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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'

• 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.
      • zaphirplane 9y ago
        Anglefire wow it's still going! I was certain the page wouldn't exist. (Goes to lookup if GeoCities still exists)
      • jacobush 9y ago
        The gif counter on the bottom of that page is even working!
        • nabaraz 9y ago
          It shows 514 for me. That seems rather low.
          • Jeremy1026 9y ago
            Up to 795 three hours later. We did it Hacker News, we finally got this guy the traffic he deserves.
            • jacobush 9y ago
              I saw it at 400 something
        • krallja 9y ago
          So is the automatic redirect to malware!
    • gleenn 9y ago
      I hardly think getting blacklisted by FB would lose you opportunities outside of FB. Sure, you probably can't get a job at Instagram because they probably share the recruiting database. Beyond that, there are a million startups, and tons of other medium and large engineering companies that need technical people. Seriously, Apple, Google, Microsoft, etc are all trying to steal each other's employees. They are competing so they definitely don't share such information. If this person is good, they will definitely have opportunities elsewhere.
    • _jal 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. That does not describe reality as I've lived it. I tell headhunters from Google, Apple, Amazon, FB and other huge companies to leave me alone every few years - seems like they expire their 'go away' notes after a while. I've had zero problems finding quality employment.
    • mister_handy 9y ago
      Facebook isn't going to blacklist someone over a bad interaction with a university recruiter, at least short of sending an email full of hate-speech. It's an opportunity missed (it's a great place to have an internship or be a new grad, not so much for senior people who've worked elsewhere in industry) but the OP will certainly have no trouble applying again with some future recruiter.
• jcastro 9y ago
  Don't sweat it, I think lots of people go through this phase. Though next time you can skip the pleasantries and go right to the "Actually, it's GNU SLASH Linux."
• samoright 9y ago
  Thank you for commenting here! I am curious. Can you be a little specific and tell us what Linux or Unix experience do you have? I mean can you specify the Linux distro names and the Unix brand names (AIX, Solaris, etc.) that you have worked with?
  • derenrich 9y ago
    wait do people actually think this position requires Unix (not linux) experience? I assumed the recruiter must just be wrong there.
    • samoright 9y ago
      It is not uncommon to come across open positions that actually do require Unix (not Linux) experience. For example, American Express has a large deployment of AIX systems and they indeed look for candidates with experience in AIX systems, although I believe someone with experience in another Unix or Unix-like system should also be okay. But I agree that such openings are usually quite specific about which Unix system they are working with.
      • ThrustVectoring 9y ago
        AIX specifically as a preference is different than anything that works like a Unix system.
      • SmirkingRevenge 9y ago
        This is true, but I would imagine that, if not in the job description, if a really specific kind of Unix experience is required, it would come out in the exchange - and be really OS specific and actually say - True64, AIX, Solaris, etc. "Unix-like" today means bsd/linux. The recruiter did bad, but recruiters will always do bad. If its a job you want, don't let a recruiter foible disqualify you, if you can help it.
        • throwaway0255 9y ago
          This is kind of out of left-field, but are you the same Smirk from AC/MT (~17 years ago)?
• nowarninglabel 9y ago
  In case you hadn't, please make sure to read foo101's comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15188746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15188746 Also, good on you for being able to receive criticism, that's a big step in the right direction. In time, you'll likely come to the realization that good communication skills are an important part of almost any role.
• derenrich 9y ago
  Eh, honestly I would've been similarly frustrated. The recruiter seems like they are being needlessly bureaucratic. Either they are familiar with Unix and thus should know that Unix-like is synonymous with Unix nowadays or they aren't and they should take your word. Maybe you were a little condescending but it happens and rejecting someone on the basis of this exchange seems mad to me. If FB doesn't reverse their decision here I'd be surprised/disappointed.
  • foo101 9y ago
    Unix-like systems are not synonymous with Unix systems nowadays. * Solaris, HP-UX and AIX are Unix systems. * FreeBSD and Debian GNU/Linux are Unix-like systems but not Unix systems. When technology people like us are debating over this terminology, I think it makes sense to cut the recruiter some slack.
    • monktastic1 9y ago
      I read the exchange as cutting the recruiter slack. He didn't say "you're wrong" or "you're an idiot." It seems to me he's saying "here's how I understand what you're saying, and here's why I think my skills meet your qualifications."
