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Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

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Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#261

Post by oculusthrift »

Aeolun wrote: post #77
jdavis703 wrote: post #9

This is not the right attitude to bring in to the workplace. You'll have a range of people from executives, to clients to co-workers in other departments who don't know what UNIX, APIs and POSIX are. If you can't communicate technical matters nicely then you have not yet developed the right attitude for a professional working environment. It's the same thing with doctors when they create metaphors to explain complica…

How about recruiters that recruit for a role at Facebook of all things just learn what the hell they are recruiting for instead? I don't think the onus is on developers here to explain why Unix and Posix are interchangable. It's like the carpenter telling the recruiter that yes, his skills in building a chair transfer to building a table.

if you're not autistic you just say "yes im an expert in unix" and move on your with your life. it isn't worth it to do anything else.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#262

Post by tbaowow »

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…

Hi. I was at FB and a lot of us in the Ex-FB group want to help. FB is a big company now, so unfortunately, these things happen.

If you email me at thomasbao12@gmail.com. I can share your email with some other FBers or ex-FBers. Here's a screencap of some of the support: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ecq6qqzu1b88grr/Screenshot%202017-...

Even if they can't help you get back in the pipeline for an internship at FB, maybe they can get you an internship somewhere else.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#263

Post by rawland »

solatic wrote: post #220
foo101 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unix-like systems are not synonymous with Unix systems nowadays. * Solaris, HP-UX and AIX are Unix systems. * FreeBSD and Debian GNU/Linux are Unix-like systems but not Unix systems. When technology people like us are debating over this terminology, I think it makes sense to cut the recruiter some slack.

Do remember that we are talking about internships here. If I have a task for an intern that requires some shell-scripting, and the intern already understands what it means to pipe commands, I put my hands together in silent thanks.

Exactly that I was thinking, too.

However, the HR person clearly filtered with "==UNIX". Hence, any explanation to him/her just wasted everybodies time. A different approach might have landed Stanley an interview with a Tech and the world might have looked different.

But then, he has plenty of new Tech contacts now. ;-)

Thanks for this lesson.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#264

Post by groundCode »

L_Rahman wrote: post #214
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…

Hi, I think you could have massaged the snark in the sentence that says "Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, most people do not have experience with a true UNIX OS" but other than that I think you should walk away thinking that your communication was clear, straight-forward and respectful. Here's what happened - the recruiter had a list of keywords, received a large volume of inbound resumes…

This is good advice. If you want the internship/job at a company, you have to get your foot in the door. That means going through the recruitment team. Cutting off your nose to spite your face doesn't often result in job offers. Get through the recruitment and make it better from the inside.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#265

Post by Andrenid »

victor___ wrote: post #260

I interned at Facebook a while back (pre-IPO). On the first day of onboarding my neighbor was struggling to follow the instructions - it turned out he'd never used bash or any Unix-like system before. Anyway, I guess he figured it out since he did well enough to get a return offer. Apparently things have changed a bit.

No, that neighbour is now just interviewing for internships :)

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#266

Post by microtonal »

foo101 wrote: post #163
derenrich wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, honestly I would've been similarly frustrated. The recruiter seems like they are being needlessly bureaucratic. Either they are familiar with Unix and thus should know that Unix-like is synonymous with Unix nowadays or they aren't and they should take your word. Maybe you were a little condescending but it happens and rejecting someone on the basis of this exchange seems mad to me. If FB doesn't reverse their dec…

Unix-like systems are not synonymous with Unix systems nowadays. * Solaris, HP-UX and AIX are Unix systems. * FreeBSD and Debian GNU/Linux are Unix-like systems but not Unix systems. When technology people like us are debating over this terminology, I think it makes sense to cut the recruiter some slack.

For which definition of UNIX? There are 'genetic unices' - systems that directly descent from AT&T UNIX. From your list Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and FreeBSD are (genetic) UNIX, since they all descent from AT&T UNIX (FreeBSD via the Berkely distribution of UNIX).

Then there are 'trademark unices', which are systems that implement the Single UNIX Specification and are certified to be compliant. Such a system does not need to be a descendant of AT&T UNIX. From your list, Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX are (trademark) UNIX [1]. Note that there is also a RHEL-deriver Linux distribution, EulerOS, that is a certified UNIX.

[1] https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#268

Post by kev009 »

flukus wrote: post #184
kev009 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can basically buy the right to call yourself UNIX today from The Open Group. The most extreme example of this is z/OS, but Mac OS is also UNIX. As for a singular product it was always kind of muddy. There was early UNIX, Research UNIX, BSD and then System III and System V as products from AT&T. The last product that was "pure" UNIX was System V Release 4. You could buy it into the 90s for 3B2s and PCs. It had lot…

Could we crowd fund a campaign to buy a unix license for linux and end this silliness once and for all?

It would be pretty comical to do so, just to muddy the already muddy term. But it has very little practical utility. I don't think any regulatory body requires a "real" UNIX these days -- sure, some products require a particular OS like AIX but I haven't heard of a spec/customer/vendor demanding "UNIX". Most clueful people would talk in terms of POSIX and {POSIX, UNIX, Linux}-like to describe the desire for portable software APIs or whatever.

Upon more thought, maybe all caps UNIX should refer to the legacy AT&T system. In the modern lexicon, Unix is mainly two things: a command environment (i.e. a shell with UNIX-like built ins and pipes) and a philosophy (shell, simple short commands, pipes, hierarchical file system, less is more etc). This use still has great meaning to me and I wish more people would spend the time to learn the culture, reading books like those by author Peter H. Salus. Using those definitions, it should still be common to talk about "Unix shell scripting" or thinking about software design in a "Unix environment", even if that were to execute entirely on Linux in practice.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#269

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

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 be dense. You acted wholly appropriately. Facebook happened to hire a bad recruiter. What could you do but correct him or her?

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#270

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

loeg wrote: post #187
foo101 wrote: post #130

Here are the facts about Unix. * The name "UNIX" or "Unix" is trademarked. * AIX, Solaris and HP-UX are certified Unix systems. These are bonafide Unix systems and there indeed are software developers today who work with these Unix systems.[2] * The set of Unix-like systems is a superset of the set of Unix systems. The set of Unix-like systems include systems like Linux, FreeBSD, etc. which the set of certified Unix…

Actually you're wrong about Linux not being included in the certified set. Inspur K-UX, a Linux distro based on RHEL, is a certified UNIX system. As is EulerOS. Interestingly, MacOS is included in the certified UNIX list. Most of its userspace and a lot of its kernel interfaces come from FreeBSD. So in a way, some of FreeBSD is a certified Unix. Curiously enough, Oracle just killed Solaris. AIX is old. Is it dead? La…

Solaris lives on in illumos and derivatives like Joyent's (now a subsidiary of Samsung) SmatOS. Sure these aren't "Solaris", but it would be a shame if the publicity around Oracle's decision were to kill these projects as well.
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