[HN Gopher] A case study in bad hiring practice and how to fix it
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A case study in bad hiring practice and how to fix it
Author : prestelpirate
Score : 102 points
Date : 2025-08-13 16:42 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.tomkranz.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.tomkranz.com)
| latexr wrote:
| > But high school? Who got paid to write that? And why aren't
| they now unemployed?
|
| Why would they be unemployed? Mark Shuttleworth, founder and CEO
| of Canonical, is reportedly _obsessed_ with high school
| performance, to the point of rejecting otherwise highly competent
| candidates who passed the whole process before that based on high
| school questions alone.
| ravedave5 wrote:
| I had a buddy go through the Canonical process, it's totally
| insane. They expect you to jump when they say, but then they
| may not respond for days or weeks.
| codr7 wrote:
| Reminds me of Apple, and once you've signed they treat you
| like dirt, wasting all the effort.
| siva7 wrote:
| Oh. I remember once applying for Canonical, and i found those
| high-school grade obsessed questions truly odd back then. After
| applying they ghosted me. In hindsight, the interview process
| seems to be matching the personality of their founder CEO, so
| very glad i'm not working there.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I had the same experience. I even made the mistake of being
| honest: In HS I didn't care about computers and had poor
| academic performance. It wasn't until 6 years later I even
| knew what computer science _was_ , and didn't look up until
| 11 years and a PhD later when I was writing software for NASA
| or managing robotics teams at FAANG/ startups. I got an
| immediate reject for a robotics SWE position. I'm trying to
| temper ego even now, but I was _qualified for an interview_.
| stripe_away wrote:
| sounds like you dodged a bullet.
|
| You qualified for the interview, but did they qualify for
| you?
| theZilber wrote:
| Tbh, to keep my ego in check, whenever i get rejected
| ghosted, or whatever, I just assume the company/interviewer
| is doing a perfect job for screening for the kind of
| candidates they want and need, and if I don't pass it means
| "there wasn't a fit", tbh if we were totally honest with
| myself, I don't fit well into most corporate cultures, and
| I should not care if they ask me questions I did not care
| enough to answer well in the first place.
|
| A highschool performance question is not odd. It is meant
| to filter me out - that is perfect, because why would I
| want to waste my time on an interview in a company with
| this mentality, in the first place?
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Of course this is the most sensible take - Seneca would
| be proud of this logic.
|
| But it offends some folks world view to live with folks
| who hire based on signals like this, vs raw capability.
|
| So, we come to this forum to kvetch.
| PhantomHour wrote:
| "CEO is obsessed with [thing]" isn't much evidence that the
| thing in question is worthwhile. Zuckerberg was utterly
| enthralled with the Metaverse, and we're not having this
| discussion in a virtual world as legless avatars.
|
| There's two big reasons this is such a red flag: 1) Come on.
| Unless you are hiring highschool graduates directly, you have
| other means of finding out how good candidates are. If a
| highschool report card tells you more about a candidate than
| your own interview process, you need to fire everyone involved
| with that process.
|
| 2) Highschool performance is highly correlated with a bunch of
| causes that are very undesirable things to proxy-measure in
| your hiring process.
|
| In the UK, where Canonical and Mark hail from, high school
| performance is a statistical proxy for class (wealth). In the
| US, it is a statistical proxy for ethnicity as well. You need
| to be careful with such measures, as selecting job candidates
| based on class or race is both unethical and commonly illegal.
|
| Again consider that these are _high school_ results. A person
| who is born to unlucky schooling opportunities can still
| compensate for the learning they were deprived of by working
| harder in college /university or their formal career after
| that.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| i think it's pretty clear GP is not saying it is worthwhile
| and is actually implicitly criticizing the practice.
|
| > high school performance is a statistical proxy for class
| (wealth). In the US, it is a statistical proxy for ethnicity
| as well.
|
| the degree to which this claim about wealth is true is
| impacted by confounders. it is generally less true than
| commonly stated. outside of the public sector, that a measure
| is correlated with race/ethnicity/class does not make it a
| priori illegal to hire based on.
| herodoturtle wrote:
| > In the UK, where Canonical and Mark hail from
|
| Minor nitpick, but Mark hails from (and was schooled in)
| South Africa.
