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I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

triplebyte.com

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Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#121

Post by oconnor663 »

iooi wrote: post #91
ransom1538 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been doing mysql database type things for 15 years solid. Once during a job interview at digg.com, someone [ok ok doxx removed] asked: "what is a having statement in sql?". I jumped in explained how you can filter aggregated sets performed by a 'group by' and rambled on and on. He stopped me and said, "You can use a having statement without a group by, are you sure you know how they work." I have never seen th…

If I understand correctly from this post on dba [1], HAVING without GROUP BY would have the same effect as WHERE. Seems like they were just being pedantic for no good reason. [1] https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/57445/use-of-having-...

If one of the columns you're SELECTing has some sort of complicated expression in it (e.g. `UNIX_TIME(colA) - UNIX_TIME(colB) AS duration`), I think you can refer to that column by name in HAVING, but not in WHERE. It's a pretty niche thing though; I can't remember if I've ever actually used it.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#122

Post by herodotus »

joeax wrote: post #83

I'm going to go against the grain and say that interview feedback is overrated (at least for senior people). If you got offered the job, then there's your feedback. If not, the interviewing company isn't going to tell you any more than you could already discern yourself by playing back your answers and conversations with the interviewers. If you honestly feel you aced the interview, then other factors are in play - p…

I agree with you, except that the company should send out a rejection letter as soon as they can. If I were hiring, I would only send a non-generic response if the rejected candidate specifically asked me if I would be willing to give her or him constructive feedback, or otherwise indicate why they did not get the position.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#123

Post by smelendez »

Dwolb wrote: post #80

>I heard back from many of the engineers I write to, and often, they were furious Bingo. I've opted to share specific team feedback via phone and although candidate feedback was generally positive and thankful, once in awhile the reaction would be extremely negative. I now opt for the much more (emotionally) safe route. Triplebyte is more incented to provide candidate feedback because if the candidate improves, Tripl…

Yeah, this sounds like as much of an issue as the legal risk to me. Imagine if you reject someone and they blog about the letter you sent them and the interview process, and the post makes Hacker News or Reddit.

Now you have to decide whether to fight in public with someone you didn't hire, normally bad form, or say nothing.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#124

Post by overcast »

paulie_a wrote: post #110
lixtra wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our HR asked me to personally call people and thank them for their declined application. But at the same time requested to not give any feedback because of fear from litigation. Sad world.

I would have simply ignored that HR person and given honest but polite feedback.

You're willing to bet your own employment on that? We'd all love to live in a world of butterflies and sugar plums, but risking your own for that is silly don't you think?

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#125

Post by pmiller2 »

Here's one thing that stuck out to me:

> Even Triplebyte only sends individualized feedback to candidates who've done a two-hour interview with us - we simply don't have the resources to do it for everyone who takes our online quiz.

Unless there's something interesting going on, it seems like it would be easy to give some kind of feedback based on the online quiz, even if it's only "You answered X out of Y questions correct on $TOPIC", repeated for however many topics were covered.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#126

Post by jackhack »

ransom1538 wrote: post #63
tptacek wrote: post #40

When someone can’t answer an interview question about relational databases, it might be that they don’t know anything about relational databases. I thought you all were better than this. Why are you asking questions about relational databases? Why not just have candidates accomplish the thing you're assessing with an actual relational database ? I know you're work-sample-literate! But if your feedback emphasizes comm…

I have been doing mysql database type things for 15 years solid. Once during a job interview at digg.com, someone [ok ok doxx removed] asked: "what is a having statement in sql?". I jumped in explained how you can filter aggregated sets performed by a 'group by' and rambled on and on. He stopped me and said, "You can use a having statement without a group by, are you sure you know how they work." I have never seen th…

Do you realize you dodged a bullet at that moment? That was a classic case of "smartest-guy-in-the-room" syndrome: from your description, he wasn't there to interview you, he was there to show off and stroke his own ego.

Be glad you didn't get that job, because that would have been the future of your days at work -- constantly listening to Mr. Smartypants compensate for his own sense of inadequacy, where every different opinion is treated as a personal insult or a challenge. No thanks. That personality type is infectious (not in a good way) and it damages an organization.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#127

Post by shimon »

abakker wrote: post #111
lixtra wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our HR asked me to personally call people and thank them for their declined application. But at the same time requested to not give any feedback because of fear from litigation. Sad world.