    • tristor 9y ago
      Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and FreeBSD are all Unix systems. With the exception of FreeBSD they are all also UNIX, because other than FreeBSD the other three are commercial Unix OSes that have been certified and therefore hold a license to use the trademarked name UNIX. Debian GNU/Linux is a Unix-like system because Linux is not Unix, but it is Unix-like and when combined with a GNU userland is POSIX compliant.
    • solatic 9y ago
      Do remember that we are talking about internships here. If I have a task for an intern that requires some shell-scripting, and the intern already understands what it means to pipe commands, I put my hands together in silent thanks.
• droopyEyelids 9y ago
  You're internalizing your repression, which is actually another requirement for most full time positions.
• JoshCole 9y ago
  Don't take all the feedback in the thread to heart. The fact of the matter is that even if you were more condescending than you desired to be, the joke in this thread about plumbers and pipes is also true. The end of the chain really does enter an absurd territory that narrows things down such that the recruiter was either failing very badly at understanding your emails, lying about his reason for rejecting you, or not even reading the emails. There is a very gross lack of comprehension in his later responses. It eclipses your condescension, by far. If it didn't, your post wouldn't be at the top of Hacker News.
• monktastic1 9y ago
  I also think you're being too hard on yourself here. Sure, it will be helpful for you to learn to interact with difficult people, and to bite your tongue when frustrated. But frankly, most of us have limited success with that even by late in our careers. It appears to me that the recruiter could have been a lot more helpful, particularly at the end where you flat-out explain you have Unix and Linux experience and they still insist that your email never said so.
• chis 9y ago
  This follow-up shows a lot of maturity. Both sides are obviously at fault here, although you instigated it. I suspect you could still get the internship if you send an apology like "Sorry for my previous emails they were out of line. You're essentially correct and here's an updated resume to reflect that."
  • aspyrx 9y ago
    Thank you - I actually did send an apology email, but since I'm pretty sure I'm not quite qualified for the position, I didn't bother pursuing it any further than that.
    • ryandrake 9y ago
      You had nothing to apologize for. There are tons of recruiters in this industry who do not know what they are recruiting for and are dumbly trying to match text. I've had a recruiter tell me that they are looking for experience programming "graphics drivers", and would I kindly update my resume to say that instead of "display drivers". If a company uses recruiters this clueless, you dodged a bullet.
    • 3131s 9y ago
      Oh it hurts my soul that you apologized to that clueless tool. Why do you want to work at Facebook anyway?
      • mister_handy 9y ago
        It looks really good on a resume, and _if_ (and it's a big if) you end up on the right team, they have some really cool stuff going on there.
    • renaudg 9y ago
      Are you insisting that you're not qualified for the position on the basis of that Linux / Unix distinction alone ? If so, that's really really sad. Even more so if you thought "Unix-like" genuinely disqualifies you because it's not strictly "Unix" ! You need to be more confident about your skills. Most interns don't know how POSIX relates to UNIX and Linux like you do, if they are even familiar with the word ! Look, I'm a former Facebook production engineer. I won't exactly reveal a secret by saying that FB is wholly Linux based. It's not a bank with legacy commercial Unix systems, and you were of course right about the 1970s engineers comment. Positions requiring expertise with a specific brand of Unix are less and less common, and these would always mention the flavor they're after anyway (mostly Solaris, possibly some AIX/HP-UX). One more general piece of advice : let others decide that you're not qualified for, don't self-censor before you even get a chance to fight.
• gluggymug 9y ago
  If you are not an old fart like myself, you probably haven't used an actual Unix system but back in the days before the popularity of Linux, you'd see a lot of Solaris. You stuck to your guns and didn't just lie about Unix experience, so I commend you. But if you really want the job, next time just lie and set them straight once you've gotten an interview. It is splitting hairs to make a big deal out of actual Unix experience vs Linux experience.
  • Annatar 9y ago
    It is splitting hairs to make a big deal out of actual Unix experience vs Linux experience. This only holds true if one is a UNIX Graybeard, otherwise, GNU/Linux is rife with pitfalls and minefields for the unwary. Shell scripting and GNU-isms or bash-isms is an example of this, or using GNU specific functions or semantics when programming yet another. There are many such landmines lying in wait on GNU/Linux, waiting to blow one's legs off. The BSD guys have been trying to raise awareness of this for years.
• g09980 9y ago
  Hey, you did nothing wrong. Reading, it was frustrating to see the recruiter looking for essentially an "exact string" match. They did not appear to be interested in leveling with you on UNIX vs Unix vs POSIX vs Linux or having any sort of interesting technical discussion. Also their "thanks for the tutorial" phrasing is very unprofessional. I do hope this thread helps FB in training + calibrating their external comms with candidates.
