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No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

blog.interviewing.io

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Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#501

Post by swish_bob »

hvidgaard wrote: post #428
kamaal wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". Looks like this is a common pattern with take home projects. I faced a very similar problem a few weeks back. Though they called me for the interview. The general approach is to take some ones overn…

If someone actually told me they'd use 'cat error.log | grep 'ERROR:' | wc -l' to find an error count, they'd have to be gigantic drama queens or asshole for me to not hire them for a position, I'd even look for a different one if it's not quite the right fit for the one they're interviewing for. That is textbook example efficiency.

Dunno, watching people cat something then pipe it to grep drives me up the wall. I'll let piping grep to wc -l instead of just using -c pass this time though.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#502

Post by madamelic »

2rsf wrote: post #480
noahtallen wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve done a trial project which was after an initial (much shorter) code test which was non paid. The trial earned me a couple grand and I got a 1099 alongside my w2 at the end of the years since I was hired full time.

How long was the trial ? can you do it while being employed elsewhere? it could be forbidden by contract to be employed in two places, and you could simply don't have the time for a full time, short, project

Current place does trials. Typically two weeks long and you get paid the same amount as if you worked there.

And yep, many people do have other jobs. Some take vacation time and others do nights + weekends.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#503

Post by sobani »

timwaagh wrote: post #483

Personally I'd rather not know, unless I do. Process of receiving feedback can be awful. In a hiring role (done that too) I'd rather save people the embarrassment of a dressing-down. I wouldn't want for them to bear more resentment towards the company than necessary.

If you equate constructive feedback with a dressing down, I can only feel sad for you.

"We noticed you used an unsorted list, where a dictionary/map would've been a natural fit. Based on this we don't feel confident that you have the mastery of algorithms that we require for this job. We suggest you take time to brush up on your algorithms by reading the first volume of The Art of Computer Programming by Donald Knuth or the first three chapters of Algoritms by Robert Sedgewick. We believe this will also help you in your future career at other companies. We wish you good luck in you job search."

If someone gets mad by that, that says a lot about their character and how much you never want to have them in your team. Also other people will either know their character and discount their opinion or will not, which means they will self-select themselves out of your candidate pool, which I see as a positive.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#504

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

> No engineer has ever sued a company because of constructive post-interview feedback. So why don’t employers do it?

Because there's only risk and zero benefit in it for the employer.

Note: the risk isn't mythical 'lawsuits', the risk is in bad PR that disgruntled rejected candidates generate. Even if one in 10 get offended and start spreading shit-talk on the Internet, that 10% is still too much.

Without a post-interview explanation, there is no ammunition for internet discussion.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#505

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

5cott0 wrote: post #338
vector_spaces wrote: post #246

I'm so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of "There's nothing in it for the company but risk". I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with "sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience". I asked them for a couple quick points on what I could have done better. I had ze…

Interview homework is in many cases more of a disrespectful waste of candidates time than fresh grad whiteboard hazing rituals.

Not if it saves the candidate time in commuting to/from interviews and spending time answering pointless boilerplate questions. ("Why did you leave your previous job", "where do you see yourself in five years", etc.)

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#506

Post by samastur »

I bet ones view on this really depends on personal experiences both as an interviewee and an interviewer.

I work for a small start-up and recently went through hiring another developer to our team. I know how awful it is as a candidate to get little or no feedback of what is happening, so my goal was for our process to be more humane.

At first I answered all rejected submissions with a reason why that happened. There was rarely just one, but I would pick those were they clearly did not meet one of few inflexible requirements.

Because of a huge volume applications, vast majority of which poorly matching our requirements, that was almost all I was doing for the first few days, having difficulties finding time to move successful ones further, let alone do any other kind of work. I also quickly learned that many applicants see these feedbacks as an invitation to argue with often the only way to end it is by just not responding any longer.

So, I stopped doing this and resigned myself to sending generic rejection promptly unless I was asked for feedback explicitly. In my opinion candidates still quickly learn where they are at and have opportunity to learn more which is better than with most companies.

Few asked and I send feedback to all of them, but since I am not paid to persuade candidates that my decision is the right one for my company, these feedbacks admittedly were not as detailed as they would have been without that previous experience.

I am not happy with how the whole thing transpired, but I am comfortable with my decisions even though many here are telling "me" how I failed as a human being because I did not spend more of my off-clock time providing detailed feedback to people who mostly seemed to have keyword match our job ad and skipped reading it.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#507

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

jakobegger wrote: post #476
desas wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lawyers are correctly suggesting how to minimise legal risk, it's up to HR and the company if they feel like the risk is worth it. The lawyer isn't likely to get upside of giving feedback, they will likely get the downside of the company gets involved in legal stuff.

> The lawyers are correctly suggesting how to minimise legal risk, it's up to HR and the company if they feel like the risk is worth it. A good lawyer should also tell you how big the risk is that you are avoiding, otherwise their advise is worthless.

Lawyers at companies have much bigger fish to fry like constantly reviewing sales and customer contracts in the high six figure ballpark not reviewing the risk of the feedback for every rejected candidate. For the latter their answer is always clear cut, "don't give any meaningful feedback to avoid ANY AND ALL risk of litigation, period". Their job is to keep the company safe from any litigation risk, no matter how small, not to keep rejected candidates happy.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#508

Post by sobani »

mdorazio wrote: post #384
Thriptic wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They gain the goodwill of a prospective employee who might cycle back and be a great fit later on in their career (and who has more skills then). It's also about what they don't lose, which is not only me but potentially other prospective candidates. Know what happens when someone mentions they are considering applying to a place that never got back to me? I tell them don't apply there, they waste your time / they do…

Reputation only matters if your candidate pipeline isn't full enough. For example, Google is notorious for their awful hiring gauntlet, but people still line up around the block to work for them. If your pipeline is fine, reputation and goodwill from people you rejected are worthless.

Most companies are not Google, so their (local) reputation matters a lot.

I'm a .Net developer. In my area there is a well known company that hires a lot of .Net devs. I heard from 2 people that .Net devs are basically treated as 2nd class citizens (after Delphi devs). So now I will not consider applying there. I don't know if they would want to hire me, but I have nothing to gain finding out.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#509

Post by rimliu »

kenhwang wrote: post #221
ddelt wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take: you could hire someone who did absolutely well in the interview, and they could find a few weeks into the job that they loathe everyone, and go on a social media rampage. What I’m getting at is, there will always be bad apples, or people who react in a way that damages your organization. But not providing useful feedback to people who ask for it simply because one person went crazy is punishing a lot more p…

In our case, it's not an iron-clad no feedback allowed policy. We're just much more careful about giving it, approval is given on a case-by-case basis. A good typical whiteboard interview naturally includes hints, feedback, and collaboration. After several hours of it, we have a very good idea of how well they may respond to feedback from members of our organization. Honestly, I love giving feedback. I love helping c…

    > A good typical whiteboard interview
There is nothing good in a typical whiteboard interview. If anything, any whiteboard interview is typically bad.

Re: No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback

#510

Post by rimliu »

mc3 wrote: post #232
mrfusion wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should produce it in “I feel” phrases. That makes it known that it’s your opinion and could be wrong. Treat it like couples therapy.

My internal translation: "I feel" -> "I have concluded, based on no evidence"

Or, alternatively, based on intuition. Which, in many cases, is an internalized experience.
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