Managerial CYA, and fear of the potential for litigation are crippling corporations more that I think we'd like to admit. Financial risk is something people seem comfortable accepting, but the specter of unknowable legal risk cause so many management anti patterns and so much passive aggressive behavior is it incredible. As a relatively junior person in management, it is amazing the kind of phantom fears I've been ca…

For a swath of business responsibilities, this "phantom legal risk" is the Most Available Excuse (TM).

We see Most Available Excuses in product feedback ("it's too hard to use" is easier to say than "I didn't see how this would help me accomplish anything I actually care about"), in social engagements ("sorry, too busy this week"), and many other areas.

I'm a natural skeptic so I maintain a mental set of Most Available Excuses, and when I hear one I treat it as a dodge, not an answer. Why don't they want to do it? How might I make them more comfortable with me so they can explain how they really feel?

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#128

Post by pmiller2 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #120
nosseo wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the ways I discussed in the article - more nuanced, more thorough, more detailed, more focused on constructive advice you can take to your next interview. Plus, we've just improved our process in general so you aren't tested on skills you don't need. It's easier to give constructive feedback about an interview process you have a lot of confidence in, and much of the work we've put in as a company over the last fe…

> It's easier to give constructive feedback about an interview process you have a lot of confidence in, and much of the work we've put in as a company over the last few years has been designing an interview we think really works. It's hard to take this at face value, as 100% of the TripleByte messaging I've seen since before I received that email focused heavily on how confident they were that their interviews were t…

I think a lot of the dichotomy here is that nobody really knows what a thorough, high-quality assessment for a software engineer really is. I mean, yes, the standard "work sample über alles" line that comes from research is great, but what really constitutes a valid work sample? How do you set up expectations so the candidate knows where the bar is, much less how to get over it? Things like that.

Edit: You also need to consider that TripleByte's idea of what works is probably different from yours. Their idea is probably more along the lines of "people pass our assessment and get hired." All you really need to do to hit that (not that it's a trivial thing at all), is conduct an assessment that's similar enough to what the hiring companies are doing. And, many of us know that hiring companies frequently aren't very good at interviewing.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#129

Post by microcolonel »

> The number one reason companies cite for not sending feedback is legal risk. Interestingly, I don’t think this is true. Companies put themselves at legal risk if they are rejecting candidates for illegitimate reasons, like race, gender, or a disability. If they send feedback which tells candidates, truthfully, that they were rejected because they didn’t get very far on the coding project, then if anything a company reduces their legal risk: they have a transparent track record of evaluating candidates based only on their skills. I recently talked with an employment lawyer about this, and he didn’t think that specific feedback on technical performance put companies at risk. So legal risk, despite being frequently cited, seems unlikely to be the real driver of policies here.

I think the problem here is that it exposes you legally even if you're not discriminating. If your explanation can in any way be argued as euphemism, or analogous to discrimination against a protected class, then you could face trouble. Maybe the risk is overblown, but the form of exposure you're talking about may not be the main one, far as I reckon.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#130

Post by tetha »

ransom1538 wrote: post #63
tptacek wrote: post #40

When someone can’t answer an interview question about relational databases, it might be that they don’t know anything about relational databases. I thought you all were better than this. Why are you asking questions about relational databases? Why not just have candidates accomplish the thing you're assessing with an actual relational database ? I know you're work-sample-literate! But if your feedback emphasizes comm…

I have been doing mysql database type things for 15 years solid. Once during a job interview at digg.com, someone [ok ok doxx removed] asked: "what is a having statement in sql?". I jumped in explained how you can filter aggregated sets performed by a 'group by' and rambled on and on. He stopped me and said, "You can use a having statement without a group by, are you sure you know how they work." I have never seen th…

Hm, I'm honest: If I get along well with an interviewee, I might throw technical oddballs at them like that. I wouldn't have known that specific one.

But at that point, I'm more interested in their personal reaction. Pondering, and/or asking "Why the fuck do you even do that!" would've been fine there to me.

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