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> Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, most people do not have experience with a true UNIX OS This line is where he started to come acr

> Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, most people do not have experience with a true UNIX OS This line is where he started to come across as a jerk. I think if he had skipped this paragraph and just replied with the "I've updated my resume..." bit, he would have been fine. > Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, .. Stanley should update his industry knowledge. My school used AIX/Solaris in the late 90s, switching over to Linux (mostly because it was free/cheap) only in 99/2000. I have friends who interned at Sun Microsystems in 2001/2 and they were still using Solaris on all their computers including what the receptionists were using. There's an old saying about no one getting fired for buying Microsoft (or was it IBM). Similarly, the (entry-level) recruiter/sourcer would rather not get fired or get a bad rap from the hiring manager for confusing Linux and Unix than risk it believing some 20 year old jerk.

Spooky23 9y ago
Most public companies running Oracle Financials will do so in Unix to control license expenses.
lloydde 9y ago
> switching over to Linux (mostly because it was free/cheap) only in 99/2000 Your school was trail blazing! At my uni, UVic, it was still all Sun and IBM Unix labs (with plaques) when I graduated in 2000.
- isostatic 9y ago
  When I started uni in 2000 (exeter) we had some Solaris workstations (with CDM), and some redhat ones. The printing system was all redhat based, but the server with the fast 10mbit internet connection I ran BitchX on to DCC voyager episodes on was irix. The student radio station was some form of Linux on the tx side (in addition to the AM transmitter) There was even a room with NT4 - I went there once. When I started work as a trainee at a major UK broadcaster in 2003 the news production system ran in Solaris, radio was on some vax thing, the image store ran on irix, the logging system was on aix, and there were half a dozen distros across about 20 servers with no real standards. The majority of staff were either windows IT staff (who got outsourced), help desk staff, or broadcast engineers with limited computer knowledge. Over the next few years I changed the news system, others followed suit, and there's now 1200 ubuntu boxes/vms over 6 continents. Hooray for monoculture. Looking back it's amazing how quickly things change.
samoright 9y ago
Don't you think the risk you are talking about in believing a 20 year old is exaggerated? Is it that hard to go back to the manager and ask if "Unix-like" is acceptable although the job description says "Unix"? Or just do a little bit of Googling to figure out if what the candidate is saying could have merit? From my perspective, it appears that the recruiter is the jerk and not the candidate. I have met many computer-illiterate recruiters but never one like this who would repeat the same response over and over again despite the candidate having clarified his position.
- foo101 9y ago
  I Googled and I find that the candidate was wrong. The recruiter was right. AIX, Solaris and HP-UX are bonafide Unix systems and there indeed are software developers today who work with them. In any case, it is not very hard to write something like the following in the resume: POSIX, CentOS (Linux), Solaris (Unix), FreeBSD (Unix-like), etc. It is always good to be more specific about your skills in situations like this than being ambiguous. [1]: https://archive.org/details/bstj57-6-1905 https://archive.org/details/bstj57-6-1905
  - foo101 9y ago
    Can the downvoters care to explain what in my comment is incorrect?
    - vowelless 9y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
  - tristor 9y ago
    The reason you're getting downvoted is because you're saying he's incorrect by making a distinction between UNIX (uppercase) and Unix when referring to commercial OSes. There is no such distinction. UNIX is a trademark for the Unix family of operating systems. All of the systems you referenced as a family of Unix systems are certified and therefore can be referred to in the trademarked way as UNIX. The candidate is incorrect in his belief that nobody uses UNIX (or Unix) in 2017 and he could have been less flippant in his responses to the recruiter, but his technical accuracy is spot on. Regarding the minimal distinction that exists, FreeBSD is Unix, but not UNIX, because it has never been certified as there is a cost associated but it is directly derived from AT&T Unix in its lineage. Mac OS X which is derived from FreeBSD in turn was certified and is therefore a UNIX, ironically enough.
seabird 9y ago
IBM licensing can be absurd. Unless his university provided AIX systems to work with (and I can almost guarantee they didn't), its unreasonable to assume that an applicant would take the slowboat to licensing/software support contract hell and back just to get hands on with a niche, oddball UNIX system. Solaris died roughly 3 times, depending on who you ask. 2002 was 15 years ago. Oracle officially killed it by laying off over 90% of people assigned to the project two days ago. Future Solaris development is deader than shit. The only true UNIX that sees "widespread" use, and the only one that you will ever find a student with any experience with it is FreeBSD, and FreeBSD is popular because of its licensing, not its "true UNIX nature." As somebody else said, it wouldn't have busted the recruiter's ass to forward the email to the manager and ask if "Unix-like" experience is relevant.

