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No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

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Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#341

Post by AzzieElbab »

reading-at-work wrote: post #260
0x445442 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non paid take home projects... Huge red flag.

I disagree that it's an automatic red flag. 8 hours? Yeah that's too long. But I would rather do a 2 hour take-home project than a 2 hour whiteboard coding interview. Edit to add: as far as getting paid, nobody expects to get paid for an onsite interview so I wouldn't expect to get paid for a take home project either. As long as it takes the same amount of time that the coding portion of an onsite interview reasonabl…

Who said a take-home project won't be followed by 2 hours of whiteboarding?

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#342

Post by CDRdude »

kamaal wrote: post #324
vector_spaces wrote: post #246

I'm so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of "There's nothing in it for the company but risk". I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". I asked them for a couple quick points on what I could have done better. I had ze…

>>I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". Looks like this is a common pattern with take home projects. I faced a very similar problem a few weeks back. Though they called me for the interview. The general approach is to take some ones overn…

> apparently 'cat error.log | grep 'ERROR:' | wc -l' is not how real programmers find error count,

Perhaps real programmers would 'grep -c 'ERROR:' error.log'. I’m not sure what kind of overhead the extra pipes use.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#343

Post by privateSFacct »

nkingsy wrote: post #170
ddelt wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take: you could hire someone who did absolutely well in the interview, and they could find a few weeks into the job that they loathe everyone, and go on a social media rampage. What I’m getting at is, there will always be bad apples, or people who react in a way that damages your organization. But not providing useful feedback to people who ask for it simply because one person went crazy is punishing a lot more p…

This is a tried and true practice in dating, and it translates well to hiring, which is basically the same thing. Most people, ESPECIALLY people who ask you for feedback, do not want feedback. They want to get in a fight with you. Edit: I don't remember ghosting anyone personally in either setting, but it's happened to me plenty. Getting upset about it just means you're new to the experience.

80% of the time this is not true. But 20% of time it is. That's often enough to scare folks away.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#344

Post by pmiller2 »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #243
pmiller2 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using the commonly understood definition of a word is not nitpicking.

So you think the phrase “I’m worried I’ll get sued” would commonly be understood to mean “I’m worried that formal legal proceedings will be initiated against me, but I’m not at all worried that legal proceedings might be threatened in an attempt to leverage me into a settlement”? If somebody hired lawyers to negotiate with another party to pay them damages, under threat of a lawsuit, I’d say that would commonly be de…

> So you think the phrase “I’m worried I’ll get sued” would commonly be understood to mean “I’m worried that formal legal proceedings will be initiated against me, but I’m not at all worried that legal proceedings might be threatened in an attempt to leverage me into a settlement”?

Yes, that is what that means in the English language.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#345

Post by techslave »

wpietri wrote: post #25

I have given it and will continue to give it. Some people do initially react badly to it. Heck, I've reacted badly to it sometimes. But that doesn't mean that it isn't helpful in the long run. My responsibility isn't just to my employers. It's also to my profession and my society, and to the extent I can help well-meaning people to improve, I'm glad to do it.

if it’s a phone screen i always tell then right at the end how i’m going to score them. in person i don’t because they have other ones to get through.

people here say no feedback because they had a bad experience once. meh. of course you’re going to get pushback some times. that’s part of it, not a thing to avoid at all costs.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#346

Post by travisjungroth »

stoops wrote: post #339
gbrown wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the space of things I can do quickly on the spot from practice, and the space of things I can get really good at after a few hours of re-calibrating, research, and trial and error are worlds apart. If I were hiring, I'd 100% look for people who can self-teach above all other technical qualifications (above and beyond whatever the basic competency level for the position is).

I only get an hour together or a bit more if I'm lucky. In terms of people I've hired, if they can solve and code things in real time on a white board, then they can definitely do even better with more time and research. Everyone does better with research, trial, and error. That's not unique. What's unique is problem solving on your feet in a foreign environment. I want those people.

But why? All of my software engineering has been done on my butt in a familiar environment.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#347

Post by techslave »

roland35 wrote: post #195

I just went through interviews with several companies, and a few of the rejections I got was that I was either too senior or too junior for what they were looking for! I think they may have just been letting me down politely though. They must have known how much experience I had ahead of time!

they don’t. resumes are nonsense these days.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#348

Post by jugg1es »

roland35 wrote: post #195

I just went through interviews with several companies, and a few of the rejections I got was that I was either too senior or too junior for what they were looking for! I think they may have just been letting me down politely though. They must have known how much experience I had ahead of time!

Don't be too harsh on your interviewers here. There are many cases where HR gets some vague idea of the open position and then forwards seemingly qualified resumes, which the recipients are then obligated to interview regardless of whether HR understood the need or not.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#349

Post by ianai »

snide wrote: post #322
bigiain wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do it anyway. You know if someone you don't remember from an interaction ages ago emailed you to say "Hey, you probably don't remember this, but you once told me $thing, so I took $action, and now I've achieved $outcome. Thanks you for that, it really helped my career!", it'd make you feel great and would probably be the highlight of your day, right?

As an anecdote. I once received something like this (on Twitter of all places). It was a "you probably don't remember me but..." for someone I'd passed on a decade ago. It really touched me and made me sit down and reflect on my career. The person had gone on to have a successful career being creative. Which honestly, is all we can ever ask. I remembered the person, but not anything about what I'd said that day. I as…

Agree! Be kind. The universe is chaotic to cruel and indifferent enough on its own.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#350

Post by artsyca »

vector_spaces wrote: post #246

I'm so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of "There's nothing in it for the company but risk". I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". I asked them for a couple quick points on what I could have done better. I had ze…

It's the small things this whole industry is a toxic brew I'm sick of all of it
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