• jdavis703 9y ago
  Don't take the feedback personally, but hopefully you will apply the lessons. Even better, this serves as a practical example for others to learn from. None of us were born knowing this stuff.
• exikyut 9y ago
  Nobody else has mentioned this so I will: leave an email address in your profile, or dump something sharable in a comment here. (Pretty much everyone here (relevant) can de-base64 (which can be convenient, a la data:text/plain;base64,...) or figure out "gmail@myaccountname".) Best case scenario, someone from FB could say hi. Not officially (that would be a nice miracle), but rather some person working there. Then you could start chatting with them, they could figure out somewhere you could probably get in on the ground at, and give appropriate instructions. AFAIK internal recommendation is the best way to get through/inside The Great Wall of Google™, perhaps that's the case for FB as well. Note, I have no experience with either company, but in a thread like this not having contact info is wasting your 15 minutes. Also note https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15188618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15188618 - apparently what happened to you is quite common (!?).
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • aspyrx 9y ago
    I've taken to your advice. Thanks!
    • exikyut 9y ago
      Awesome (I see it's in your profile, reachable by clicking your username). Good luck; here's hoping you get some emails!
• L_Rahman 9y ago
  Hi, I think you could have massaged the snark in the sentence that says "Beyond software developers who have programmed in the 1970s, most people do not have experience with a true UNIX OS" but other than that I think you should walk away thinking that your communication was clear, straight-forward and respectful. Here's what happened - the recruiter had a list of keywords, received a large volume of inbound resumes and filtered for == 'UNIX' and dumped everything else. They (and the company they represent) could have done a better job if they'd taken the information given, created an actual human mental model and filtered accordingly but chose to behave like a computer program instead. Their loss - move on and don't feel bad about this. But I want to point out that like the recruiter you too got stuck in the literal filter. You assumed, I'm guessing correctly, that the hiring team is probably looking for someone with experience working on UNIX-like operating systems. A bit of advice: When you encounter imperfect systems like this in the future a good practice is to ask yourself if you know what the actual desired outcome is, and give the lossy filter the input it needs to get you to the next round. Here it would have been simply updating your resume to list UNIX instead offering an explainer. This would get you through the recruiter filter, and during your actual phone screen with someone on the hiring team, you could discuss your UNIX-like experience if asked. If they did want literal UNIX experience, you could apologize for misinterpreting the requirement and move on. No harm done.
  • groundCode 9y ago
    This is good advice. If you want the internship/job at a company, you have to get your foot in the door. That means going through the recruitment team. Cutting off your nose to spite your face doesn't often result in job offers. Get through the recruitment and make it better from the inside.
  • ricardobeat 9y ago
    That's the most cringy part - in the second iteration you'll note he did list UNIX as a skill, but then the recruiter went on about the lack of Linux experience (which he had just replaced)! Like playing whack-a-mole.
    • droithomme 9y ago
• wrs 9y ago
  Here's the sad fact: If I were a hiring manager at Facebook and saw your post, I would slap my forehead in frustration in complete empathy with you. That recruiter is not only clueless, but shows a nearly bot-like level of comprehension of the subject they're supposedly recruiting for, which I personally find quite rude on their part. Then, because I'm at Facebook, I would just move on, because honestly anything that filters out one more of the 10,000 qualified intern candidates I'm going to have to look at is good for me, even if it's completely random and stupid.
  • cabalamat 9y ago
    > That recruiter is not only clueless Look on the bright side: automation is likely to put recruiter-as-grep out of a job soon.
    • _jal 9y ago
      At which time faulty pattern-matches will become impossible to argue with, even if you can keep your ego under control. Yay?
• jemfinch 9y ago
  > I was being pretty damn condescending and spoke out of line without regards to the context. No, you didn't speak out of line. To be honest, the recruiter was lucky you were willing to continue the conversation at all; if that were my experience with Facebook recruiting, I'd simply would have stopped replying as soon as it was clear that the recruiter was nothing more than checking boxes. The recruiter needs to improve before they lose more than just intern prospects.
• jarsin 9y ago
  How do we know the recruiter is not a chat bot?
