43 ms·

Facebook recruiting and Unix systems

• akhilcacharya 9y ago
  I never went to a elite enough school to be reached out to by Facebook recruiters so maybe there's something I'm missing but I genuinely wonder why someone would be this condescending towards the people helping you get a job.
  • autotune 9y ago
    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.
    • akhilcacharya 9y ago
      You can't beat the RSUs
      • autotune 9y ago
        Even if true you can still beat a hundred other things like not having to be on-call, base pay, location (remote vs Manlo Park/ManFrancisco or being senior enough for their alternate locations), and lack of Test Driven Development (feel free to prove me wrong here). It's far easier to get a fat base pay somewhere sensible that knows how to manage a remote team, where you can then live in a low COL area or with better housing and cultural options, than to deal with bureaucratic nonsense for the chance of cashing out a few extra dollars in a few years in a high COL area where you don't have a life outside of work for that time, IMHO.
      • fizwhiz 9y ago
        (cough) Google (cough)
    • wutbrodo 9y ago
      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 resume and a couple decades of experience, and I gave him the same interview. He clearly thought he did badly since he couldn't go through the white board coding as smoothly as a recent cs grad would, but in my book he got a 9/10, because he was obviously good at clearly thinking about creative problem solving. Now I can't speak to whether large companies universally treat these interviews the way I do, but as a sample of one, when I conducted interviews for Google I certainly did. You shouldn't let your assumptions about the interview process color your decisions so heavily.
      • autotune 9y ago
        Yeah and that's fine, you probably get enough candidates willing to grind through it anyway if you're at The Big 4. Interviewing is a two-way street though so obviously I am going to have it color my decision process. I want to know what challenges actually happen on the job and if I can solve those challenges, and if you ask me to code up a shortest path algorithm on a whiteboard but that never appears on the job, then it seems like a pointless test to me. 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.
        • wutbrodo 9y ago
          > 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." See to me, these are _terrible_ interview questions because they reward memorization and rote knowledge and completely leave aside the kind of creative problem-solving skills that I've always needed from my employees and colleagues. I've had the misfortune to work with people hired by the process you describe, and they tend to suck pretty hard. If you want cogs that can't adapt beyond their very narrow comfort zone, you've just described exactly how to get them. I agree with your description of the two-way street, but I generally take care of that by leaving time for the candidate to ask questions, generally guided a little by me to give them an idea of the stack we work on, what kind of problems generally need solving, etc. (In fact, I warned the 9/10 guy that I described above that he may not be challenged enough by the work that we'd likely have for him).
• FuckOffNeemo 9y ago
  Was this conversation with a recruiter? I'm hoping this is a yes. That was... incredibly difficult to read.
  • abhisuri97 9y ago
    Yes it is...
  • justinzollars 9y ago
    ouch. it hurt me too
• storrgie 9y ago
  It would be good to know if this was an internal or external recruiter. If the organization has contracted this out to another organization, then it should minimally reflect on Facebook and have maximum, laughable effect, on the contracted organization. From what I've experienced with Facebook recruitment, they dragnet linkedin pretty hard and have at-least a 5-step process for interviewing that is designed to be implemented at high speed by internal people, but at-least lets you talk with internal people. I stopped responding to their requests on Linkedin because you start over each time. Although the inquiries are interesting, it's not really fun to have a bunch of "first dates" constantly.
  • cargo8 9y ago
    Probably internal – when I interviewed with them in the past an internal recruiter (I was familiar with through friends / on-campus stuff) gave me some super dumb technical questions on the "initial screen". Very basic pseudo data structure stuff, but still. It was obvious she was trying to map the words I had said to some pre-provided solution. They should probably stop doing that.
    • dieterrams 9y ago
      That's somewhat common, in my experience. It's just a basic quiz to screen out obviously unqualified applicants.
  • kchoudhu 9y ago
    > then it should minimally reflect on Facebook. If a business hires cutrate idiots to source candidates for the largest investment expense it has[1], I guarantee you that it will cut costs elsewhere as well. [1] Yes, people are an investment. At a quarter of a million dollars a pop for proper coding talent, multiplied by however many coders the company has, people are the largest expense Facebook has.
    • mvc 9y ago
      I dunno man. The money spent on infrastructure at companies like these is more than the GDP of most countries.
• seorphates 9y ago
  Sooo, no UNIX, then?
• mathattack 9y ago
  Were they begging the OP to lie? Or perhaps it was a chatbot?
  • cracell 9y ago
    No it was a non-technical recruiter just looking to check off their box that the person had "UNIX" experience.
  • abhisuri97 9y ago
    I should note I am not the applicant here. This was just something I found on hackathon hackers about an actual applicant.
• type0 9y ago
  Recruiter: We're looking for someone to fix the pipes. You: Yes, I'm a qualified plumber and can do the job. Recruiter: Sure, but can you fix our pipes? You: Off course, that is is what I was trained to do. Recruiter: You keep saying you're a plumber but we need someone to fix our pipes You: I can do it. Recruiter: we need someone who have worked with pipes. You: I have worked with those. Recruiter: Sure, but we need someone to fix our pipes. etc
  • Spooky23 9y ago
    A more apropos version: Recuiter: we need someone who can work with copper and pex pipes. Your resume says that you work with PEX You: I can do plumbing. I have connected PEX to copper before. Recruiter: Do you have experience installing copper? You: Building codes allow you to substitute PEX for copper pipe. I have used PEX with copper. Recruiter: we need someone to work with copper. Thank you.
    • bo1024 9y ago
      To me, the problem (in part) seems to be that the recruiter is not qualified to understand, or at least cannot clearly communicate, whether they actually need someone who has worked specifically with copper or whether they want general experience with pipes such as copper and pex.
