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

The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

old.reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 187 posts

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#21

Post by nescioquid »

bhhaskin wrote: post #6

Sounds like their application process works. If someone is unwilling to fill out a basic questionnaire they are probably aren't a good candidate. The questions seem reasonable and they aren't asking for you to write a book for each one.

Pretty entitled freshly-minted BS degree, no doubt. Goes from wanting to work for Canonical to wanting to "punish" them by telling them to stuff it and then posting a screed to reddit -- all from just seeing the application questionnaire.

Doesn't seem a good indication for conscientiousness, integrity, and tact, frankly.

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#22

Post by juice_bus »

metadat wrote: post #15

OP- Thank you for linking to the less user-hostile "old" reddit portal.

The day old is fully removed or stops working is the day I stop using reddit entirely.

I'm trying to get away from it more and more just to make the transition less painful.

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#23

Post by cogman10 »

throwanem wrote: post #9
bhhaskin wrote: post #6

Sounds like their application process works. If someone is unwilling to fill out a basic questionnaire they are probably aren't a good candidate. The questions seem reasonable and they aren't asking for you to write a book for each one.

Yeah, I'm sure their application process works great, for keeping their pipeline nice and empty of potentially worthwhile candidates. These questions are anything but "reasonable", either in their quantity or in the depth of demanded response. I'm sure that the team at Canonical feels this process works for them, and maybe it does, but I'd love to see what metrics they have to show that it does. (Or maybe they for so…

Honestly looks like an attempt to get H1Bs. "We can't find any qualified candidates! Please give us cheap slave labor!"

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#25

Post by robonerd »

These are such inane questions.

> What was your first Linux distribution, and why did you start there?

"Red Hat Linux, and I started there because I found a CD to install it in the cover of Red Hat Linux For Dummies at my local library."

What does that say about my qualifications for the job? I can scarcely imagine. Clearly the questions are prompting for answers that will be evaluated in some vague bullshit way, so why not evaluate the questions themselves in the same manner? I see a lot of questions about what I was doing in highschool. I therefore conclude these questions were written up by an airhead do-nothing who's life peaked in highschool and they've been dwelling on the past ever since. Am I doing this right?

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#26

Post by latchkey »

klyrs wrote: post #17

I jumped through their hoops once, only to be told that they prefer to hire active contributors from the community. No unpaid internship, no job.

To be honest, that seems fair given that they are pretty community focused. You might view it as an unpaid internship, but my own contributions to open source and the community have always gotten me jobs. I view it as extracurricular activity... similar to what they pushed us to do in high school for getting into college.

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#27

Post by corrral »

version_five wrote: post #2

Discussed a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678

An exchange from that thread:

> > there is absolutely zero chance anyone on the other end is going to take the time to actually read and evaluate each of them

> This is understandable to think, but is simply wrong -- I know because I'm a software engineer at Canonical who helps review these written submissions. They're sometimes read and reviewed by our CEO, though often he delegates that out to a pool of us reviewers. I always read mine thoroughly, whether they're 3 pages or 30. I don't have exact stats, but from where I sit maybe 80% of them are quality submissions.

Shuttleworth is directly involved in, and approves of, this "write ten pages about your childhood, then take a battery of personality tests, and then maybe we'll proceed" shit? Is this a South African thing? I know some cultures have very different expectations about how job applications should work.

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#28

Post by baal80spam »

juice_bus wrote: post #22
metadat wrote: post #15

OP- Thank you for linking to the less user-hostile "old" reddit portal.

The day old is fully removed or stops working is the day I stop using reddit entirely. I'm trying to get away from it more and more just to make the transition less painful.

> The day old is fully removed or stops working is the day I stop using reddit entirely.

I know it's not the same but there's always https://teddit.net

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#29

Post by klyrs »

latchkey wrote: post #26
klyrs wrote: post #17

I jumped through their hoops once, only to be told that they prefer to hire active contributors from the community. No unpaid internship, no job.

To be honest, that seems fair given that they are pretty community focused. You might view it as an unpaid internship, but my own contributions to open source and the community have always gotten me jobs. I view it as extracurricular activity... similar to what they pushed us to do in high school for getting into college.

Sure. But I have a full-time job and a family. Combined with the essay's focus on the candidate's high school career, it's a pretty strong signal I'm too old to work there. I'm sure as hell not going to spend a year of my precious spare time on the gamble it'll get me a job where they expect me to continue working off-hours.

Re: The bulls**t Canonical wants you to jump through before they will give

#30

Post by Ekaros »

I don't see too much issue with this type of questionnaire. Even though the education part smells lot like bullshit from my European perspective.

Those questions can end up in interview too, so written answers and chance to properly articulate those isn't bad.

Still, way too many steps and hoops otherwise in the process.

Post reply on HN