  • amrrs 9y ago
    >How do we know the recruiter is not a chat bot? 'Thanks for the tutorial' I don't think any chat bot would read the entire thing and maybe sarcastically summarize it as Tutorial
    • LeoNatan25 9y ago
      guard response.length < 30 else { return "Thanks for the tutorial" }
• altrego99 9y ago
  I think you did the right thing posting this. If I were in Facebook, I'd like to learn about this.
• peterkelly 9y ago
  You were dealing with an idiot. I don't think you said anything wrong.
• new299 9y ago
  As you've requested comments. I would say your replies were fine. You gave more detail than was necessary, and the recruiter was not able to understand. That's not really your fault though. Your comment here however indicates to me you lack confidence. That's normal too. But lacking confidence can be career limiting. You're trying to figure out "what did I do wrong" which is a useful exercise, but as Picard said "it is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose that is not a weakness, that is life". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4A-Ml8YHyM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4A-Ml8YHyM
• feelin_googley 9y ago
  Since you are soliciting feedback, I think you can do better than Facebook. You have taken the time at university to learn about the origins of "UNIX" and about portability, but it seems clear to me you do not need to know about these things for this Facebook internship. If you want this knowledge to be acknowledged and valued, if you want to put it into practice, then perhaps Facebook is not the proper place for this to happen. There are open source UNIX-like projects that would be better suited and more appreciative. If the position they were recruiting for was not "UNIX and Linux" then I would have a different opinion. You did nothing wrong. Sure, you could have gotten past this recruiter by being more cooperative but if you are really passionate about UNIX then I think the internship would be a disappointment. You come across as far more impressive than the Facebook organization and I hope that you will stick with UNIX-like OS going forward, whether as part of your day job or as an open source contributor.
  • foota 9y ago
    "feelin_googley" wouldn't have any motive for encouraging people to work somewhere else, could they? :P (I jest)
    • efreak 9y ago
      Given what (admittedly little) I know about UNIX and the companies/software, I'd think Apple (Darwin) would be a better fit?
  • atdt 9y ago
    Oh, come on. I work at Google. I am sure Facebook is a very fine place to work. They have plenty of very smart people working on very interesting projects. Don't be a snob.
    • nvarsj 9y ago
      I like how you name drop "I work at Google" - which has no relevance to the rest of your comment. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
• ideal0227 9y ago
  If you never work on Unix, then you should insist on saying so. Holding integrity is much more important than getting an internship from FB. And, as an engineer working in the infrastructure space, I do not believe FB is looking for someone has UNIX experience for the internship. The recruiter is not knowledgeable. If he/she is hiring for production engineering, he/she needs to understand the basic of the keywords they search for. No reason for you to apologize.
• tbaowow 9y ago
  Hi. I was at FB and a lot of us in the Ex-FB group want to help. FB is a big company now, so unfortunately, these things happen. If you email me at thomasbao12@gmail.com. I can share your email with some other FBers or ex-FBers. Here's a screencap of some of the support: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ecq6qqzu1b88grr/Screenshot%202017-09-06%2023.12.05.png?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/ecq6qqzu1b88grr/Screenshot%202017-... Even if they can't help you get back in the pipeline for an internship at FB, maybe they can get you an internship somewhere else.
• TheMagicHorsey 9y ago
  Don't be dense. You acted wholly appropriately. Facebook happened to hire a bad recruiter. What could you do but correct him or her?
• peteretep 9y ago
  I'm a recruiter, your responses were spot-on. I think I'd have probably been a lot ruder a lot earlier than you were.
• Annatar 9y ago
  You were not condescending, what you wrote about POSIX are facts (with a slight addendum that if you grew up on Solaris, HP-UX and IRIX like some of us, those are true UNIXes). You simply had the misfortune to run into an inexperienced recruiter. It happens often whereas it shouldn't happen at all: I've been preaching for years that IT professionals should be recruiting other professionals, instead of companies putting up someone who isn't formally trained in computer science to do something they don't really understand. After my own experience, I'm of deep and firm belief that recruiting good people is part of a social contract of every good IT professional. It is too critical to be left in the hands of the non-practitioners.
• scelerat 9y ago
  You dodged a bullet. If a recruiter is that dense, that doesn't speak well for the company they represent (they are helping to recruit others, too!) You can do better. Nothing in your response was wrong or out of line.
  • grecy 9y ago
    I used to think like that too, but it's worth remembering that HR/Recruiters != company. It's entirely possible that once you get past the inane recruiter junk you find yourself on a superb team of talented people. Unfortunately, I have just come to accept silly HR/Recruiter practices as a negative reality of life in 2017.