    • Jedd 9y ago
      Recruiter: We need someone who knows apropos is an adverb, and won't use it where they probably want 'appropriate'.
  • cracell 9y ago
    So it says here you've worked with pipes in large commercial buildings and small residential buildings. But this position is primarily for pipes in park bathrooms. Do you have any experience with that type of pipe?
    • 2_listerine_pls 9y ago
      Please draw a triangle with 2 perpendicular lines.
• jdavis703 9y ago
  This is not the right attitude to bring in to the workplace. You'll have a range of people from executives, to clients to co-workers in other departments who don't know what UNIX, APIs and POSIX are. If you can't communicate technical matters nicely then you have not yet developed the right attitude for a professional working environment. It's the same thing with doctors when they create metaphors to explain complicated problems. You need to speak in the layperson's terminology, and if all they know is UNIX then call it UNIX and leave it at that.
  • muglug 9y ago
    Nah, they were pretty patient - updating their resumé so that they weren't lying, yet still giving the recruiter what they thought the recruiter wanted. Presumably they were worried that the resumé wouldn't just be seen by a recruiter, and a more knowledgeable person might flag it.
  • mquander 9y ago
    Verbatim exchange: Thanks for the quick response and clarifications. Experience with Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems is largely transferrable thanks to the standardization that resulted from the POSIX specification. As a result, the terms "POSIX" and "UNIX-like" by-and-large refer to the same thing. My experiences are in particular with developing software for Linux platforms, which are the most popular of the UNIX-like operating systems. I also have experience using POSIX-specified APIs to ensure consistency and portability. Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, most people do not have experience with a true UNIX OS, and I would find it hard to believe that such outdated technologies are underpinning Facebook's advanced innovations. I've updated my resume to indicate my familiarity with Linux, POSIX, and UNIX-like systems. Please let me know if there is anything else you need. Thanks for your time and consideration, Stanley Zhang. Response: Hi Stanley, Thank you for the tutorial. We're looking for experience working on Linux and Unix. If you do not meet the above, please let me know if there are other roles you'd like to rank. Best, ________ I'd love to see you defend why the guy who wrote the first half is bad at technical communication and needs to develop a professional attitude, and the recruiter -- who copies and pastes the same incorrect response over and over, showing no indication that they read a single word -- is a professional communicator with a good attitude.
• jacques_chester 9y ago
  Put yourself in the recruiter's shoes for a second. Facebook has a vast array of technologies in use, from the top to the bottom of the stack and across a wide breadth of problem domains. A lot of the time there are competing technologies. No one engineer at Facebook is familiar with the sum of technologies worked on by engineers at Facebook. It stands to reason that recruiters are in the same boat. So if someone comes to you and says "I've used Oberon, which is like Modula", do you know if they're correct? You don't, really. They very well may be. But the recruiter may also be dealing with one of the three dozen hopefuls every day who are desperate to pitch that X is similar enough to Y that they should be given a chance. The recruiter was in the wrong. But at that size, there will always be recruiters who are in the wrong. It's luck of the draw. I've dealt with two Facebook recruiters in the past 4 years: one who misunderstood my résumé, another who understands it quite well. These days I don't take it personally.
  • pweissbrod 9y ago
    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.
    • kichik 9y ago
      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?
      • aianus 9y ago
        If your expectations from a recruiter are this low, might as well replace them with a spam bot, web form, and a recruiting video.
      • pweissbrod 9y ago
• throwaway2016a 9y ago
  Somewhat on topic. Does anyone use actual Unix? Is it even something you can install anymore?
  • mattzito 9y ago
    Absolutely, though it's a dying breed, and with the news of Solaris's EOL, accelerating all the time. BSD is the FOSS actual UNIX. On the commercial side there's AIX from IBM, HP-UX from HP, and probably a few other really niche-y ones I forget.
    • _asummers 9y ago
      Illumos had a hard fork from Solaris in 2010 and many of the Solaris team are apparently involved in that project, Joyent uses their own UNIX for their hypervisor, too, if I recall correctly.
  • davidw 9y ago
    His response about the 70ies is off. I used IRIX, Solaris, and a bit of AIX in the late 90ies. Still though... pretty silly stuff.
    • auxym 9y ago
      As a unix sysadmin, my dad worked on tru64 in the 2000's. Mostly switched to linux/vmware in the last years before he retired though.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • DeRock 9y ago
    macOS is certified UNIX: https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3627.htm https://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3627.htm
  • kev009 9y ago
    You can basically buy the right to call yourself UNIX today from The Open Group. The most extreme example of this is z/OS, but Mac OS is also UNIX. As for a singular product it was always kind of muddy. There was early UNIX, Research UNIX, BSD and then System III and System V as products from AT&T. The last product that was "pure" UNIX was System V Release 4. You could buy it into the 90s for 3B2s and PCs. It had lots of derivatives that used it as the port base like Solaris, Interactive UNIX, UnixWare etc and the code was also widely incorporated into other port bases (AIX, IRIX, etc) that predate or incorporated lots of different code like OSF/1. IIRC Novell came to own this "pure" UNIX and then sold it to SCO. I would say any of the BSDs are UNIX today, but that caused a pretty big legal gaffe between AT&T and BSDi in the early '90s and limited adoption at a critical point. OpenBSD to me seems like the spiritual Research UNIX continuation.
• gargarplex 9y ago
  Facepalm. Somebody show this to Zuck. Change needs to begin at the top. EDIT: Is it possible that they actually want people with actual UNIX experience? They are recruiting students. Maybe they want someone who has used an actual UNIX system on some kind of emulator for some sort of secret retro initiative. EDIT2: http://www.jbox.dk/sanos/pdp11.htm http://www.jbox.dk/sanos/pdp11.htm
  • SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
    I was wondering if they were looking for people with BSD or Solaris experience, in addition to Linux experience -- a broader trip around *nix land.
