dumb interview process on the day, and perhaps some story about why you don't have a degree from a university the American elite thinks is elite enough.

that feels very different from Mark requiring your high school maths grades.

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