441–450 of 497 posts
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…
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?
I dont make the rules. If your job is procuring or selling a resource and you have little/no appreciation of said resource then you're effectively a spam bot.
Imagine a car salesman said to you "Im a low level guy. I dont really know cars. But I bet you'd look great in this blue one". Does that sound acceptable to you?
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…
Hi, I think you could have massaged the snark in the sentence that says "Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, most people do not have experience with a true UNIX OS" but other than that I think you should walk away thinking that your communication was clear, straight-forward and respectful. Here's what happened - the recruiter had a list of keywords, received a large volume of inbound resumes…
I feel like this is one of the most fundamental skills I learned in school. You don't answer the actual question, you provide the response that they are looking for, even if those are different. This is doubly true for machine graded multiple choice exams.
We had a biology teacher in high school who, in order to keep things fair, made the system very clear: when answering essay questions, he had a list of a dozen or so points he wanted you to mention, and you were graded by how many you hit. It didn't matter if you had a brilliant thesis or whatever, if you didn't recite the relevant parts of the book and lectures back, you lost credit.
The biology barely matters, but I couldn't have asked for better training in dealing with recruiter (and hard headed managers, beurocrats, etc).
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I agree with your agreement in principle, but the real mistake was not simply adding Unix to the skills list to begin with, and keeping POSIX and Linux. It's not really a lie, and it's pretty obvious from the first email what's going on with this recruiter. Besides, if he's touched a Macbook, he's used UNIX in some form, because at least 7 versions of OSX have been certified as Unix [0]. I don't think I'd have though…
I don't see a recruiter not knowing the particulars of POSIX/UNIX differences as the red flag (heck, I'm not even sure I could answer that question). The red flag to me is that the Kafkaesque exchange that followed, I suspect, is the product of the overall recruiting culture rather than a lone recruiter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hi, I think you could have massaged the snark in the sentence that says "Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, most people do not have experience with a true UNIX OS" but other than that I think you should walk away thinking that your communication was clear, straight-forward and respectful. Here's what happened - the recruiter had a list of keywords, received a large volume of inbound resumes…
That's the most cringy part - in the second iteration you'll note he did list UNIX as a skill, but then the recruiter went on about the lack of Linux experience (which he had just replaced)! Like playing whack-a-mole.
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…
True, but consider that some commenters might be commenting as end users of open source UNIX-like OS, not as salaried software developers.
In that case, there is nothing in this email exchange to suggest he could not be a valuable contributor to a UNIX-like project, paid or unpaid.
As an end user, I could care less whether developers are adept at dealing with recruiters (though I might sympathize them for the BS they must endure).
What I care about as an end user is whether they can write portable code.
Given that these companies are dedicated to selling web ads, it really makes me wonder how "progress" would be defined in your chosen context.
I am not sure that UNIX or Linux would even exist were it not for the type of person you are describing.
There is nothing wrong with having technical understanding or working elsewhere besides companies selling web ads. That is where true "progress" has come from in the past and I think it is likely to come from in future.
Just my opinion.
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…
People fail FizzBuzz. 'Nuff said.
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…
Anyone who is old enough to remember MUDs feels your pain - it's a real shame that you had to test HR inputs this way though! $ CROSS DRAWBRIDGE CANNOT CROSS DRAWBRIDGE $ TRAVERSE DRAWBRIDGE CANNOT TRAVERSE DRAWBRIDGE $ ABANDON DRAWBRIDGE YOU REALIZE THAT YOUR EFFORTS ARE WASTED TRYING TO EXPLAIN YOUR QUEST TO A LOW LEVEL GUARD. YOUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE. GO NORTH, WEST, SOUTH OR EAST (?) Your application fo…
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…
Por examplo: I get the arguments that Stanley was a bit of a buffoon, but at the abstract level, the HR person lacked the pragmatism and interpersonal skills to identify a possible problem with a job description, and at the very least run it by the hiring manager if they were not allowed and/or comfortable adjusting the must-fit qualifications themselves.
I see a few people like this in every company and they most definitely hold up progress. Most of them get fired, rigidly filtering resumes by well-defined criteria isn't the only facet of being a recruiter. Working to help build teams is a mix of being assertive when its important and bridging the gap between what was said and what is desired, much like life. A failure to distinguish between the two types of situations is a pretty big flaw for anyone who will be working as part of a team.