  • cellularmitosis 9y ago
    Some schools do still maintain a lab of Sun hardware. Extremely weak speculation: Perhaps they are targeting those schools and/or professors, without being explicit about targeting them?
    • gargarplex 9y ago
      Another possibility is that they are sowing the seeds of confusion in the developer community as part of a larger power grab (c.f. React.js)
  • ams6110 9y ago
    Zuck seems to0 busy with his political career these days.
  • foo101 9y ago
    Did you read the email exchange carefully? The Facebook recruiter did not ask for experience with the AT&T Unix systsem of 1970s. The candidate perhaps assumed that incorrectly. Facebook asked for actual Linux and Unix experience which indeed many people who have worked on GNU/Linux systems like CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, etc. and Unix systems like AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, etc. have.
    • 9y ago
• noncoml 9y ago
  True story, I once got an email from a recruiter asking for someone with experience in C, C+ and C++. No idea if it was a typo for C# or the recruiter thought, we have C and C++, why not add C+ in there to increase our hits. I found it amusing, but didn't start an argument..
  • pacman128 9y ago
    Years ago I had a recruiter pull a list of questions from their technical guy to ask. The first question was something about constructors in C. I carefully explained that the question made no sense for C but would for C++. They insisted the question was correct, so I told them what the answer would be in C++. They also asked me about if I had experience with the EMACS editor, but spelled out the letter E-M-A-C-S. Why that was an important skill I have no idea. Especially since this was for a contact that several companies were competing for and I was hired by the winning company to work on it. No special knowledge of EMACS was required. Any text editor would work.
    • sithadmin 9y ago
      Regarding the Emacs question - could be a weedout/profiling question. I've asked recruiters in the past to screen candidates for familiarity with certain tools as a shortcut for identifying candidates with higher aptitude for what I'm hiring for. For instance, when I'm hiring a vSphere admin, and I ask my recruiters to put anybody that wasn't immediately familiar with RVTools (among other things) at the bottom of the resume pile. It's a dead simple and ubiquitous utility for vSphere admins, and is a pretty good shortcut for eliminating people with too little experience or too hands-off experience from contention. Sure, it might end up accidentally selecting against what would otherwise be good candidates, but in general I've found it helps accelerate forced ranking of candidates. That's probably a bit more directly applicable to the role than your Emacs question, but they might be trying to feel out what 'kind' of a developer you could be. Those that favor Emacs, Vim etc tend to be rather different than those that use Visual Studio, etc.
      • tacotaco98 9y ago
• kichik 9y ago
  In my home country we say sometimes it's better being smart than right. The recruiter is doing their job and antagonizing them, no matter how right you are, is not the smart move.
  • JackFr 9y ago
    No - the recruiter is not doing their job. They are marking time in a role and collecting a paycheck, but decidedly not doing their job.
    • kichik 9y ago
      And yet that's the hand you've been dealt. You can be right, or you can get the job.
      • JackFr 9y ago
        I'm not disagreeing with your main point -- no one gets into the club by arguing with the bouncer. My point is that the recruiter is a collossal screw-up, and its imprecise to describe what they did as 'doing their job'. Unless their job is to alienate qualified applicants.
        • kichik 9y ago
          There's no argument there. I would actually like to learn more about Facebook's recruiter situation to understand how this can happen. That's definitely something you want to avoid in your own company.
      • Rapzid 9y ago
        Or you can get another job.
    • almostApatriot1 9y ago
      I disagree. There are probably 100 Stanley's in line for these positions and the recruiter is helping to weed out the smug ones. Part of his job.
• marktam264 9y ago
  so you didn't get the internship. did you get one with a different place, after all of that? if not, do you think your response and this subsequent post increase your marketability?
  • LeoNatan25 9y ago
    > this subsequent post increase your marketability? It did in my eyes.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• foobaw 9y ago
  This is a tricky exchange. Both sides could've done better. To be honest though, a company like Facebook gets so many resumes that these mistakes are inevitable. Not saying it's acceptable, but it's just the nature of recruiting.
  • Aeolun 9y ago
    Unless you have competent recruiters. Are you saying that incompetent recruiters are the norm?
    • lazaroclapp 9y ago
      In all fairness, at scale. it takes one incompetent recruiter out of literally hundreds, or one badly managed case from an otherwise very competent recruiter, out of thousands a day, to get something like this to happen. Any large enough system will have component-level faults. Sure, it is Facebook, they know how to build systems that are tolerant to faulty components. If they cared about preventing this, they could send resumes to multiple recruiters and proceed based on some sort of consensus. But that's the kicker, turns out their recruitment organization is already a fault tolerant system. The particular fault tolerance mode here is that they don't care about a certain rate of false negatives, no matter how egregious in hindsight, as long as they have few false positives. Sucks at a human level, but in some ways it probably is the optimal system based on what the objective function is for a large company.
• kev009 9y ago
  Sort of off topic but I am just kind of wondering if there is a safety net if I ever burn out, and how much money I am potentially not earning :o)... Any chance someone on here that was deeply technical transitioned into recruiting? Will you spill the beans like compensation ranges, per head bonus/commission, and satisfaction? As an engineering manager I've done all my own recruiting and have been recognized by my management chain for doing a stand up job at it. I know several socialites from High School that are not or barely technical that outwardly seem to be earning a lot of money doing recruiting or contract agency talent management. It seems like way less hours and stress than I've put in to become a systems expert. Maybe that wont last forever with economic waves, but then again neither do a lot of tech jobs.
  • Spooky23 9y ago
    It's not a bad gig, but it's sales. You need to fill and maintain your funnel of both candidates and customers. Typically you get a cut of the action (10-20% of first year salary or annual rate) or spiffs. If you have a good network of contacts, you may be able to specialize in some niche that pays more.
