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Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

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Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#471

Post by mister_handy »

aspyrx wrote: post #182
chis wrote: post #178

Earlier 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.

If you know enough Linux to do anything useful with Arch, and you're as CS student at CMU, you're almost certainly qualified for a PE internship there.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#472

Post by mister_handy »

3131s wrote: post #296
aspyrx wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh it hurts my soul that you apologized to that clueless tool. Why do you want to work at Facebook anyway?

It looks really good on a resume, and _if_ (and it's a big if) you end up on the right team, they have some really cool stuff going on there.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#473

Post by throwaway76543 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #463
throwaway76543 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook interns are paid, and paid quite well. It is, in fact, illegal to not pay an intern in the state of California if the intern performs beneficial work. Your entire rant is predicated on untrue assumptions.

> It is, in fact, illegal to not pay an intern in the state of California if the intern performs beneficial work. It's illegal in the whole US: https://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm

Thank you, good to know. I limited my claim to California as that was the scope of my certainty.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#474

Post by freehunter »

RealityNow wrote: post #462
freehunter wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd love to see you defend why the guy is a professional communicator with a good attitude. He's not, but that doesn't matter. You're going to be hard pressed to only ever communicate with professional communicators with good attitudes your whole career. So if you ever want to be taken seriously and have a successful career, you're going to need to learn what battles are worth fighting. Hell, maybe it was even a tes…

What is up with this societal mentality that the employee is beneath the employer, and the employer has the license to be rude and it's the employee's job to accommodate their bullshit? Sending a resume for a job interview and dealing with an obnoxious recruiter is definitely not a battle I'd pick. If that's how they treat prospective job candidates, then that's probably not a company I want to work for.

The employee is not below the employer, but the employer is the one who decides if the employee gets hired.

Want a job there? Play by their rules. Don’t want a job there? Have an email exchange like this one.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#475

Post by falsedan »

L_Rahman wrote: post #459
falsedan wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My statement is about condescendingly calling humans doing their job 'lossy filters', and challenging the deeply-ugly assumption that they should have bowed to the candidate's correctness. The recruiter wanted to advance the candidate through the pipeline; they told them exactly what they needed to do to proceed; the candidate didn't think it was necessary to modify their position to conform with the requirements, in…

We are all lossy filters because the world makes infinite demands on our time and attention and we have finite amounts of it give. I didn't write this as an indictment of the recruiter. How could I when I have no knowledge of their constraints, their past experiences or the incentives that guide their behavior? In all likelihood, they're behaving in a way that's perfectly consistent with their environment. What I can…

> I didn't write this as an indictment of the recruiter.

Have you heard? Authorial intent is dead. If you write something crappy, it doesn't matter if you meant to or not.

Calling someone a 'lossy filter' dehumanise them; these are people doing an incredibly difficult job & whose work has a huge impact on the productivity and success of companies.

> Structuring the response so that everyone gets the outcome they want, as an acknowledgment of the constraints, and not as a criticism of the recruiter makes everybody win.

I find this a disingenuous excuse: the behaviour you think should change was the recruiter's insistence on specifically 'Linux'. It is a criticism, whether you intended it or not. Your recommendations are to recognise and work around this behaviour, not to understand and accept it.

As a thought exercise, have you considered how a candidate without Linux experience would have acted in this situation? What evidence would the recruiter use to determine if this was a genuine candidate, or a dead lead that wouldn't proceed + waste their time + cause them to miss their quota?

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#476

Post by oneplane »

falsedan wrote: post #431
oneplane wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, since you asked... Your statement is a mismatch between the comment about the lossy filter, and the actual email conversation, which clearly shows the lossy filter in all its glory.

My statement is about condescendingly calling humans doing their job 'lossy filters', and challenging the deeply-ugly assumption that they should have bowed to the candidate's correctness. The recruiter wanted to advance the candidate through the pipeline; they told them exactly what they needed to do to proceed; the candidate didn't think it was necessary to modify their position to conform with the requirements, in…

Humans are always lossy filters, more lossy in some areas than others. There is also no 'bowing' required, and there is no correctness.

The recruiter wanted to put pegs in holes (which is essentially what selection is), but mistook the request for a red rond peg for 'only a specific type of red' peg. The peg in this situation might have been fire engine red, while the recruiter had poppy red in mind. In both cases, what they both should have in mind is not the color of the peg, but the shape. Swap peg with 'POSIX' and color with Unix, Linux, Unix-alike and you're back in context.

In this specific context, the one setting up the list of requirements should have specified "any posix, unix, linux or similar knowledge" as one single item, and then the recruiter should have matched any response that contains either posix, unix, linux or bsd, or a combination of those. This same problem could have happened if someone wanted a lathe operator that does threads, but the respondent lists NPT, TPI and M, but the recruiter doesn't know the area of expertise to filter for that and thus loses the input completely.

Aside from that, there is emotion and intonation and tone and appearances, but that doesn't have anything to do with the concept of 'lossy filters' and it totally irrelevant regarding that.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#477

Post by cakedoggie »

protomyth wrote: post #129
cakedoggie wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they should know the difference (or practical lack thereof) between linux and unix. I hate this attitude. How can a recruiter know all the intricacies for the roles he is hiring, he would need to be an expert. He has to know everything he they have to learn a whole pile of new terms.

That’s why you pay a technical recruiter. It’s their job to know all the terms and their relationships. They don’t need to know how to program them, just what fits what. Think the difference between a athlete and a sports reporter. The best sports reporters know the intricacies but no one expects them to play the sports they cover. Generic recruiters are not very useful.

It is stupid to expect a technical recruiter to know everything, especially in this ever changing world of languages and frameworks.

I like how easy it is for people to blame someone else here, rather than try to understand it from the recruiters position. I understand, we all hate recruiters.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#478

Post by protomyth »

cakedoggie wrote: post #477
protomyth wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s why you pay a technical recruiter. It’s their job to know all the terms and their relationships. They don’t need to know how to program them, just what fits what. Think the difference between a athlete and a sports reporter. The best sports reporters know the intricacies but no one expects them to play the sports they cover. Generic recruiters are not very useful.

It is stupid to expect a technical recruiter to know everything, especially in this ever changing world of languages and frameworks. I like how easy it is for people to blame someone else here, rather than try to understand it from the recruiters position. I understand, we all hate recruiters.

I don't hate recruiters. I know quite a few that keep up with the industry. I literally only ask the competence of a sports reporter. What baffles me is the acceptance of little to no knowledge in recruiters.

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#479

Post by machz »

Some recruiters can truly get on your nerves. I once applied to Expedia; the recruiter once called and asked me what's an 'Epic' (from Agile Methodology). That was my first call after email communication. I expected the HR guy to ask questions about my experience and setup an interview time with an engineer. I just didn't get why asking for a definition of keywords from the Agile Method was the first step in their interviewing process at all!

Re: Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

#480

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

throwaway0255 wrote: post #255
SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but I would imagine that, if not in the job description, if a really specific kind of Unix experience is required, it would come out in the exchange - and be really OS specific and actually say - True64, AIX, Solaris, etc. "Unix-like" today means bsd/linux. The recruiter did bad, but recruiters will always do bad. If its a job you want, don't let a recruiter foible disqualify you, if you can help it.

This is kind of out of left-field, but are you the same Smirk from AC/MT (~17 years ago)?

Nope, not it!
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