    • Grue3 9y ago
      >once you get past the inane recruiter junk you find yourself on a superb team of talented people But... these are exact same people the "inane recruiter junk" has selected. How good can they possibly be?
      • grecy 9y ago
        Just because the people played the "inane recruiter junk" game doesn't mean they are good or bad. Maybe the manager of the team does an excellent job of sorting out the noise after people have passed the recruiter game. Maybe they have great face-to-face interviews with the team and the team decides. There are a hundred reasons why the recruiter junk is meaningless to the quality of the candidate, but it certainly lets you know everyone that gets through is willing to be adaptable, compromise, communicate clearly etc. etc.
      • joatmon-snoo 9y ago
        Because this is one of hundreds (if not thousands) of recruiters that Facebook has ever employed ;)
• wellboy 9y ago
  You didn't do anything wrong. In fact, you should have asked the recruiter to speak to a supervisor with deep knowledge in Unix, where he could confirm your knowledge and get back to you and you would've gotten the job.
• mto 9y ago
  Ah, don't worry - as others said, most of us did something similar at some point. I'd even say that it's good to keep our profession strong by not playing the game of the business and HR people. I always envy my friends in medicine. They have a strong union and stand together, pushing salaries for all of them and don't accept anyone above them who is not also from their profession (even if that's often hell of arrogant...).
• pmlnr 9y ago
  Do not bend. Keep educating people. You done right. If we all give in, the result is 2017: ignorant, arrogant recruiters, not willing to look into what they _should_ understand, since they are looking for speciality positions; and ignorant, arrogant people all around, not willing to learn anything.
  • dymk 9y ago
    > Do not bend This kind of advice is what will keep him from being an engineer that others want to work with, and from passing the trivial HR screens that big companies have immediately before talking with an engineer. Soft skills and an ability to explain without condescension are much more important for educating others, rather than doubling down and being pedantic to someone who obviously isn't getting it.
• watwut 9y ago
  I don't think you was horribly inappropriate, tho you really was condescending. You was mostly quite a lot unstrategic and you did not tailored your communication to audience. The audience is not-too-technical requiter. You introduced term he did not knew (posix) and sent him wall of text explaining history of unix/linux. First, even tech people use terms Linux and Unix as a synonyms for Unix-like daily, so there is not need to go full nerd on someone who is not into it. Local experienced senior could easily have said "we need Unix and Linux experience" and requiter then simply attempts to fulfill that requirement. Local experienced seniors would rather change job then manage communication with dozens of potential interns, you cant expect first contact to be like them. Second, history of tech wall of text will not work even if you are the most polite and humble person in the world. People don't read long detailed explanation even when they actually need them. They want to move to next mail as soon as possible. If the long text where you are lecturing someone contains just a hint of condescension, even if unintentional, people wont read it and will react negatively (which happened by the end of conversation). It is his bad not yours, but such reaction is still fairly predictable. Just say that yes, you worked with Linux and Unix systems and leave out historical details. When you are looking for doctor, you don't expect lecture on correct latin names of body parts and their history. You expect them to translate from human speech to doctor speech. It is same thing.
• omer_balyali 9y ago
  You're not condescending; you were trying to explain to a person who is not qualified to screen you. It's a billion-dollar business, and they're hiring engineers, so they're not picking up apples at the grocery store. Even if you would apply before they contacted you, there is no excuse that they don't know what they're talking. You don't have to be gentle to excuse someone else's illiteracy. He/she is not your friend or your family, this is a business. You screened the recruiter well, and he/she failed to continue. Best luck in his/her exactly-UNIX-and-not-UNIX-like engineer search!
• rkangel 9y ago
  I see recruitment like a see sales. When you're selling a technical product (e.g. a smartphone) to the general public, it's your job to communicate what makes it great, and it's not the public's fault if they don't understand the technical terms. That doesn't mean that a chunk of the population aren't being idiotic when they misunderstand some bit of your marketing spiel, but it's fundamentally your problem and not theirs. Another point of view is that recruitment people are going to be less technically savvy than the actual engineers. That's a good thing - do you want to work as an engineer somewhere where they make the engineers do all the HR grunt work?
• rdslw 9y ago
  Commenting just to let you know. You did nothing wrong. Never forget who reached for who. It's FB in desperate need that they pick workers from students these days. Also, trying to (yuck) trick you into providing names of others companies - hahaha - it's like you asking him: what's the maximum salary FB can offer or similar questions. Disgusting simply because any sane person (your friend e.g.) would suggest you never provide that to counter negotiating party. Asking for this info is not far (in effect) to asking about age/race etc. This data is intended to have more bargaining power on FB side. Unethical. And NB: it's the recruiter who introduced 'UNIX-like' into conversation. Take your time, they all (companies) will bend. It's an employee market. You did a great job!