    • kev009 9y ago
      The most appealing thing to me about that is performance based pay. It's not hard to imagine closing dozens of hires a year in a moderately interesting company. It probably feels great too, as you're greatly helping individuals and managers and the company by landing talent. In an engineering org, I typically see low salary multiples for the lowest and highest performers. The lowest may be barely responsive while the highest is trading away health and life to make something happen. There is a real ceiling for pay vs effort and talent in technical roles. Tech management roles can allow for less effort and incentive programs are easier to come by, but it is still very seldom performance based where again the difference between the worst and the best is marginal. Cynically, it seems the most effective game theory to maximize ROI in a technical org is to be a shitbag and perform minimally. I can't bring myself to slump like that. I am really thinking I need to transition into something like this or sales to build wealth in a few years. I would trade 10 years of grueling effort for financial freedom. I traded 15 years of basically unpaid grueling learning to become a systems expert. Very silly from an ROI perspective. I can always get intellectual stimulation from open source I guess, but I'd caution anyone from taking the path I did.
• skndr 9y ago
  Reminds me of this: If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/News/Item/7c334037d1a9437d9fa6506e2f35eaac http://www.jasonbock.net/jb/News/Item/7c334037d1a9437d9fa650... -- Interviewer: First of all, we're working in a subdivision building a lot of brown houses. Have you built a lot of brown houses before? Carpenter: Well, I'm a carpenter, so I build houses, and people pretty much paint them the way they want. Interviewer: Yes, I understand that, but can you give me an idea of how much experience you have with brown? Roughly. Carpenter: Gosh, I really don't know. Once they're built I don't care what color they get painted. Maybe six months?
• cryptozeus 9y ago
  I had totally different experience with Facebook recruiter, honestly they are great and really want you to succeed. You could have just updated resume as UNIX/LINUX ...rest of the technical jargon should be explained to technical person in the interview. Why argue with recruiters? Get in the door as soon as possible and deal with someone who can understand the terms.
• swalsh 9y ago
  Just because you're right, doesn't mean you've won. The recruiter is a gatekeeper, just say the thing you need to say to get past them... move on to the next level. The recruiter asks for Unix/Linux and yours says Unix-Like, get over yourself and change your resume. They are literally telling you the password.
• tw1010 9y ago
  In situations like these you really aught to ask yourself what your end-goal with being elitist like that is really trying to serve. In engineering situations usually the purpose is some form of disguised signaling. This is the purpose of most sentences that start with "technically". But when you're talking to a recruiter that kind of move is unlikely to be effective. It's unlikely to affect your application positively, and the only effect you can expect is what happened in this interaction, namely rejection. Be honest about why you act the way you do, and be rational about your decisions.
  • adamnemecek 9y ago
    He's not interested and wants some lulz.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • dec0dedab0de 9y ago
    I disagree. It looks like the recruiter is clueless or maybe even trolling, and applicant was going out of their way to be helpful. They could have just updated their resume, and allowed the recruiter to remain ignorant, but imo that would have been very rude.
    • Spooky23 9y ago
      If you're looking for someone who has actual high level expertise working on AIX or FreeBSD, having some dude tell you that Linux is the same as Unix or asserting that knowing what POSIX means is equivalent to having production knowledge of AIX/FreeBSD for a production engineering role is not very productive. The recruiter handled himself professionally and should be commended for not being bullied. Mr. Zhang sounds like a punk, and would probably be better served by pulling the image.
      • aspyrx 9y ago
        I'm going to leave the image up. It's regrettable, but for accountability's sake I don't want to run away from my mistakes. And yeah - I think it boils down to their having strict requirements and large applicant volume, so my response definitely wasn't appropriate there.
• acmustudent 9y ago
  This is the official CMU facebook recruiter. They have done this to multiple people I know, each time they tried to explain and yet this keeps happening.
  • adrianpike 9y ago
    It's almost as if this is actually intentional on the FB side of things.
  • jacalata 9y ago
    How does it keep happening if you know about the previous instances? Does each student just stubbornly repeat the same conversation?
  • exikyut 9y ago
    I'm glad it's finally in the open then.
• fiatjaf 9y ago
  Unless you value money over all the other goods in the world, why would you want to work for Facebook?
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • nandemo 9y ago
    Money can be exchanged for goods and services. Besides, there are other upsides: you get to work at a company that values developers, you'll have lots of competent colleagues and you'll learn a lot, and you'll work at a product that hundreds of millions of people love.
• deagle50 9y ago
  The kid isn't doing himself any favors but this is totally on the recruiter. Good lesson to learn early, you will have to deal with many ignorant people in your career and you need to adapt on the fly.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• brad0 9y ago
  Other comments say this guy should learn how to communicate better. I agree with that. Knowing the person you're talking to helps greatly. The average recruiter has a high school certificate and that's it. They're hired to do largely manual work comparing skills on resumes to skills on job positions. Now that you know how they work you should ask yourself what's your goal? Is it to get that internship at Facebook? If so then how can I write my resume and cover letter to help me get the recruiters attention? Put the skills from the job listing on your damn resume. Personally I'd dislike working with this guy. I can tell he's a smart guy but he's misdirecting his intelligence.
  • nulagrithom 9y ago
    > Put the skills from the job listing on your damn resume. He did. Everyone seems to be scrolling by that screenshot. He's trying to be honest -- the poor bastard. A few more interactions like this though and he's bound to start telling white lies on his resume. Eventually he'll start to think "sure, I've got like '4 years'ish of experience in that... fuck it..." And so it goes. Pretty soon he's just like everyone else who doesn't bat an eye at "10 years of Swift experience" and all that garbage. Frankly, if Facebook is hiring recruiters fresh out of HS with no tech background and treating fresh, naive, honest soon-to-be devs like this, then they've failed their own interview. This is nothing short of ridiculous.