|
| Agree with your overall point.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| > is reportedly obsessed with high school performance, to the
| point of rejecting otherwise highly competent candidates who
| passed the whole process before that based on high school
| questions alone.
|
| Right but given the pay, talent level, and more from Canonical,
| they should probably not be trying to invent new ways to filter
| candidates beyond what even top tier software shops are doing.
|
| If Jane Street and Anthropic aren't rejecting candidates for
| high school performance, maybe your mid tier company with low
| tier pay shouldn't be either.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Jane St is not a good example of a company that doesn't care
| about HS performance. Lots of finance firms ask for SAT
| scores years out and Jane St weights heavily on college
| (which in turn is exclusively a function of HS performance).
| rvz wrote:
| > hey should probably not be trying to invent new ways to
| filter candidates beyond what even top tier software shops
| are doing.
|
| Exactly spot on.
|
| Surely everyone would also agree with this and at this point,
| just don't bother with Canonical and ignore them. They do it
| because they are not interested in hiring at all, even if the
| post is there.
|
| Would much rather go to Anthropic if I had my time again,
| which there is far more upside and pays extremely well than
| whatever pathetic amount Canonical could ever come up with.
| rvz wrote:
| > Mark Shuttleworth, founder and CEO of Canonical
|
| who....cares?
|
| I think we need to ask ourselves why we put up with this
| nonsense. Not even the serious tech companies and adjacent care
| about that aspect of your performance.
|
| He would certainly have passed on Linus Torvalds if he applied
| to work at Canonical - because he did not got to some well
| known top high school or get the top marks Shuttleworth wanted.
| latexr wrote:
| > > Mark Shuttleworth, founder and CEO of Canonical
|
| > who....cares?
|
| Presumably everyone reading the article. It's about bad
| hiring practices and uses Canonical as the example, thus
| Canonical's CEO and their inane contributions to the hiring
| practices at their own company are relevant to the
| discussion.
| ohreallx wrote:
| It's pretty typical for a CEO of a major tech company to have
| some kind of quirk in their behavior that is nonsensical but
| insufficient to ruin the company given its luck, etc.
| jacobsenscott wrote:
| It's unlikely my high school transcript exists anywhere. If it
| does it is in the basement of some government building in rural
| Wisconsin. So - 4.0 - straight A's, captain of the linux
| security team.
| corytheboyd wrote:
| Wow that's insane, had no idea. What the fuck does my behavior
| at 14-18 have to do with my professional capabilities at 36. I
| had a terrible programming class experience in HS but was
| otherwise obsessed with computers. Hated programming until I
| took a CS class at community college with a great professor,
| starting my obsession with programming. One year out of high
| school. It's been non-stop since then.
| metalforever wrote:
| It's honestly kind of discriminatory from a class perspective .
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I think many if not most companies have things they look for in
| employees that are irrelevant. Sometimes its a preference for
| particular universities over other universities that are
| effectively as good. Sometimes they like people who excelled in
| sports, or seem well dressed, etc. The point is that if you
| have some filters for things that matter, and enough
| candidates, you can also screen out people for terrible reasons
| and get away with it.
| lovich wrote:
| Oh is that why they asked? I just put whatever the minimum gpa
| for passing my high school was since I was never going to
| remember that number and only could confirm I passed.
|
| If I wasn't desperate for a job I would declined to apply out
| of the idiocy of the question
| andy99 wrote:
| See also "Canonical's recruitment process is long and complex"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37059857
|
| FWIW, I disagree with this logic It has nothing
| to do with the CoL where you live, and everything to do with how
| much the company values you in that role.
|
| It's not about cost of living, it's about supply and demand. If
| you want people in e.g Bay Area to consider you at all, you'll
| have to offer them more than you'd need to get the attention of
| people in Warsaw. That's why remote salaries can still vary by
| location.
| nlawalker wrote:
| _> If you want people in e.g Bay Area to consider you at all,
| you 'll have to offer them more than you'd need to get the
| attention of people in Warsaw. That's why remote salaries can
| still vary by location._
|
| Then why not take what you'd offer to people in the Bay Area
| and also offer that to people in Warsaw? That's what the author
| is taking issue with.
