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I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

triplebyte.com

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Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#381

Post by Ntrails »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #362
marvy wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I partly agree and yet... surely the candidate noticed that communicating was difficult?

If they're never getting the feedback that they're hard to follow, maybe they don't?

There is a point where you realise you don't understand, and are too embarrassed to ask someone to repeat for the fourth time. So you kinda take a guess and move on to something else.

It may not be obvious to the other party that you didn't understand depending how well you covered.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#382

Post by gaius »

will4274 wrote: post #308
wildmusings wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the point of legal risk, I’m concerned by the authors naïveté in believing that as long as you’re not actually discriminating based on race/sex/religion, you won’t be accused of it. The more data you put out there, the more likely that someone will crunch it and find some statistical patterns that they will label “racism” or "sexism". Even if you’re innocent, you will get dragged through the mud in the press and m…

My friend works for a large consulting company (you've heard of them). They were hired by a client who needed to reduce their labor costs by 10-15% (read: fire people) because they were hemorrhaging money. The team of consultants asked to NOT be given any performance data - and recommended that the consulting team handle the layoffs and fire randomly - this immunized the client from any discrimination lawsuits and wa…

The team of consultants asked to NOT be given any performance data

I call shenanigans, because people are not made redundant, positions are. Who gets laid off is related to their job not existing anymore, nothing to do with them as an individual person.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#383

Post by jefftk »

fogetti wrote: post #323
btilly wrote: post #141

I believe that the article is fundamentally wrong. The bulk of the article is true. But companies are not lying when they say that legal risk is a reason not to send feedback. Triplebyte is in the unusual position of being able to say, "Everyone who has enough technical skill gets through the interview." And that fact is sufficient to defuse their risk. But real companies don't have the luxury of ignoring non-technic…

I am wondering why are the technical interviews are put before the personal interviews then? If none of the technical skills matter in light of the soft skills because some candidate has a hair color or accent which bothers a team member, why bother with checking technicality in the first place?

Other companies effectively outsource the first stage of their hiring to Triplebyte. These companies have much more agreement on the "hard" skills than the "soft" skills, and also have an easier time trusting Triplebyte to evaluate the former. A candidate who passes a general technical interview could be a potential culture fit for many companies.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#384

Post by jMyles »

jasonlotito wrote: post #276
jMyles wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was with you until you said that refraining from hiring someone because his accent was too difficult to understand. That's an insane reason - why pass on a good candidate for this reason? Can your company afford this? If you are working closely with this person, it will be 3 months before his accent is sufficiently adjusted. This is a stupid reason to pass.

> why pass on a good candidate for this reason? Given two people otherwise capable of doing the job, one you can easily communicate with, and one you cannot, which would you choose?

If it's just a matter of accent, then I'll decide not to give a fuck about that and hire the very best person. I have done this on two occasions that immediately come to mind (almost certainly others also) and it was obviously the correct decision.

Why the hell do you care about accent? If you talk to someone every day, they can have a fucking martian accent and you'll learn to understand it.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#385

Post by EliRivers »

presscast wrote: post #358
gnicholas wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, if they give concrete technical reasons why people weren't hired in most cases, then telling some people that they were "not a fit" could actually raise a red flag. Basically, it tells them that there was no technical reason not to hire them, which raises the question of whether it was something illegitimate.

This gets right to the heart of the issue, IMHO. Hiring has become such a litigation-prone process that companies are now incentivized to leak as little information as possible. It's sad because nobody wins -- companies get sued for petty nothings, candidates who have been wronged have no recourse, and candidates aren't given the feedback they need to improve themselves. Our startup isn't hiring yet, but I must confe…

Hiring has become such a litigation-prone

Where? I've never seen anyone sue a company for not hiring them, and no company I've ever worked at has been sued for not hiring someone. If it was litigation-prone, I'd expect to see some litigation. I don't work in the US; maybe this is a weird US thing? Maybe people who do work in the US can give us some numbers? What proportion of companies one has worked for have been sued for not hiring someone? Or in a given year, what proportion of rejected interview candidates come back to sue the company?

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#386

Post by Shaddox »

dunpeal wrote: post #316
bglazer wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be totally honest, I always find these stats about some x% > 50% failure to program at all totally unbelievable. What do these people do all day, if not design and build software? Yet they're apparently completely unable to write code? How is that possible? I understand that there is always a certain amount of slack and underperformance but any workforce would be completely paralyzed by 70% completely incompetent…

> What do these people do all day, if not design and build software? Indeed this is a fascinating question, and I explored it a few times. Some folks who have multiple years of "software engineering" on their resume worked in a place where they did some form of "paint by numbers" programming, producing some work by modifying templates with limited (at best) understanding beyond the specific blanks they were filling.…

How do I stop being a bottom feeder?

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#387

Post by binmanthrowaway »

btilly wrote: post #141

I believe that the article is fundamentally wrong. The bulk of the article is true. But companies are not lying when they say that legal risk is a reason not to send feedback. Triplebyte is in the unusual position of being able to say, "Everyone who has enough technical skill gets through the interview." And that fact is sufficient to defuse their risk. But real companies don't have the luxury of ignoring non-technic…

The accent thing could be viewed as not hiring someone on the grounds of disability. If you can't understand how someone speaks, you can always communicate via Slack or email.

The lunch one - if the argument was not related to work, then I can't see an issue. You don't have to talk personal stuff to the co-workers, so unless the conversation wasn't mandatory and wasn't initiated by the candidate, then no issue here.

Only really valid cause is the firework.

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#389

Post by austenallred »

fogetti wrote: post #323
btilly wrote: post #141

I believe that the article is fundamentally wrong. The bulk of the article is true. But companies are not lying when they say that legal risk is a reason not to send feedback. Triplebyte is in the unusual position of being able to say, "Everyone who has enough technical skill gets through the interview." And that fact is sufficient to defuse their risk. But real companies don't have the luxury of ignoring non-technic…

I am wondering why are the technical interviews are put before the personal interviews then? If none of the technical skills matter in light of the soft skills because some candidate has a hair color or accent which bothers a team member, why bother with checking technicality in the first place?

Because most people applying for programming jobs can’t write fizzbuzz and it’s easier to verify than “culture fit”

Re: I know why rejection emails suck – I write them

#390

Post by carlmr »

ericdykstra wrote: post #370
hm10 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well that sucks for the person if they were rejected because of their accent and no feedback was given. All that hard work in preparing for interviews and you don't even know for sure why they didn't pick you.

This is a small part of why anti-discrimination laws are harmful. Companies can't be honest because they need to cover for potential discrimination lawsuits. If you go a step further, a truly racist company is never going to hire someone of a race they look down on, but they can't put anything on a job description about it, so they just end up wasting a minority's time.

>they just end up wasting a minority's time.

They also waste their own time, so there's some good coming out of it.

But I wouldn't say unintelligible accent is racism. I've met some unintelligible people that were born and raised where I live.

An accent is also something you can change (even though it's hard). So it would be really valuable feedback to the person who's not getting it.

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