    • brad0 9y ago
      I agree that it's terrible and it promotes bad behaviour. I'm yet to see a system that outperforms it though.
• robocat 9y ago
  Good summary of difference between Linux and Unix: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-vs-unix-crucial-differences-matter-linux-professionals/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-vs-unix-crucial-differenc... "Mac OS X is also a certified Unix operating system".
• tzs 9y ago
  > Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, most people do not have experience with a true UNIX OS, and I would find it hard to believe that such outdated technologies are underpinning Facebook's advanced innovations Every OS X from 10.5 on except 10.7 has been certified under Version 3 of the Single UNIX Specification, and thus is officially considered to be UNIX.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• williamscales 9y ago
  The right answer is to say "Oh, you're exactly right. I've updated my resume accordingly. ...//Unix //Linux" and have that be the end of it. What is the point of arguing here but to prove some kind of imagined superiority?
  • nandemo 9y ago
    "Ha! He's lying on his resume! Rejected".
• Chloro 9y ago
  At least this recruiter wont be as dumb moving forward. It's important as a recruiter to understand what the hell it is you are looking for in a candidate. I personally thought the applicant handled this perfectly.
• coverband 9y ago
  If true, this is truly hilarious. (I'm sure the young man will do fine with another employer.)
• aspyrx 9y ago
  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 online was inappropriate as well. I briefly debated deleting the image, but decided to leave it up for sake of posterity and accountability. Also, just to be clear, I do not (and never did) hold any hard feelings towards the recruiter; in fact, it was very kind of them to point out why I was not qualified in the first place. This has been probably the most reflective of how I let my ego get the best of me at times, and I hope it might serve as a warning to those who might be tempted to do the same "devsplaining" in similar situations. Please let me know if you have any other criticisms beyond the ones already voiced in this thread. I'm reading through the comments here as I can, and it's been a lot of good advice. Thanks again.
  • rjeli 9y ago
    This is ridiculous. Nothing in your responses was rude. The CMU recruiter is dense and underqualified. Don't apologize for taking the time to remain honest in your communications and explain the circumstances.
    • autokad 9y ago
      Because of the monopolies that have been allowed to exist, getting black listed by FB is akin to chopping off a large portion of the quality tech jobs out there. Its not that he was factually wrong (or even wrong in etiquette) , but as my mom said you can be right and dead right, which is why he recognizes he needed a better approach to leave the most opportunities for his career going forward
      • xlii 9y ago
        There is an old joke about janitor who couldn't work for Microsoft because he didn't get an email. (Link: http://www.angelfire.com/oh3/momathome/janitor.html http://www.angelfire.com/oh3/momathome/janitor.html) What has been done has been done and there is no place for regrets. Facebook might (along with its partner and associates) be a big workplace but it definitely isn't the only launchpad for a happy & successful career. He came a little bit snarky, true, but I yet have to see devstar who isn't snarky at least to some degree.
• foo101 9y ago
  Here are the facts about Unix. * The name "UNIX" or "Unix" is trademarked. * AIX, Solaris and HP-UX are certified Unix systems. These are bonafide Unix systems and there indeed are software developers today who work with these Unix systems.[2] * The set of Unix-like systems is a superset of the set of Unix systems. The set of Unix-like systems include systems like Linux, FreeBSD, etc. which the set of certified Unix systems do not. [1]: https://archive.org/details/bstj57-6-1905 https://archive.org/details/bstj57-6-1905 [2]: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-vs-unix-crucial-differences-matter-linux-professionals/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/linux-vs-unix-crucial-differenc...
  • deathanatos 9y ago
    If I quizzed engineers, what percentage of them do you think would get that exactly right? Prior to your post, I had myself thought — as Stanley seems to — think that Unix referred to the operating system by that name. I did not know that, > By decree of The Open Group, the term "UNIX" refers more to a class of operating systems than to a specific implementation of an operating system; those operating systems which meet The Open Group's Single UNIX Specification should be able to bear the UNIX 98 or UNIX 03 trademarks today, after the operating system's vendor pays a substantial certification fee and annual trademark royalties to The Open Group. But if I were exchanging information with a candidate, what Stanley provides is more than I would expect from a candidate (even from industry; he seems to be a student); that he isn't exactly on the mark should have been fine. If we really wanted exacts, the recruiter had ample opportunity to explain his/her position, but instead, we get nothing. Stanley took the time to both give his view on things, and give a simple layman's answer that conforms to that view when the tech jargon didn't seem to go over well. That he might be technically wrong is incredibly nitpicky, and I am not persuaded that that was the issue the recruiter had. It still seems like an extremely weird qualification to require, doubly so again for an intern level position: you would still be likely to pass over extremely qualified candidates who just never touched a "UNIX".
    • foo101 9y ago
      All I am saying is that when technology people like us are debating about terminology, we can cut the recruiter some slack, be nice to him or her and be more explicit in our communication to the recruiter. For example, instead of responding to "We are looking for experience in Linux and Unix" with "I have updated my resume with POSIX", respond with the following instead assuming you indeed have real Unix experience with a system like Solaris, "I have mentioned Linux and Unix more explicitly in my resume in the following manner: Debian (Linux), CentOS (Linux), Solaris (Unix) and FreeBSD (Unix-like).
• hohohmm 9y ago
  The recruiter is an idiot who doesn't really know the hiring requirement of his/her employer, which is exactly the job he/she is supposed to do. Simple as that. I marvel at people who can spin it as the student's bad communication. Maybe you communicated your way to your current position? The recruiter is tasked with a job to find appropriate candidates, and is apparently failing. If it were to happen in my company I'll just fire the recruiter on the spot. The lesson that should be learned: HR should have some technical background to do technical hiring.