|
| EDIT: This was posed as a question for rhetorical purposes,
| it's obvious that businesses don't do this because they don't
| have to and it's cheaper not to. Parent said they didn't agree
| with the author's logic, but the author's statement about
| companies paying based on value wasn't attempting to make a
| logical assertion, it was a lament about ethics.
| Majestic121 wrote:
| Because you don't have to: even a significantly lower salary
| than what would be good in the Bay Area would attract and
| retain people from Warsaw
| x0x0 wrote:
| Because employees are very expensive, and I don't live in
| magic pixie land where money is free. Every penny spent on an
| employee is a foregone opportunity to hire more employees, or
| require less sales to break even, or deliver dividends to the
| owners of the company, ie rent for the capital borrowed from
| them.
|
| You can see this in how engineers don't volunteer to take pay
| cuts so janitors and fast food employees get paid the same...
| kube-system wrote:
| > the author's statement about companies paying based on
| value wasn't attempting to make a logical assertion, it was a
| lament about ethics.
|
| The ethics is also not that simple either. Paying an equal
| nominal number of dollars to employees on opposite sides of
| the planet is not necessarily fair and equal in other ways.
| Those employees may have different benefits, legal rights,
| legal and tax obligations, and a different standard of life
| that they can purchase with that nominal amount of dollars.
| mystifyingpoi wrote:
| Actually it's even more impactful when considering a whole
| country. To follow this example, renting in Warsaw can be
| easily 2-3x more expensive than in a random small city in
| Poland. You could slash the salary by 30-40% and still get
| people willing to work, as long as you keep it remote.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > Also, there is no target salary or salary range. This is a red
| flag for a couple of reasons: > - It sends a message that the
| actual compensation is going to be rubbish. > - It sends a
| message (combined with the evidence from the advert spamming)
| that the hiring company will be paying different levels of
| compensation based on where the applicant lives. > That last one
| is particularly inexcusable. We call it a 'compensation package'
| for a reason: the employer is compensating the employee for using
| their expertise, time, and energy to make the employer money. It
| has nothing to do with the CoL where you live, and everything to
| do with how much the company values you in that role.
|
| Welcome to the world - labor is also subject to supply and
| demand.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| COL adjustments are not labor supply/demand. You don't pay a
| high COL because you _want_ a candidate from SF Bay Area
| (unless you have your office there). Companies pay a _lower_
| salary in _lower_ COL areas (relative to their target salary),
| because they have an excuse to and can save money. That 's just
| how it is, I've been on that side of the table. Senior leaders
| saying "We're not going to pay them the same salary if they're
| living in nowhere kansas!!"
|
| Thought experiment: Get a job, then move to a higher COL area,
| do you expect a raise? No. Move to a lower COL area: Somehow we
| expect lower salary?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| "COL adjustments" might be publicly described as COL
| adjustment but they actually have to do with supply:demand of
| skilled labor in those various regions. Kansas has low demand
| for skilled tech labor so companies can win with a bid that
| would be considered a lowball in VHCOL, that is all that
| matters.
| flatline wrote:
| I'd make an even broader generalization, which is that all of
| these attributes are proxies for status. Graduated from a top
| school? Live in the Bay Area or NYC? Did well in High School
| (I guess?) These are all status indicators in the mind of
| someone higher up, and deserving of better pay. If you live
| in a low cost of living area it's correspondingly lower
| status and deserving of lower pay. Other common status
| indicators include things like age, gender, and race...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Is it possible that people who are good at acquiring status
| markers are also good at other things? No, it's the world
| that's wrong - there is no reason a Harvard grad in NYC
| should have a higher chance of being paid six figures than
| a University of Missouri-Kansas City grad in Missouri.
| flatline wrote:
| I certainly didn't mean to imply otherwise. I do think
| that hiring solely or even principally based on
| superficial status indicators can lead to systemic
| problems, especially when those indicators may _not_ be
| good reciprocal proxies for relevant skills.
| badgersnake wrote:
| My engineering team is split between Malmo and London. We've
| had people transfer from Malmo to London and they have
| received a COL raise. The reverse is also true.
| kube-system wrote:
| My experience doesn't line up with most of what you are
| asserting.
