Facebook recruiting and Unix systems • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#201

Post by jdavis703 » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 3:37 AM UTC

aspyrx wrote: post #128

Hey folks, I'm the student writing the emails in the post here. Thanks to everyone for their criticisms. While I was initially kind of shocked by the recruiter's response, I've had a lot of time to think about it today and have realized that I was being pretty damn condescending and spoke out of line without regards to the context. It's been a hard lesson learned. I honestly regret the whole exchange, and posting it…

Don't take the feedback personally, but hopefully you will apply the lessons. Even better, this serves as a practical example for others to learn from. None of us were born knowing this stuff.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#202

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 3:37 AM UTC

samoright wrote: post #151

derenrich wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait do people actually think this position requires Unix (not linux) experience? I assumed the recruiter must just be wrong there.

It is not uncommon to come across open positions that actually do require Unix (not Linux) experience. For example, American Express has a large deployment of AIX systems and they indeed look for candidates with experience in AIX systems, although I believe someone with experience in another Unix or Unix-like system should also be okay. But I agree that such openings are usually quite specific about which Unix system…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#203

Post by ryandrake » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 3:48 AM UTC

aspyrx wrote: post #182

chis wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This follow-up shows a lot of maturity. Both sides are obviously at fault here, although you instigated it. I suspect you could still get the internship if you send an apology like "Sorry for my previous emails they were out of line. You're essentially correct and here's an updated resume to reflect that."

Thank you - I actually did send an apology email, but since I'm pretty sure I'm not quite qualified for the position, I didn't bother pursuing it any further than that.

You had nothing to apologize for. There are tons of recruiters in this industry who do not know what they are recruiting for and are dumbly trying to match text. I've had a recruiter tell me that they are looking for experience programming "graphics drivers", and would I kindly update my resume to say that instead of "display drivers". If a company uses recruiters this clueless, you dodged a bullet.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#204

Post by exikyut » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 3:49 AM UTC

acmustudent wrote: post #99

This is the official CMU facebook recruiter. They have done this to multiple people I know, each time they tried to explain and yet this keeps happening.

I'm glad it's finally in the open then.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#205

Post by exikyut » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 3:54 AM UTC

aspyrx wrote: post #128

Hey folks, I'm the student writing the emails in the post here. Thanks to everyone for their criticisms. While I was initially kind of shocked by the recruiter's response, I've had a lot of time to think about it today and have realized that I was being pretty damn condescending and spoke out of line without regards to the context. It's been a hard lesson learned. I honestly regret the whole exchange, and posting it…

Nobody else has mentioned this so I will: leave an email address in your profile, or dump something sharable in a comment here. (Pretty much everyone here (relevant) can de-base64 (which can be convenient, a la data:text/plain;base64,...) or figure out "gmail@myaccountname".)

Best case scenario, someone from FB could say hi. Not officially (that would be a nice miracle), but rather some person working there. Then you could start chatting with them, they could figure out somewhere you could probably get in on the ground at, and give appropriate instructions. AFAIK internal recommendation is the best way to get through/inside The Great Wall of Google™, perhaps that's the case for FB as well. Note, I have no experience with either company, but in a thread like this not having contact info is wasting your 15 minutes.

Also note https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15188618 - apparently what happened to you is quite common (!?).

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#206

Post by foo-man-chu » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 3:54 AM UTC

Part of working in the industry is learning to work with recruiters.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#207

Post by nandemo » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 3:56 AM UTC

williamscales wrote: post #123

The right answer is to say "Oh, you're exactly right. I've updated my resume accordingly. ...//Unix //Linux" and have that be the end of it. What is the point of arguing here but to prove some kind of imagined superiority?

"Ha! He's lying on his resume! Rejected".

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#208

Post by bshanks » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 3:59 AM UTC

tw1010 wrote: post #91

In situations like these you really aught to ask yourself what your end-goal with being elitist like that is really trying to serve. In engineering situations usually the purpose is some form of disguised signaling. This is the purpose of most sentences that start with "technically". But when you're talking to a recruiter that kind of move is unlikely to be effective. It's unlikely to affect your application positive…

As a tutorial for those of us like me who sometimes stumble in situations like this, could someone who found the OP's responses to the recruiter unprofessional please post example phrasing of what the OP should have said? Let's assume the constraint that the OP will refuse to lie (so they won't just change their resume to 'Unix' instead of 'Unix-like').

This is a genuine question; I often can't think of how to phrase things and I think an example would be educational.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#209

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 3:59 AM UTC

exikyut wrote: post #205

aspyrx wrote: post #128

Hey folks, I'm the student writing the emails in the post here. Thanks to everyone for their criticisms. While I was initially kind of shocked by the recruiter's response, I've had a lot of time to think about it today and have realized that I was being pretty damn condescending and spoke out of line without regards to the context. It's been a hard lesson learned. I honestly regret the whole exchange, and posting it…

Nobody else has mentioned this so I will: leave an email address in your profile, or dump something sharable in a comment here. (Pretty much everyone here (relevant) can de-base64 (which can be convenient, a la data:text/plain;base64,...) or figure out "gmail@myaccountname".) Best case scenario, someone from FB could say hi. Not officially (that would be a nice miracle), but rather some person working there. Then you…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#210

Post by nandemo » Thu, Sep 07, 2017, 4:00 AM UTC

fiatjaf wrote: post #106

Unless you value money over all the other goods in the world, why would you want to work for Facebook?

Money can be exchanged for goods and services.

Besides, there are other upsides: you get to work at a company that values developers, you'll have lots of competent colleagues and you'll learn a lot, and you'll work at a product that hundreds of millions of people love.