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

Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

imgur.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 497 posts

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#271

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

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…

Nothing in that guy's email was rude or unprofessional.

Is just communicating a fact politely, "not nice"?

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#272

Post by peteretep »

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…

I'm a recruiter, your responses were spot-on. I think I'd have probably been a lot ruder a lot earlier than you were.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#273

Post by Annatar »

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…

You were not condescending, what you wrote about POSIX are facts (with a slight addendum that if you grew up on Solaris, HP-UX and IRIX like some of us, those are true UNIXes). You simply had the misfortune to run into an inexperienced recruiter. It happens often whereas it shouldn't happen at all: I've been preaching for years that IT professionals should be recruiting other professionals, instead of companies putting up someone who isn't formally trained in computer science to do something they don't really understand. After my own experience, I'm of deep and firm belief that recruiting good people is part of a social contract of every good IT professional. It is too critical to be left in the hands of the non-practitioners.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#274

Post by bodz »

nulagrithom wrote: post #237
obstacle1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The recruiter's response isn't irrational. Very clear instructions are being given: put UNIX and Linux on your resume . Not tell me via e-mail. Then candidate goes ahead and 'educates' the recruiter, and puts something other than UNIX (UNIX-like) on the resume. i.e., does not follow instructions. Clear no hire.

But he put UNIX on his resume, and not UNIX-like. There's a screenshot that shows this.

There are multiple screenshots of his resume. One of them says "UNIX", but does not include "Linux". The recruiter asked him to put both Unix and Linux on his resume. He then updated it to say "Linux and Unix-like". The recruiter again asked him to specifically put "Unix and Linux", but he still didn't.

The recruiter does appear to be a little clueless with the terminology, but there could be several reasons for this. Oftentimes resumes are input into an automated system that searches for very specific keywords, or the resume might be going to an executive who is very specific about what they are looking for.

At the end of the day, the recruiter gave very clear instructions on what to do. If Stanley had just followed those instructions and re-sent his resume, he'd probably be fine. Instead, he chose to be snarky and condescending in his response. The recruiter was very professional and STILL gave him a chance to fix his resume and re-send, but he still didn't.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#275

Post by Jdam »

I'm so tired of this Linux/Unix/Posix religious BS. Earning money with software development for 7+ years now and mostly using macOS, Suse and Ubuntu (to precisely name it), I'm wondering if this Posix debate is applicable anywhere outside school and Wikipedia.

Of course, the recruiter is just a recruiter but with this "I know it all & better"-attitude, when the intention was absolutely clear, having no deal was the right choice for fb.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#276

Post by scelerat »

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…

You dodged a bullet. If a recruiter is that dense, that doesn't speak well for the company they represent (they are helping to recruit others, too!) You can do better. Nothing in your response was wrong or out of line.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#277

Post by foolfoolz »

bshanks wrote: post #208
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…

Stanley did

email 1: I want to apply

email 2: I fixed my resume

email 3: my fix didn't work? you must be wrong

email 4: you are still wrong

but at email 3 you clearly aren't getting it and should ASK them what they want

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#278

Post by Annatar »

gluggymug wrote: post #179
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…

If you are not an old fart like myself, you probably haven't used an actual Unix system but back in the days before the popularity of Linux, you'd see a lot of Solaris. You stuck to your guns and didn't just lie about Unix experience, so I commend you. But if you really want the job, next time just lie and set them straight once you've gotten an interview. It is splitting hairs to make a big deal out of actual Unix e…

It is splitting hairs to make a big deal out of actual Unix experience vs Linux experience.

This only holds true if one is a UNIX Graybeard, otherwise, GNU/Linux is rife with pitfalls and minefields for the unwary. Shell scripting and GNU-isms or bash-isms is an example of this, or using GNU specific functions or semantics when programming yet another. There are many such landmines lying in wait on GNU/Linux, waiting to blow one's legs off. The BSD guys have been trying to raise awareness of this for years.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#279

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

I had a similar experience with a recruiter at Google ... only worse. Recruiters are the gatekeepers. In my case I was waiting for an answer on my interview at Google for 6 months ... just radio silence with no reply.

If you are lucky, maybe you have some friends at Facebook that can intervene on your behalf. If not, there's other companies.

I had friends at Google to help me get an answer. But I decided I never wanted to work for Google based on how callously they treated me during the interview process. It became clear to me that I was not a high priority person to them ... just a fungible commodity. This is true, but nobody likes to be shown the truth of their value like that.

I knew other people with other talents that were treated really well by Google. My skillset was not in that high demand ... or there were plenty of other candidates. But I felt like Google did not need to treat me like garbage.

After that I went and joined a startup. Quite happy now. We stole a few engineers from Google even :)

I always make sure we get back to our interview candidates as quickly as possible. I won't let us turn into a callous Google.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#280

Post by spawarotti »

kstenerud wrote: post #218

Take this as a lesson in people handling. As a rule when dealing with business situations: - Keep messages simple. Less information to process is better. - If the response seems strange, start by assuming miscommunication and misunderstanding. Do not respond with more complicated information. - When in doubt, say what they are expecting to hear and sort it out later when you talk voice or in person. A more fruitful e…

That was my thought all along. My suspicion is one of the directives of the recruiter is to weed out people that are getting hung up on proving their point and/or stubbornly arguing about inconsequential things. The recruiter gave the candidate multiple chances to redeem himself, but no cigar.
Post reply on HN