|
| Many companies do have reasons to want employees in high COL
| areas, e.g. to be closer to the office, closer to customers,
| or lower travel costs.
|
| And it is not uncommon to receive COL bumps upward when
| moving to higher cost locations. It is advisable to do this
| so that you keep your employees happy and don't have them
| jump ship to other employers that will pay more.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| It is entirely possible that I worked mostly for unethical
| companies.
| bityard wrote:
| The company I work for has a published map with pay tiers on
| it. It's all admittedly a bit arbitrary and they are always
| careful to repeat often that employee pay does NOT scale with
| nor adjusted for the cost of living in your location, or
| inflation. (Basically to communicate that all raises are
| given based on merit and performance alone.)
|
| Nevertheless, the highest tiers on the map are of course on
| the coasts, with mid-level tiers being parts of Colorado,
| Texas, Florida, etc. And the lowest tiers reside in flyover
| country where I live. But they say if you DO move permanently
| from one tier to another, your pay will be adjusted
| accordingly.
| weitendorf wrote:
| FTA: Also, there is no target salary or salary range. This is a
| red flag for a couple of reasons:
|
| - It sends a message that the actual compensation is going to be
| rubbish.
|
| - It sends a message (combined with the evidence from the advert
| spamming) that the hiring company will be paying different levels
| of compensation based on where the applicant lives.
|
| That last one is particularly inexcusable. We call it a
| 'compensation package' for a reason: the employer is compensating
| the employee for using their expertise, time, and energy to make
| the employer money. It has nothing to do with the CoL where you
| live, and everything to do with how much the company values you
| in that role.
|
| -----
|
| While I mostly agree with the sentiment I think this is pretty
| normal and not nearly as much of a faux pas as the author is
| making it out to be. Kinda applies to a lot of his points - some
| of these aren't unequivocally bad hiring practices, they are just
| polarizing or a matter of pros and cons.
|
| Hot take: a lot of job openings for highly specialized skills or
| from small-medium sized businesses are not posted with specific
| salary bands in mind, just "as much as it takes to get a great
| candidate, but not more than their expected value". In some cases
| you could legitimately be open to candidates costing anywhere
| between $80k and $500k - it looks weird to list a job that way,
| would you do it? Maybe it turns some candidates off, maybe it
| prevents scaring off candidates who would be great fits and
| accept the offer. Maybe it's not worth getting upset about
| ch33zer wrote:
| I mean it's the law in California that job postings must
| include salary ranges since 2023, so it's more than 'boy sure
| would be nice if I knew the pay range before applying':
| https://www.cda.org/newsroom/employment-practices/pay-scale-...
| weitendorf wrote:
| And the article is about Canonical making multiple job
| postings all around the world where California labor laws
| aren't applicable...
|
| Regardless, I think there are underrated issues with
| mandatory pay bands that aren't obvious unless you're on the
| hiring side. Let's say you legitimately are open to hiring
| candidates from anywhere from $100k to $300k. For candidates
| closer to the $300k end they might not want to apply if they
| think they might get offered way less than they want, and it
| might attract a lot of candidates on the $100k end who will
| make it all the way through the process and then get upset
| when they're not offered something closer to $300k. Also, for
| companies like Canonical, they have enough name recognition
| and genuine supporters that they probably don't want to talk
| to candidates who are only applying because they saw a big
| number (and if they have to, it makes harder for candidates
| that are better fits to get noticed).
|
| There's understandably a lot of strong feelings about hiring
| practices right now and I know a lot of candidates will tend
| to assume the worst because of how they've been treated by
| other companies. But sometimes companies just make multiple
| listings so they show up for candidates around the world
| instead of as a spam tactic, are flexible on salary, and have
| a culture that values different things.
