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Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

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Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#41

Post by ajross »

eridius wrote: post #24
mquander wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verbatim exchange: Thanks for the quick response and clarifications. Experience with Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems is largely transferrable thanks to the standardization that resulted from the POSIX specification. As a result, the terms "POSIX" and "UNIX-like" by-and-large refer to the same thing. My experiences are in particular with developing software for Linux platforms, which are the most popular o…

A professional communicator tailors their communication to their audience. Stanley's initial explanation was pretty good, but since the recruiter didn't seem to understand it, Stanley should have adjusted his approach instead of doubling down.

That's not incorrect, but at the same time it's not improbable that he was essentially trolling at this point and expecting to show this nonsense to his peers (which worked!).

Solid engineers, even ones still in school, know who they are and that their skills are valuable. To this candidate the value of any one recruiter is near-zero. He was chasing lols, basically.

The story here is that Facebook messed up by having this person front their recruiting efforts, not that Stanley Zhang was denied a job.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#42

Post by flukus »

mquander wrote: post #32
eridius wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A professional communicator tailors their communication to their audience. Stanley's initial explanation was pretty good, but since the recruiter didn't seem to understand it, Stanley should have adjusted his approach instead of doubling down.

I'm sure he could have done a better job communicating to the recruiter. You could tell he was slightly irritated, and maybe somehow he could have figured out a different framing that the recruiter would understand. (But note that at the end, he changed his strategy and said simply that he had experience with Linux and UNIX, and the recruiter still didn't care. It really isn't clear whether there was any approach tha…

> He did like a 75% good job.

I'd say a 75% good job for a fresh grad is a really good score. Explaining technical jargon to the computer illiterate is not really something you can learn at school.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#43

Post by JackFr »

kichik wrote: post #29

In my home country we say sometimes it's better being smart than right. The recruiter is doing their job and antagonizing them, no matter how right you are, is not the smart move.

No - the recruiter is not doing their job. They are marking time in a role and collecting a paycheck, but decidedly not doing their job.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#44

Post by auxym »

davidw wrote: post #21
throwaway2016a wrote: post #12

Somewhat on topic. Does anyone use actual Unix? Is it even something you can install anymore?

His response about the 70ies is off. I used IRIX, Solaris, and a bit of AIX in the late 90ies. Still though... pretty silly stuff.

As a unix sysadmin, my dad worked on tru64 in the 2000's. Mostly switched to linux/vmware in the last years before he retired though.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#46

Post by HarryHirsch »

eridius wrote: post #24
mquander wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Verbatim exchange: Thanks for the quick response and clarifications. Experience with Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems is largely transferrable thanks to the standardization that resulted from the POSIX specification. As a result, the terms "POSIX" and "UNIX-like" by-and-large refer to the same thing. My experiences are in particular with developing software for Linux platforms, which are the most popular o…

A professional communicator tailors their communication to their audience. Stanley's initial explanation was pretty good, but since the recruiter didn't seem to understand it, Stanley should have adjusted his approach instead of doubling down.

The kid was pretty green (when you apply for internships you usually are), he had no idea that first-line screeners at a big-5 company could be that awful. With age comes experience and low expectations but as an undergraduate you can be excused. You might even demand a minimum standard of discourse, interviews go both ways.

Storytime: back then us students were doing a factory tour, we went to Hoechst in Frankfurt (yes, it was that long ago). There was lunch with company research staff in the Jahrhunderthalle (they did have longer time horizons then). Strangely, the majority was from our university. That was puzzling, do they mostly recruit from our university?! They solved the mystery for us, this was a recruitment visit, they wanted us to consider them and wanted to put their best foot forward.

Something happened to the employer-employee relationship in the meantime.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#47

Post by kichik »

JackFr wrote: post #43
kichik wrote: post #29

In my home country we say sometimes it's better being smart than right. The recruiter is doing their job and antagonizing them, no matter how right you are, is not the smart move.

No - the recruiter is not doing their job. They are marking time in a role and collecting a paycheck, but decidedly not doing their job.

And yet that's the hand you've been dealt. You can be right, or you can get the job.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#48

Post by gargarplex »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #39
gargarplex wrote: post #20

Facepalm. Somebody show this to Zuck. Change needs to begin at the top. EDIT: Is it possible that they actually want people with actual UNIX experience? They are recruiting students. Maybe they want someone who has used an actual UNIX system on some kind of emulator for some sort of secret retro initiative. EDIT2: http://www.jbox.dk/sanos/pdp11.htm

Some schools do still maintain a lab of Sun hardware. Extremely weak speculation: Perhaps they are targeting those schools and/or professors, without being explicit about targeting them?

Another possibility is that they are sowing the seeds of confusion in the developer community as part of a larger power grab (c.f. React.js)

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#49

Post by aianus »

kichik wrote: post #37
pweissbrod wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm a recruiter and an intelligent-sounding person comes to me and says theyve used Oberon which is like Modula I would do 30 seconds research and understand if that is true, maybe reach out to my peers for more info. If I didnt bother accepting anything beyond an exact keyword match of something I didnt understand then I was probably a lousy recruiter and likely not worth my paycheck.

In your experience, does it make sense for Facebook to also hire low-level recruiters to go over a mass of students? Would those recruiters be expected to do the same?

If your expectations from a recruiter are this low, might as well replace them with a spam bot, web form, and a recruiting video.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#50

Post by JackFr »

noncoml wrote: post #23

True story, I once got an email from a recruiter asking for someone with experience in C, C+ and C++. No idea if it was a typo for C# or the recruiter thought, we have C and C++, why not add C+ in there to increase our hits. I found it amusing, but didn't start an argument..

Had a former boss who when he was being interviewed (sometime in the 80's) claimed proficiency in Lotus 1, 2, and 3!
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