Its weird to see people encourage the guy for this. If you can't bite your tongue in order deal with someone who is clearly not getting it, what else are you going to slam the brakes on progress for? It was in your best interest to just let it go, then clarify in the follow up interview or when it came to a technically adept person. I get the arguments that the HR recruiter was a bit off a buffoon, but at the abstrac…
Facebook recruiting and Unix systems
421–430 of 497 posts
Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems
#422Its weird to see people encourage the guy for this. If you can't bite your tongue in order deal with someone who is clearly not getting it, what else are you going to slam the brakes on progress for? It was in your best interest to just let it go, then clarify in the follow up interview or when it came to a technically adept person. I get the arguments that the HR recruiter was a bit off a buffoon, but at the abstrac…
I used to interview at Google and I've dealt with entitled candidates, but this reads about as polite as I could expect without being a complete pushover.
Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems
#423Earlier quoted context omitted.
This follow-up shows a lot of maturity. Both sides are obviously at fault here, although you instigated it. I suspect you could still get the internship if you send an apology like "Sorry for my previous emails they were out of line. You're essentially correct and here's an updated resume to reflect that."
Thank you - I actually did send an apology email, but since I'm pretty sure I'm not quite qualified for the position, I didn't bother pursuing it any further than that.
Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems
#424Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook reaches out to me every few months and don't have a degree. I don't have the time or patience to study for their fresh-out-of-cs-grad style interview process though so only go with companies that test for what actually happens on the job vs in a text book, of which there are plenty.
Honestly, my best guess for why this kind of interview is used is that it's just an intelligence test. It's worked extremely well for me: I'm very upfront about the fact that I don't expect them to _know_ anything (it would probably be tough for me to do something as simple as Dijkstra's on a whiteboard under time pressure), but that I want to see how they think. I recently had a guy with an incredibly impressive res…
Compare this to other companies, both large and small who have asked more reasonable challenges such as; "set up MySQL master/slave replication," "write a script that parses a text file in Python," "build a 2-tier architecture through terraform," "troubleshoot these issues on a broken server." Obviously these aren't as fancy as "implement an algorithm on a whiteboard," but it shows me as a candidate/potential candidate what type of problems to expect on the job. As a DevOps person I don't believe in whiteboarding for interviews, nor do I believe it should be a thing for devs, but if a company prefers to interview with this method like Facebook and Google (have received study material for both), I'll continue to focus on the companies who are practical about interviewing instead as it's worked out fine so far for my career path.
Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here's the sad fact: If I were a hiring manager at Facebook and saw your post, I would slap my forehead in frustration in complete empathy with you. That recruiter is not only clueless, but shows a nearly bot-like level of comprehension of the subject they're supposedly recruiting for, which I personally find quite rude on their part. Then, because I'm at Facebook , I would just move on, because honestly anything tha…
> That recruiter is not only clueless Look on the bright side: automation is likely to put recruiter-as-grep out of a job soon.
Yay?
Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems
#426Its weird to see people encourage the guy for this. If you can't bite your tongue in order deal with someone who is clearly not getting it, what else are you going to slam the brakes on progress for? It was in your best interest to just let it go, then clarify in the follow up interview or when it came to a technically adept person. I get the arguments that the HR recruiter was a bit off a buffoon, but at the abstrac…
Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems
#427Its weird to see people encourage the guy for this. If you can't bite your tongue in order deal with someone who is clearly not getting it, what else are you going to slam the brakes on progress for? It was in your best interest to just let it go, then clarify in the follow up interview or when it came to a technically adept person. I get the arguments that the HR recruiter was a bit off a buffoon, but at the abstrac…
It's a new-grad. They're generally not going to be masters of etiquette when facing social challenges.
There are many new grads who are capable of appropriately dealing with social challenges. Those who can't have only themselves to blame.
Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems
#428Hey 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…
Commenting just to let you know. You did nothing wrong. Never forget who reached for who. It's FB in desperate need that they pick workers from students these days. Also, trying to (yuck) trick you into providing names of others companies - hahaha - it's like you asking him: what's the maximum salary FB can offer or similar questions. Disgusting simply because any sane person (your friend e.g.) would suggest you neve…
This is the most important comment in this entire thread.
Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems
#429Hey 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…