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Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

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Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#371

Post by kragen »

rlpb wrote: post #366
kragen wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i installed ubuntu or kubuntu on most of my new machines since it came out, but for my newest install i picked debian instead, especially since the softening of the debian social contract eliminated most of the install hassles because i usually use xpdf for pdf files and ubuntu dropped it https://askubuntu.com/questions/1245518/how-to-install-xpdf-... i was skeptical about ubuntu's business prospects when mark pitche…

> because i usually use xpdf for pdf files and ubuntu dropped it FWIW, Ubuntu only didn't ship xpdf in 20.04. It's back in 22.04. Looking at the history of the package in Debian, it looks like it was on "life support" for a while in Debian by people I recognise as Ubuntu developers, but then also got removed from Debian testing for the same reason. However Debian didn't have a release at all in 2020, so it didn't mis…

i have 20.04 installed here (should i confess that publicly?) and the absence of xpdf has been a irritation literally every day for months

a more rational person would have compiled xpdf from source obviously

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#372

Post by JohnFen »

imiric wrote: post #358
matheusmoreira wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why do these companies insist on these incredibly long hiring processes? Clearly it must not be working if candidates are moving on before they're hired.

They don't insist on it. It's just the way they operate. Everything takes ages in the corporate world. Every hiring decision needs to be signed off by interviewers, managers, HR, and sometimes even executives. Someone in this chain is usually on vacation, but there's no clear replacement, so someone else needs to be brought up to speed. Meetings need to take place for everyone to touch base, and discuss the candidate…

> Everything takes ages in the corporate world

But not everywhere. I've been hired by a couple of major tech companies and didn't have to go through such an insane, lengthy process as this. I think a lot of it depends on the corporate culture.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#373

Post by valzam »

chihuahua wrote: post #273
Aeolun wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re saving money on not buying equipment for their employees.

I'm surprised Amazon didn't come up with that idea a long time ago.

I can only imagine that the amount of money you have to spend on IT for a myriad of different devices + the security implications + the hurdle to get non-technical people to manage their own devices is just not worth it. Let's say amazon has 100k white-collar workers. If they all the 1k USD devices on avg that's 100mio dollars. That's < 0.1% of their !quarterly! revenue.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#374

Post by jjgreen »

smeagull wrote: post #335
TrackerFF wrote: post #175

Having previously worked at a place where it took minimum 3 months to hire someone (but often 6-12), I'd be amazed if Canonical actually ever gets to hire their first choices. What happened was this: By the time the first pick hires had been cleared, they had gotten another job. Same with second pick. Maybe even third, too. Most people don't have the luxury or will to just sit and twiddle their thumbs for months and…

Actually if you're slow enough, you can get them the next time around. I've had it before where I got an offer when I was in a job search from a place I approached from the last time I was in a job search.

Recruitment aliasing!

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#375

Post by allan_s »

philovivero wrote: post #367
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends where you're going. Villas Las Estrellas requires an appendix removal.

I'm assuming this is a joke of some sort?

No he's not joking https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180810-villas-las-estre...

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#376

Post by Panzer04 »

tristor wrote: post #139
EatingWithForks wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think it's especially rich that HR people think you're wasting /their/ time when they make you an insultingly low offer after extensive interviewing, especially considering there's a massive skills gap between tech workers and HR folks (who are a dime a dozen). I agree with everything up until this portion. I think HR can be a very difficult job, in a way that's quite similar to say security positions. If an HR p…

My comment wasn't saying that HR wasn't important or that their job was easy, it's saying that it doesn't require skills which are hard to acquire in the labor market. If we use credentials as a corollary for skills (which, ironically, is understating my case), then there are a vastly higher number of available persons in the labor market with the necessary credentials/skills to be in an HR role than to be in a techn…

I see your point, but it's worth being clear about the meaning of "hard" here.

There's hard as in effortful, which certainly you could make the argument that many jobs eclipse software or other technical positions.

And there's hard as in difficult, or technical, or complicated, etc. This is more difficult to describe since what's complex or impossible to one person is trivial for another.

The second bucket is how most technical jobs play out. It's easy to write off the "get skilled" requirement of these jobs, but that's usually a difficult endeavour itself, usually involving a few years of higher education (in the normal case)

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#377

Post by antod »

pydry wrote: post #238
s_dev wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't read this comments as anything other than virtue signalling. You can call Mark Shuttleworth an asshole and still use Ubuntu without being a hypocrite.

Ive been feeling like Ubuntu has been failing technically for years and this thread is really helping explain why.

But these factors were also in place for their distro ascendency too, so you probably can't blame the factors. If anything, long term success itself is more likely to explain eventual hubris, complacency then decline.

I still use Ubuntu at home, but it's probably just inertia at this point. I don't hate it, but I also don't really like it the way I used to.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#378

Post by iraqmtpizza »

phist_mcgee wrote: post #357
iraqmtpizza wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he's an asshole because he wants to work with extraordinary people and made fun of george bush?

Twisting the signal/noise knob this way may not attract all or even the right kind of extraordinary people you think you will.

The classic Madeleine Albright-Aaron Swartz dichotomy. Gee, that's a tough call LOL

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#379

Post by rlpb »

kragen wrote: post #371
rlpb wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because i usually use xpdf for pdf files and ubuntu dropped it FWIW, Ubuntu only didn't ship xpdf in 20.04. It's back in 22.04. Looking at the history of the package in Debian, it looks like it was on "life support" for a while in Debian by people I recognise as Ubuntu developers, but then also got removed from Debian testing for the same reason. However Debian didn't have a release at all in 2020, so it didn't mis…

i have 20.04 installed here (should i confess that publicly?) and the absence of xpdf has been a irritation literally every day for months a more rational person would have compiled xpdf from source obviously

You could probably grab the next version that was published to Debian (3.04-14), throw it into a PPA to build against 20.04 and it would probably work. People have also published this kind of thing as an update in the official repositories in the past in this sort of case where the fix wasn't available at the time of release so it's missing from just one release.

I appreciate that this is all a non-trivial exercise for someone not familiar with the tooling though.

Re: Canonical’s recruitment process is long and complex

#380

Post by [deleted] »

benhoyt wrote: post #353

In case it helps anyone, here's a recent blog article written by Daniele Procida (a director of engineering at Canonical, responsible for documentation) that helps explain the motivation for our written interview: https://ubuntu.com/blog/written-interviews - "Not just an annoying list of questions" Disclaimer: I work for Canonical and help with recruiting. I'd love it if our hiring process was shorter or tighter, but…

[deleted]
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