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| In California at least, nothing stops you from asking about
| expected pay as part of the application process and setting
| expectations for individual candidates early. From the
| applicant side, I'm constantly amazed at how many companies
| are shamelessly advertising senior level jobs with
| embarrassingly low salary ranges. Being able to weed out
| companies whose _upper_ bound is less than I'm making now
| as a government contractor (i.e. very much not FANNG pay)
| saves a ton of time.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Times are tough but I noped out of a Director of Product
| role that was offering $100-110K.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I never had to work on that, but I imagine you would
| publish a position at the 100k-200k range, and another one
| at the 200k-300k range. In fact, that may still be too
| large a range.
|
| Or are the people in that large range interchangeable from
| the employer's point of view?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Netflix posts bands something like $100-700k.
| dudeWithAMood wrote:
| There have been previous articles posted with people's direct
| experience with the hiring process at Canonical. I don't think
| this is a good candidate for a case study.
| theideaofcoffee wrote:
| Though perhaps shining a light on shittiness like that might
| cause someone doing hiring in the future to think for a
| fraction of a second and reflect. Maybe it'd be better to do it
| in a less than an insane way and make their slice of the world
| just a smidge better.
|
| And just to add to the Canonical shame too, I'm all for that.
| neilv wrote:
| OTOH, the hiring process described by the article is not as bad
| as that of Google and everyone who copied them. We've just been
| conditioned to the latter.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I had a great experience with Google. But once I got an offer,
| they were unable to even tell me what team/project I'd start on
| and refused to elaborate. Totally silly.
| msgodel wrote:
| At least they're being honest. Half the large corporations
| I've worked for would say one thing and then completely
| change it last minute.
| decimalenough wrote:
| For major roles like SWE, Google hires first and figures out
| your team later. Although I gather this is changing now.
| decimalenough wrote:
| Google is not great, but you're definitely not getting quizzed
| on your HS grades, doing personality tests, or writing essays.
| Resume, prescreen, 4-5 interviews (in rare cases more), done.
| rvz wrote:
| > we're still seeing companies complain that there is a skills
| shortage and a lack of talent.
|
| The truth is these companies want Stanford, Oxbridge, MIT
| engineers for minimum wage or close to free. But of course, no-
| one that will work to be exploited for their below low-ball
| offers.
|
| Thus, they scream for the bullshit "skills shortage" delusion.
| The ones that continue to do this are almost certainly joke
| companies that can't afford market rate.
| thmsths wrote:
| The hypocrisy in these situations is what I find annoying. Try
| to apply that in a different context "I can't find a Ferrari
| for the price of Ford, we have a Ferrari shortage!" and people
| would think you're a lunatic. But if you wrap that in "concerns
| about the economy" somehow, people take it seriously.
| snapetom wrote:
| This is not limited to Canonical. This is happening across the
| board because it's a buyer's market for labor. The game is
| stacked against job applicants. A posting on LinkedIn will
| attract hundreds of applicants, and as recruiter friends tell me,
| they'll get dozens of qualified people that can do the job. Blame
| the internet, blame globalization, blame remote work.
|
| At _best_ companies act in good faith but are dysfunctional
| /incompetent to make this an efficient process. At worst,
| employers are exploiting the current labor situation to their
| advantage.
|
| Will this ever change back? I don't think so unless you can
| eliminate the internet and AI systems.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| >> This is happening across the board because it's a buyer's
| market for labor.
|
| In my region in the Midwest, we have several well known
| companies that have been doing this for a very long time. They
| basically promote the same insane hiring process and then
| compare their companies hiring process to getting admitted to
| Harvard - they actually say they're hiring standards are more
| stringent than Harvard's.
|
| The other funny thing is these same companies who hold
| themselves out as "elite" pay 30-40% less than market rate. So
| in essence, you go through some insane hiring process, jumping
| through all the hoops, and you're still going to end up in a
| job that pays 30% less than every other company doing two or
| three interviews before hiring someone.
|
| Will this ever change back? Probably when market dynamics
| change back in the favor of developers, which could be a very
| long time. I wholeheartedly believe the "gold rush" of the tech
| industry has ended. Gone are the days where you had 4-5
| different companies vying for your talent year after year after
| year. The whole industry feels like its contracting.
| bityard wrote:
| Cold-applying to jobs on LinkedIn is a fool's game.
|
| How do I know? I did it. A couple years ago, I wanted to make a
| move to full-time remote work. I liked the people that I worked
| with, but I spent over a decade there, management started going
| downhill, and I could tell the company was on a trajectory of
| slow death. I spent HOURS almost every day for six months
| applying to jobs on LinkedIn. I restricted myself to positions
| that I thought I was actually qualified for without stretching.