• speiestaaim0 9y ago
  Ad: we're looking for guitarists Candidate: I have experience with guitar like instruments Recruiter: can you play guitar? Candidate: as I explained, I have experience with guitar like instruments. I have played a couple of fretted string instruments. Recruiter: do you play guitar? .... ..
• arielm 9y ago
  Throwing my two cents here - as an employer who also happens to be technical I don’t like working with recruiters for the simple reason that most of them aren’t qualified to asses the kind of talent I’m looking for most times. They are good at parsing through resumes. However, keep in mind this guy is recruiting for internships, so I assume he’s not the most experienced recruiter on the team. P.S. - I personally believe in reading the audience, which in this case meant not digging deeper into technical terms but just adding “experience with Linux and Unix systems” to the resume as the recruiter suggested. But... only if you really _can_ answer questions about either/both during an interview.
• j_s 9y ago
  TL;DR: A recruiting conversation insisting that each party 'get bent' with utmost professionalism. Edit: apparently the student did follow up here about the same time I posted this; props for doing so. This entire discussion serves as a reminder that getting a resume past HR (and most recruiters) is 100% about ticking exactly the right boxes, and only serves as the most rudimentary of filters.
• IE6 9y ago
  I don't work at facebook I work at a healthcare company and I would accept this rejection as a solid weed out. If you cannot understand that the HR person responsible for hiring you maybe is not a top-tier engineer and you cannot accommodate that person's gap in technical knowledge you probably cannot function in a healthy way with other members of the team such as junior developers, business people, or end users.
  • bo1024 9y ago
    It's not exactly easy. The student has to figure out if the position genuinely needs UNIX experience or not. The recruiter doesn't seem able to communicate this. If so, it would be dishonest to claim experience the student doesn't have.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• foo-man-chu 9y ago
  Part of working in the industry is learning to work with recruiters.
  • MatthiasP 9y ago
    Or with other people in general.
• numismatex 9y ago
  Well, I'm not shocked. You came across as intentionally obtuse. You don't waste a recruiter's time -- they're higher status than you and working for a living. This reflects that. Glad you realized that your condescension and lack of communication skills escalated the situation. The biggest setback that every IT candidate that I meet is "I'm great, I know X, Y, Z." when the reality is that a great attitude, nice smile and a hard focus on soft skills including selling yourself, building rapport and interpersonal intelligence (aka EQ) will take you much further.
• kstenerud 9y ago
  Take this as a lesson in people handling. As a rule when dealing with business situations: - Keep messages simple. Less information to process is better. - If the response seems strange, start by assuming miscommunication and misunderstanding. Do not respond with more complicated information. - When in doubt, say what they are expecting to hear and sort it out later when you talk voice or in person. A more fruitful exchange would be: Recruiter: We require having UNIX experience. If you have it could you update your resume and resend? Candidate: Resending with UNIX experience written in. Recruiter: Thanks! We'll be contacting you shortly.
  • spawarotti 9y ago
    That was my thought all along. My suspicion is one of the directives of the recruiter is to weed out people that are getting hung up on proving their point and/or stubbornly arguing about inconsequential things. The recruiter gave the candidate multiple chances to redeem himself, but no cigar.
  • UK-AL 9y ago
    The thing is he did do that. But then the recruiter than changed to Unix & Linux experience.
• wallabie 9y ago
  This sounds so much like those ads that look for "8 years of Swift development experience" despite the fact that Swift only came out 3 or 4 years ago. The fact that a recruiter can 'recruit' for a company like Facebook without having enough knowledge in the area that they're recruiting for is not only embarassing for FB but for the recruiting profession in general.
  • wutbrodo 9y ago
    > is not only embarassing for FB but for the recruiting profession in general. I don't think the profession has any room to be embarrassed:it seems like a check your dignity at the door type deal. I've dealt with plenty of recruiters as an applicant, an employee being hounded for referrals, and even in just social situations, and I can't think of a single positive thing to say about them. I'm usually not comfortable with such blanket statements, but it's literally 100% of the ones I've interacted with. I've yet to meet one that knows anything about the jobs they're hiring for, or one that doesn't give you the dirty feeling of being used after a conversation in any capacity with them. The worst was meeting them in social situations when they'd hear I worked for Google: 90% of the time they'd immediately get a predatory gleam in their eye and the tenor of their interactions with me would immediately shift. It was sickeningly transparent.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• mcbits 9y ago
  > We're looking for experience in Linux and Unix, not just Unix-like OS. ... > We're looking for students with experience working on Linux and Unix. What the recruiter said - twice - was pretty clear and matter-of-fact. Why does everyone assume it's not true? They could indeed be filtering out candidates whose "Unix" experience is limited to Linux.
• beefsack 9y ago
  The cynic in me makes me think this was actually intentional by the recruiter to gauge personality characteristics of the candidate. It's not entirely implausable to think that corporations could use techniques like this to try to measure social capabilities of technical people.
• fellellor 9y ago
  Wow. Great thread. I'm personally waiting for n-gate's take on this.
• on_and_off 9y ago
  You are technically right but also very wrong. Empathy is a critical skill in engineering. In this exchange you have shown to be unable to understand what the recruiter's point of view. You will encounter many similar situations in your career, especially when working with people in areas of expertise different than yours. Luckily, it is a skill, not a gift. So it is just up to you to get better at it.