Spooky23 9y ago

Most public companies running Oracle Financials will do so in Unix to control license expenses.

lloydde 9y ago

> switching over to Linux (mostly because it was free/cheap) only in 99/2000 Your school was trail blazing! At my uni, UVic, it was still all Sun and IBM Unix labs (with plaques) when I graduated in 2000.

isostatic 9y ago
When I started uni in 2000 (exeter) we had some Solaris workstations (with CDM), and some redhat ones. The printing system was all redhat based, but the server with the fast 10mbit internet connection I ran BitchX on to DCC voyager episodes on was irix. The student radio station was some form of Linux on the tx side (in addition to the AM transmitter) There was even a room with NT4 - I went there once. When I started work as a trainee at a major UK broadcaster in 2003 the news production system ran in Solaris, radio was on some vax thing, the image store ran on irix, the logging system was on aix, and there were half a dozen distros across about 20 servers with no real standards. The majority of staff were either windows IT staff (who got outsourced), help desk staff, or broadcast engineers with limited computer knowledge. Over the next few years I changed the news system, others followed suit, and there's now 1200 ubuntu boxes/vms over 6 continents. Hooray for monoculture. Looking back it's amazing how quickly things change.

samoright 9y ago

Don't you think the risk you are talking about in believing a 20 year old is exaggerated? Is it that hard to go back to the manager and ask if "Unix-like" is acceptable although the job description says "Unix"? Or just do a little bit of Googling to figure out if what the candidate is saying could have merit? From my perspective, it appears that the recruiter is the jerk and not the candidate. I have met many computer-illiterate recruiters but never one like this who would repeat the same response over and over again despite the candidate having clarified his position.

foo101 9y ago
I Googled and I find that the candidate was wrong. The recruiter was right. AIX, Solaris and HP-UX are bonafide Unix systems and there indeed are software developers today who work with them. In any case, it is not very hard to write something like the following in the resume: POSIX, CentOS (Linux), Solaris (Unix), FreeBSD (Unix-like), etc. It is always good to be more specific about your skills in situations like this than being ambiguous. [1]: https://archive.org/details/bstj57-6-1905 https://archive.org/details/bstj57-6-1905
- foo101 9y ago
  Can the downvoters care to explain what in my comment is incorrect?
  - vowelless 9y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
- tristor 9y ago
  The reason you're getting downvoted is because you're saying he's incorrect by making a distinction between UNIX (uppercase) and Unix when referring to commercial OSes. There is no such distinction. UNIX is a trademark for the Unix family of operating systems. All of the systems you referenced as a family of Unix systems are certified and therefore can be referred to in the trademarked way as UNIX. The candidate is incorrect in his belief that nobody uses UNIX (or Unix) in 2017 and he could have been less flippant in his responses to the recruiter, but his technical accuracy is spot on. Regarding the minimal distinction that exists, FreeBSD is Unix, but not UNIX, because it has never been certified as there is a cost associated but it is directly derived from AT&T Unix in its lineage. Mac OS X which is derived from FreeBSD in turn was certified and is therefore a UNIX, ironically enough.

seabird 9y ago

IBM licensing can be absurd. Unless his university provided AIX systems to work with (and I can almost guarantee they didn't), its unreasonable to assume that an applicant would take the slowboat to licensing/software support contract hell and back just to get hands on with a niche, oddball UNIX system. Solaris died roughly 3 times, depending on who you ask. 2002 was 15 years ago. Oracle officially killed it by laying off over 90% of people assigned to the project two days ago. Future Solaris development is deader than shit. The only true UNIX that sees "widespread" use, and the only one that you will ever find a student with any experience with it is FreeBSD, and FreeBSD is popular because of its licensing, not its "true UNIX nature." As somebody else said, it wouldn't have busted the recruiter's ass to forward the email to the manager and ask if "Unix-like" experience is relevant.