| I avoided consulting/MSP companies. I probably applied to well
| over a hundred positions.
|
| How many responses did I get? Zero. Not a single one.
| Occasionally, a recruiter would ping me and say they had a job
| opening that was a perfect fit. Every single time, it ended up
| being a contract position.
|
| I DID eventually find my current job on LinkedIn, but only
| because I recognized the company name as one that a friend of
| mine moved to 6 months earlier. I called him up, asked him how
| it was, and he provided a referral. It dawned on me after I
| accepted the offer that every SINGLE job I have ever had was
| either through a friend's referral or because I knew the
| manager beforehand. The old adage, "it's who you know," is
| still as relevant as ever.
| snapetom wrote:
| Only job searching through sites like LinkedIn and Indeed are
| just a huge waste of time. They're going to get at the very
| least, hundreds of applicants. Thousands if you're
| advertising for remote. This is all a numbers game.
|
| People will hate to admit this, but the best ways to counter
| this game is leveraging your network and ending remote work.
| The problem is the combination of LinkedIn/Indeed and the
| internet creates a national, much bigger labor supply than a
| national labor demand pool.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > Glassdoor is a good barometer for company health
|
| Glassdoor hasn't been a good barometer for anything. When your
| reviews get removed because the company paid them, you're just
| being shown what the company wants you to see. Their salary data
| is highly inaccurate and deflates the industry wages. That site
| needs to be banished into non existence.
| avgDev wrote:
| Almost spilled my margarita.
|
| Seriously, I don't trust Glassdoor at all and stopped looking
| at it.
|
| Finding a current employee through a friend or knowing one
| seems to be the only way to get any accurate feedback.
|
| Possibly seeing how company treats customers could be another
| point.
| rgblambda wrote:
| I find the company's hiring process to be a good window into
| what it's like to work there.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I wish I could actually confirm this for my self somehow.
| But I do have a feeling it's somewhat right.
|
| I had a meeting with canonical once, I thought it was kind
| of weird that everyone on the other side of the call went
| through their high school information to get that job lol.
|
| Ive had some interesting interview experiences where I wish
| I could confirm what life is like on the inside. Good and
| bad
|
| Duck duck go has you write a short essay, then pays you!
|
| Drop box had me do some weird prep and deep dive into a
| project.Also an hour and half coding screen before even
| talking to anyone. Felt rude.
|
| Curent company I knew more about the coding question then
| the guy giving the interview. That was weird, can confirm
| the engineering level is frustrating
|
| Shopify gave me a timed brain teaser test to do. I didn't
| think anyone really did those.
|
| I am curious if all the companies that do these expect
| perfection with rigorous interviews are actually that much
| better.
|
| I'll have to think of more
|
| Edit to add all the recruiters that don't show up to the
| interview they scheduled
| codr7 wrote:
| Avoiding top rated companies should work as a decent heuristic
| though.
| Kranar wrote:
| >When your reviews get removed because the company paid them,
| you're just being shown what the company wants you to see.
|
| Glassdoor does not remove reviews for payment.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| You are right, unfortunately I can't change my original
| statement. Glassdoor doesn't directly take payment for taking
| down reviews and I was wrong in implying that.
|
| However, there is an inherent conflict of interest here
| because Glassdoor makes money from employers and not users. I
| can't imagine that this doesn't impact how reviews are taken
| down.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Edit: Glassdoor does not take money directly for taking down
| reviews. However there is an inherent conflict of interest
| because Glassdoor makes money from employers via various
| offerings and letting too many negative reviews on the site
| would affect that business model.
| setsewerd wrote:
| Isn't that just taking money for taking down reviews, but
| with extra steps?
| bityard wrote:
| Canonical has been famous for _decades_ in tech circles for
| having one of the most bizarre hiring processes in the world.
| They're honestly an easy punching bag and I don't think there are
| many left who have looked for a job in the OS/admin/Linux space
| who haven't run across them and stumbled across all of the horror
| stories of getting hired and working there.
| jldugger wrote:
| It's a fascinating problem. It seems there's always an endless
| stream of new applicants so there's no reason to change it. And
| there's an entire group of people contributing to ubuntu for
| free...
