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

371–380 of 497 posts

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#371

Post by PhoneRemote »

golergka wrote: post #355
solatic wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. I thought we were talking about university students studying CS or related discipline? How on earth would a uni student in CS don't know about piping commands? Does this actually happen? I dropped out of uni after 1,5 years, and I studied bio…

> How on earth would a uni student in CS don't know about piping commands?

Beyond the obvious ones, lots and lots of valid reasons this could happen:

1. Student is entirely new to programming as a concept and just started in university. Not every fresh CS student has been programming since birth.

2. Student uses the shell entirely for basic commands and honestly doesn't even realize it can be used for more advanced things

3. Student is really interested in the "Science" part of CS and isn't planning on being a developer. Plenty of brilliant CS minds are awful at the programming part but extremely adept at, say, consensus protocols.

Your basic first year CS curriculum might offer a crash course in things like basic shell scripting, but it's certainly not a given. Computer Science is a very broad field and it's arguably a huge waste of time for them to teach you how to pipe commands when they could be teaching you something you can't pick up in 10 minutes, like automata theory.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#372

Post by atdt »

feelin_googley wrote: post #254
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…

Since you are soliciting feedback, I think you can do better than Facebook. You have taken the time at university to learn about the origins of "UNIX" and about portability, but it seems clear to me you do not need to know about these things for this Facebook internship. If you want this knowledge to be acknowledged and valued, if you want to put it into practice, then perhaps Facebook is not the proper place for thi…

Oh, come on. I work at Google. I am sure Facebook is a very fine place to work. They have plenty of very smart people working on very interesting projects. Don't be a snob.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#373

Post by loopbit »

golergka wrote: post #355
solatic wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. I thought we were talking about university students studying CS or related discipline? How on earth would a uni student in CS don't know about piping commands? Does this actually happen? I dropped out of uni after 1,5 years, and I studied bio…

Yes, it happens. And much worse.

Many interns I've been in charge of were not comfortable in the command line and most had no experience outside of windows. Writing shell scripts? The everything-is-a-file concept in Unix? You're lucky if they know what you are talking about.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#374

Post by anonu »

Working at a large corporation is knowing when to pick your battles. IMHO the candidate failed before he even got started. Picking your battles means figuring out if putting up a fight or being pedantic about something is worth it. What are you getting out of it except for some sort of sense of "winning" in the short term. Corporate survival is about thinking long term, and often doing or saying something to keep moving forward. Not suggesting one iota to compromise the quality of your work or your moral perspectives. Just saying there's a delicate balance to surviving in any corporate setting.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#375

Post by skj »

verbify wrote: post #368
pwdisswordfish wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, pwdisswordfish, accept all responsibility for all of my posts, past, present, and future.

Ironically, you could always claim that acceptance of responsibility was written by someone else (and perhaps it was).

That's the joke...

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#376

Post by krallja »

jacobush wrote: post #302
xlii wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an old joke about janitor who couldn't work for Microsoft because he didn't get an email. (Link: http://www.angelfire.com/oh3/momathome/janitor.html ) What has been done has been done and there is no place for regrets. Facebook might (along with its partner and associates) be a big workplace but it definitely isn't the only launchpad for a happy & successful career. He came a little bit snarky, true, but I y…

The gif counter on the bottom of that page is even working!

So is the automatic redirect to malware!

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#377

Post by nol13 »

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…

TL;DR

"ya was pretty much all true, but writing this to show i'm not an asshole to hopefully not fuck up any future job prospects with other recruiters who might read this"

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#378

Post by Jedd »

Spooky23 wrote: post #150
type0 wrote: post #8

Recruiter: We're looking for someone to fix the pipes. You: Yes, I'm a qualified plumber and can do the job. Recruiter: Sure, but can you fix our pipes? You: Off course, that is is what I was trained to do. Recruiter: You keep saying you're a plumber but we need someone to fix our pipes You: I can do it. Recruiter: we need someone who have worked with pipes. You: I have worked with those. Recruiter: Sure, but we need…

A more apropos version: Recuiter: we need someone who can work with copper and pex pipes. Your resume says that you work with PEX You: I can do plumbing. I have connected PEX to copper before. Recruiter: Do you have experience installing copper? You: Building codes allow you to substitute PEX for copper pipe. I have used PEX with copper. Recruiter: we need someone to work with copper. Thank you.

Recruiter: We need someone who knows apropos is an adverb, and won't use it where they probably want 'appropriate'.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#379

Post by dsr_ »

throwaway76543 wrote: post #172
aspyrx wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RE: Linux distros, I am familiar with Ubuntu, Debian, and Arch Linux. To some extent RHEL as well. RE: Unix (commercial brand names), none. It was my fault that I assumed the recruiter meant UNIX-like systems. I can claim experience with developing userland applications portable across POSIX-compliant systems, as well as some understanding of lower-level operating system concepts. However, to be honest it seems I am…

The recruiter did mean UNIX-like systems. There exists no useful set of experience which is common among pedantically defined "UNIX" and which excludes UNIX-like systems. The pedantic definition-lawyer type responses you've gotten are absurd. A role might specifically require extensive AIX experience in particular -- and if it did you would say you needed "AIX experience" -- never some vague umbrella family of "UNIX…

"The recruiter did mean UNIX-like systems."

Nope. The hiring manager meant that.

The recruiter in this case is a pattern-matching engine with no internal semantics, as a result of Facebook hiring them and training them but not educating them.

Eventually they'll notice that they are only seeing car salesmen with extensive experience in selling brown cars with walnut dashboards, rather than carpenters. [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15190438 ]

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#380

Post by pwdisswordfish »

verbify wrote: post #368
pwdisswordfish wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, pwdisswordfish, accept all responsibility for all of my posts, past, present, and future.

Ironically, you could always claim that acceptance of responsibility was written by someone else (and perhaps it was).

I am verbify, this actually works
Post reply on HN