  • bsamuels 9y ago
    I'm sorry, but we're looking for social skills, not empathy. -Facebook Recruiter
• cthalupa 9y ago
  While both parties here could learn how to communicate better, there's an important distinction: The student is representing only himself. The recruiter is representing the company. When a recruiter mishandles a situation so massively as was the case here, it puts Facebook in a poor light. Obviously, Facebook's engineering teams are well aware of what all of this technology is, but it is distasteful to see this complete lack of understanding and know that I might have to deal with it if I were to work with one of their recruiters. I'm not saying the industry in general is better than this, but it would have taken the recruiter all of 30 seconds to draft an email to the hiring manager and ask for clarification - "This guy is really insistent on how he has POSIX and Linux experience and that this will be okay. What do?" Also, putting Unix on the required skills for an intern position? What did they think was going to happen?
• victor___ 9y ago
  I interned at Facebook a while back (pre-IPO). On the first day of onboarding my neighbor was struggling to follow the instructions - it turned out he'd never used bash or any Unix-like system before. Anyway, I guess he figured it out since he did well enough to get a return offer. Apparently things have changed a bit.
  • Andrenid 9y ago
    No, that neighbour is now just interviewing for internships :)
• beckystreet 9y ago
  yeah she's not known for being the kindest person around..
• Jdam 9y ago
  I'm so tired of this Linux/Unix/Posix religious BS. Earning money with software development for 7+ years now and mostly using macOS, Suse and Ubuntu (to precisely name it), I'm wondering if this Posix debate is applicable anywhere outside school and Wikipedia. Of course, the recruiter is just a recruiter but with this "I know it all & better"-attitude, when the intention was absolutely clear, having no deal was the right choice for fb.
• TheMagicHorsey 9y ago
  I had a similar experience with a recruiter at Google ... only worse. Recruiters are the gatekeepers. In my case I was waiting for an answer on my interview at Google for 6 months ... just radio silence with no reply. If you are lucky, maybe you have some friends at Facebook that can intervene on your behalf. If not, there's other companies. I had friends at Google to help me get an answer. But I decided I never wanted to work for Google based on how callously they treated me during the interview process. It became clear to me that I was not a high priority person to them ... just a fungible commodity. This is true, but nobody likes to be shown the truth of their value like that. I knew other people with other talents that were treated really well by Google. My skillset was not in that high demand ... or there were plenty of other candidates. But I felt like Google did not need to treat me like garbage. After that I went and joined a startup. Quite happy now. We stole a few engineers from Google even :) I always make sure we get back to our interview candidates as quickly as possible. I won't let us turn into a callous Google.
  • Cursuviam 9y ago
    On the point of needing friends, I don't think this is necessary given that this post hit 500 points on this site. This almost definitely will be posted to some internal group for recruiting feedback. edit: Looks like it's been posted already internally judging from one of the other posts
• Cursuviam 9y ago
  Hey recruiters, At the point that it became clear that there was a technical misunderstand, would you find it condescending to say something like, "I think there's a misunderstanding over this qualification for `foo` position. Could we clear it up with a `foo` engineer who is working on this stack?
• banhfun 9y ago
  I wish I went to a prestigious enough university for a Facebook recruiter to reach out to me for internship opportunities.
  • oculusthrift 9y ago
    but id you did, youd be so arrogant from your perceived IQ that youd blow the chance with your response email
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• Zelmor 9y ago
  Bio-droid recruiter. You shouldn't feel bad about it. Hopefully these sort of obstacles will be removed with automation of recruiting processes.
• SolarNet 9y ago
  A lot of people in this thread seem to believe people should remain ignorant of technology. How many people understand how a car or airplane works - at least in theory? A technology recruiter should be able to know this (or at least pick it up on the job when polite explanations are given to them). And it would be beneficial to broader society if people had at least a surface level understanding of computers (like how airplanes generate lift, how combustion engines work, and how source code is used; so that when someone says Linux is a common variant of UNIX, they understand what that means from a source code perspective). Perhaps it's in our best interest to keep these people ignorant; we do get paid a lot of money. Perhaps society has decided it's not important for most people to know, and that it's alright to be ignorant (though this leads to common problems we complain about every day). But whatever the reason, this person was doing the right thing by trying to educate the person in a pretty polite way. Sure he could play the game and get the job. But it's still frustrating.
• betadreamer 9y ago
  This happens all the time. Recruiters are Sales people. They don't want to learn technical things. It's not in their interest to know what Unix is. They just want to validate whether you are good and if so, sale you the position. The proper response here is: "I have experience in Linux and Unix. Updated resume is attached." Done. You need to treat them like he's your old uncle. Use minimal technical words, repeat what they ask/say and most importantly respect them.
• arkadiytehgraet 9y ago
  I don't understand why you felt necessary to leave out the recruiter name. I personally would really like to know this person and try to avoid her/him by all means possible, saving me (and all the others, who will know him) a ton of time and consequently punishing this recruiter for his incompetence and inability to learn the actual thing he is recruiting for. We (developers) want the recruiting, interviewing and hiring processes to be improved and optimized to not let this sort of things happen again, yet when it comes to actual actions to take, we just decide to post it as a "look, another funny incompetent recruiter!" post. As time shows, this post will not change anything and these people will continue harassing and denying interviews for good developers. Today it was a fresh graduate; tomorrow it can be me or you. So please, do share the name of this recruiter.
  • Kluny 9y ago
    Doxxing/outing people here is probably against site rules, and if it's not, it's still unprofessional and likely to reflect just as badly on the him as on the recruiter. The recruiter can say to his boss, "shit, I didn't have enough coffee that day!" and be forgiven; Stan won't get the same forgiveness.
    • arkadiytehgraet 9y ago
      It does not matter what recruiter says to his boss; what matters is that we will know this person and avoid all contact with him; it is not his boss (as if the boss cares) he should seek forgiveness from. Stan does not need forgiveness for there is nothing to forgive him for; the only thing he will get is respect for standing up for the gross incompetence and bullying.