| attendant3446 wrote:
| I also recently came across a job listing from Canonical, and the
| application form was enormous, with lots of mandatory fields. I
| also questioned whether they ever hire anyone at all with this
| process. You would really have to want a job at Canonical to fill
| in that form.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| I guess no one who works there came across this (viral) post
| about how ridiculous their hiring process was. Maybe they're
| too busy reading applicant responses.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37059857
| dismalaf wrote:
| Everyone complains about Canonical's hiring practices, yet they
| keep increasing headcount and still get many times more
| applicants than they hire...
| ndiddy wrote:
| Of course they get many times more applicants than they hire.
| They have 1,200 employees but over 20,000 job postings on
| LinkedIn. I'm more curious about whether the people they end up
| hiring are their top choices. Because people need money for
| things like food and housing, it seems to me like forcing
| applicants to go through a months-long gauntlet with lengthy
| written essays, IQ tests, and 8+ interview rounds will filter
| out most people who are able to get hired anywhere else.
| lawlessone wrote:
| >An exceptional academic track record from both high school and
| university
|
| That one grinds my gears, i couldn't remember or pull school
| records now if i wanted to.
| base698 wrote:
| Exceptionally, I had both the highest and lowest grade in
| linear algebra. Probably not what they mean though.
| babyshake wrote:
| One thing I'll add to this, from more than one personal
| experience. A refusal to provide compensation info without first
| doing a reference check. The reference check should be the last
| thing after there is a conditional offer with at least a comp
| range provided. The reasoning I have been given is that they
| would need to see what the references say in order to determine
| the correct role or comp range. So when I suggest they provide
| the comp range assuming I have good references and they decline
| to, that's a nonstarter and demonstrates they are acting in bad
| faith IMO. This is clearly the type of negotiation tactic where
| you want your counter party to invest as much as possible (by
| providing their references) so you have more leverage.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| if you are actually in a strong position, you can just refuse
| and say that you won't continue the process without a range.
| i've never had a recruiter not cave on me
| ghostpepper wrote:
| I don't understand why LinkedIn allows their spammy postings to
| render the job search results page absolutely worthless.
| mavelikara wrote:
| Mods, please consider adding a "[Canonical]" tag to the title.
| This might save many people a click.
| mads_quist wrote:
| Who of you have ever been on the hiring side? I will tell you
| that it is frustrating in the very same way at it is for
| applicants.
|
| How can you tell as a recruiter if a resume is good? People can
| put anything on it. Did I work with SAP 20 years ago? Yes, for
| two weeks! And I can simply put that on my CV. Candidates do that
| with every piece of technology.
|
| Ok, how to test this then, that they actually master the
| technology?
|
| Real interview of 2h with maybe a coding challenge. "This does
| not respect my time and anyway I cannot code under stress" will
| some people complain.
|
| OK, then maybe some automated offline/online task? "Why do I need
| to solve some algorithmic nonsense without ever speaking to a
| person? They don't respect me as a person"
|
| Hm ok, then maybe a real interview in house. But with how many
| candidates when I get 100+ applications for a position. I CANNOT
| talk to all of them...
|
| So in the end it's again statistics... Filter out those where the
| probability is high that they are fast learners and dedicated.
| What is a good indicator of this? Well, high school and uni
| grades....
| lovich wrote:
| I've been on the hiring side. It is hard but everywhere I've
| worked I've felt like it's just been a fear reaction on the
| company's side about possibly spending a dollar on a bad hire.
|
| I had one position I was hiring for, for over a year where I
| just straight up told my manager that I didn't care to
| interview anyone anymore until he was ok with them.
|
| The process at every single place I've worked at was built to
| find a reason _not_ to hire someone because we might find the
| perfect candidate next week
| carlosjobim wrote:
| How come a company who does X and already have employees doing
| X can't find new hires?
|
| I'm sincerely wondering. So if you have 50 people on the
| payroll to do "SAP", where did they come from? A school? A
| course? Didn't they have coursemates to reach out to for more
| workers? Don't people and companies have networks? How can
| things deteriorate to the level that you have to put out ads
| for total strangers to apply?
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