  • notyourday 9y ago
    > Commenting just to let you know. You did nothing wrong. > Never forget who reached for who. This is the most important comment in this entire thread.
    • linkmotif 9y ago
      > Never forget who reached for who. Yep, that's the core. Whether he did something wrong, though, depends on how much he wanted the job.
• marmaduke 9y ago
  It's not a criticism, but I think you should have recognized immediately the mismatch between your competence and that of the recruiter. When participants in conversation are different enough, true communication becomes impossible, and it's useful to recognize this as early as possible to either choose another tact or abort entirely. (I think this applies to any distributed system not just recruiter-candidate pair.)
• nol13 9y ago
  TL;DR "ya was pretty much all true, but writing this to show i'm not an asshole to hopefully not fuck up any future job prospects with other recruiters who might read this"
• zero_one_one 9y ago
  Anyone who is old enough to remember MUDs feels your pain - it's a real shame that you had to test HR inputs this way though! $ CROSS DRAWBRIDGE CANNOT CROSS DRAWBRIDGE $ TRAVERSE DRAWBRIDGE CANNOT TRAVERSE DRAWBRIDGE $ ABANDON DRAWBRIDGE YOU REALIZE THAT YOUR EFFORTS ARE WASTED TRYING TO EXPLAIN YOUR QUEST TO A LOW LEVEL GUARD. YOUR PRINCESS IS IN ANOTHER CASTLE. GO NORTH, WEST, SOUTH OR EAST (?) Your application for an internship was spot on - ignore any and all feedback you've received from the HR rep, as it's all gumph. You obviously know what you're doing, and Internships (while beneficial in the market at the moment) are useful, you will be more than capable finding real paid work in any other area with your skillset - and best of luck to you as well. Aiming high doesn't necessary mean applying to the Facebooks and Googles of the world. --- Wonder if the HR filters take regex? 'It'"'"'s a $"[nN].[Xx]" system! I know this!'* *Edit: This also qualifies you on Xanax, which may not be what you want.
  • drharby 9y ago
    >I know this! Velociraptors are always the real enemy
• nvarsj 9y ago
  I'm more disappointed with this comment! But I guess it's to be expected. You've learned a life lesson - Don't get out of line, Don't mess with authority, Or you'll get shut down! I dislike big companies for this reason. Expect worse when you work at one. The most successful learn the game (you've taken your first step) and rise the ranks.
• rayiner 9y ago
  You don’t deserve the criticism in my opinion. Recruiters serve a necessary function, and knowing a good recruiter can be a great help. That being said, engineers drive the bus. Recruiters aren’t subject matter experts and shouldn’t pretend to be. This is a simple question that could and should have been kicked up to an actual engineer.
• charliedevolve 9y ago
  While reading the exchange, I totally thought that you were conversing with a bot. Just scanning the resume for missing items and pointing them out in slightly different ways each time. Kind of disturbing, actually.
• jaclaz 9y ago
  If I may, Stanley you were IMHO "perfect": correct, respectful, clear, plain. Personally I would have (different character AND way too many years dealing with this kind of people) sent him this: https://i.imgflip.com/spwve.jpg https://i.imgflip.com/spwve.jpg (and be blacklisted forever).
• forgottenpass 9y ago
  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. Nah. Relax. It was gauche, but not that bad. The responses you get are largely driven by the fact you got egg on the face of a tech Golden Boy. Also, social norms say you shouldn't air private conversations that expose the failings of a (potential, current, or former) employer. Almost everyone will admit that tech hiring practices are an ongoing dumpster fire and comedy of errors, they just prefer a less dicey context and framing for that conversation. You're new to the world of applying for jobs and how hiring works in professional contexts. I don't hold this against you. But this does lower my opinion of Facebook. Don't buy into the meme that programmers are dorks and therefore always carry 100% of fault for any social interaction that doesn't go magnificently. See if your school has a career services office, they can give you a crash course in all the ceremony and fuss around building a resume and getting interviewed.
• _anonymous 9y ago
  Not your fault. 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.
• stefek99 9y ago
  Don't you know that recruiting at this stage (gatekeepers) is a box-ticking exercise?