• royalharsh95 9y ago
  Somebody once referred me to a role at Facebook. I never got a response from the recruitment team. After emailing them, one of the recruiters told that their referral platform has some issues. After that I never got a response from any recruiter, I tried reaching out to different recruiters on LinkedIn but none responded. I suppose they have a shitty recruiting team.
• lsmarigo 9y ago
  This bit in particular I think did you in: Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, most people do not have experience with a true UNIX OS, and I would find it hard to believe that such outdated technologies are underpinning Facebook's advanced innovations. These two sentences could easily be read as "Hey idiot, no one since 70's era programmers have that experience, also I think you're wrong about this requirement because I know better. Dripping with condescension, but you're young and smart so understandable that ego can swell. You've down tremendous self-awareness in your post here though, clearly have a bright future!
  • trengrj 9y ago
    He is actually incorrect in this case as Mac OS is certified UNIX so is a UNIX and not just UNIX-like [*]. If the recruiter was being clever and wanted the applicant to understand the distinction or answer with the magic OS X words I'd be impressed. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1489/is-mac-os-x-unix https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/1489/is-mac-os-x-un...
• justinjlynn 9y ago
  Robots are going to do what robots are going to do.
• Gonzih 9y ago
  HR is basically keyword matching nowadays, person doing hiring is completely unaware of intricate details of the domain, it applies not just for IT.
• Ice_cream_suit 9y ago
  Cutting off your nose to spite your face...
• walrus1066 9y ago
  You should have just appended UNIX to the CV and been done with it. You just have to play the game and keep a long 'experience tuple' of keywords. The recruiter was basically trying to help you, most would have just filtered you out and not even replied. Recruiters don't have technical experience, so don't expect them to understand the nuances of OSes etc.
  • pmlnr 9y ago
    > Recruiters don't have technical experience, so don't expect them to understand the nuances of OSes etc. Yes, you should. If they don't understand what they should be looking for in a CV, they should not be recruiting for the position.
• anonu 9y ago
  Working at a large corporation is knowing when to pick your battles. IMHO the candidate failed before he even got started. Picking your battles means figuring out if putting up a fight or being pedantic about something is worth it. What are you getting out of it except for some sort of sense of "winning" in the short term. Corporate survival is about thinking long term, and often doing or saying something to keep moving forward. Not suggesting one iota to compromise the quality of your work or your moral perspectives. Just saying there's a delicate balance to surviving in any corporate setting.
• andreygrehov 9y ago
  Interesting. I almost feel like he spoke to an ai chat bot. Could that be the case?
• jtanderson 9y ago
  Reading through the comments about the "recruit by grep" methods made me wonder: what are the chances this was a Facebook chatbot instead of a human recruiter? Anybody in the know able to say whether it would have that level of conversational fluidity (e.g. "Thanks for the tutorial but..." sounds a bit too human to me)?
• real-hacker 9y ago
  The HR person should at least understand the very basic technical terms, a.k.a, what it is and how are they related. I know HR/headhunters who think Hadoop/AWS are programming languages.
• threecleartones 9y ago
  Just send the recruiter to the Linux Wikipedia article and have them read the first line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux
• zapperdapper 9y ago
  Oh this is hilarious. I was left wondering whether the recruiter was a real person at all, or one of those Bots that FaceBook had to unplug. Seriously though, this conversation is not completely untypical of some I've had in the past. The technical knowledge of _some_ recruiters is, well, non-existent. As has been pointed out they tend to keyword search, and well, if you don't have exactly the right keyword you're toast.
• stesch 9y ago
  So the people who are currently working at Facebook do so because they lied?
• nhumrich 9y ago
  FWIW I think OP handled the situation well. A lot of commenters say, "just role with it", but he did. He updated the resume to match what the recruiter wanted, then the recruiter said, well... What about this? He gave an explanation as to why his resume was still valid, and added that. I also think he explained the issue very well, and communicated well. A no-win situation in my eyes.
• AJRF 9y ago
  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 abstract level, you lacked the pragmatism and interpersonal skills to brush through something that clearly isn't important seeing as you have the relevant skills. I see a few people like this in every company and they most definitely hold up progress. Most of them get fired, technical understanding isn't the only facet of being a software developer. Working in a team is a mix of being assertive when its important and placating others when it doesn't matter, 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.
  • mozumder 9y ago
    It's a new-grad. They're generally not going to be masters of etiquette when facing social challenges.
    • meri_dian 9y ago
      That actually makes it more problematic. New grads trying to break into an industry should be especially respectful. If someone can't strategically avoid confrontation when the situation calls for it, that does not bode well for their ability to work in a team. There are many new grads who are capable of appropriately dealing with social challenges. Those who can't have only themselves to blame.
      • 9to5isdead 9y ago
        True, but the recruiter on the other hand should show more experience and cognition. The emails might refer to systems the recruiter doesn't understand, but the actual words make complete sense.
    • pc86 9y ago
      It doesn't take a master of etiquette not to send a recruiter a 4-paragraph explanation of the finer points of POSIX v. UNIX. "I'm right and I'm going to explain to you exactly why whether it's relevant or not" is not generally a good attitude to have in the business world, even if you're working for Facebook.
• jrpelkonen 9y ago
  This exchange reminds me of this old Dilbert strip, one of my all time favorites: http://dilbert.com/strip/1993-11-09 http://dilbert.com/strip/1993-11-09
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• machz 9y ago
  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!
• _anonymous 9y ago
  Most recruiter are relatively idiots, and obviously do not know how to talk to super-smart people. Lesson to learn here is to stop apologizing, and start learning how to exploit their idiocy instead.
• acd10j 9y ago
  I am updating my resume to list Unix to Unix Like , did not thought that i was lying on my resume till this date.