20 ms·

Why I went with them and not you: feedback to an interviewer

214 points by jobeirne 16y ago

dmlorenzetti 16y ago
I picked my first career essentially on the basis of interviewers. My undergrad (at U.Cincinnati) required all engineering students to take a co-operative education job for 6 months a year. You pick your first job after the freshman year. At that stage in the game, I had no idea what I would find most rewarding (I was in an electrical and computer science program, which left a lot of room to choose). Most companies sent engineers to the campus recruiting center. They tended to ask dry questions about classes and training. The guy from RCA Semiconductor was personable, warm, and knew how to sell his company. He also "got" that frosh aren't really at the stage where grilling them on technical knowledge makes much sense when deciding who to take a chance on, so he steered the conversation more toward life experiences, interests, and working style. I went with RCA, with no reservations. Happily for me, it turned out that Tom reflected the company culture in the factory that sent him. Was it the "best" decision? I can't say, but I do know that a truly professional interviewer had a profound impact on the path I followed for many years of my professional career.
pdenya 16y ago
A lot of good points that would definitely influence me in picking a company. Especially developing on windows, I would personally list that heavily in the cons column.
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  It would be for me as well, but there are many people who swear by Visual Studio, and Microsoft is generally very developer-friendly. I'm sure there's reasons beyond corporate dictate that many companies choose to develop in Windows.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    I've used Visual Studio at work. The first C++ program I wrote caused the compiler to segfault. It was hello world compiled as managed code using the .net string class. The solution was to wait for the next version of Visual Studio to be approved by the Internal Software Approval Team. I switched to Haskell + Emacs and never looked back. If you're stuck on Windows, that's a damn good development environment. Miles ahead of anything Microsoft could offer. (But visual studio lets you refactor shit by right clicking. Yeah, but Haskell lets me write code that actually works.)
    - MortenK 16y ago
      So you were at a competency level where you couldn't get Hello world to work, switched to another language and based on that, conclude that your choice of language plus editor is miles ahead of anything MS could offer?
      - alextingle 16y ago
        I think he said that the MS toolchain was incapable of compiling a simple hello world program. How did you make the mental leap from that to questioning his competence??
        waterlesscloud 16y ago
        I don't think it's much of a leap to question the programmer rather than the compiler when "Hello World" won't compile. Maybe it's the compiler, but there would need to be some evidence that it was so before I went with that option.
        jrockway 16y ago
        We called Microsoft and they said, "yeah, don't use managed C++ in this version of VS."
        jarek 16y ago
lwhi 16y ago
Bravo on scoring two jobs, but a little bit boastful all the same. What a show off :P
- InfinityX0 16y ago
  In the developer job market, I think this is OK - because they are in such high demand. If this compared jobs as entry-level marketing associates, I would've felt more dissonance towards what you mention - but in this situation, I think it was OK and not too ego-driven.
  - lwhi 16y ago
    Why would an applicant care whether other employers score good developers over sating their own desire for an ego boost? I don't buy it.
    - mkelly 16y ago
      Hiring qualified people is hard. Just because you're the applicant today doesn't mean you won't be an interviewer tomorrow. It's better for all of us if there's more communication about these things.
      - lwhi 16y ago
        I'm a cynic, but maybe yr right.
gyepi 16y ago
Great points. As someone hiring for a "company Y", I firmly believe in the design process and culture and try hard to make candidates feel that they would play meaningful technical and cultural roles in the company.
j_baker 16y ago
It may seem arbitrary, but the platform an organization uses is indicative to me of a whole lot. Was anyone else a bit annoyed by this statement? It's a good, wholesome, and healthy thing to say "You guys use Windows and I like using Unix", but it's wrong to say "You guys use Windows, and that says something about your organization." Why do techies have such a tendency to phrase "I don't like x" as "It is wrong to use x".
- jobeirne 16y ago
  I never said using Windows is wrong or implied anything negative about its use; I said that I don't prefer to develop on Windows and that I like the principles behind Unix.
  - j_baker 16y ago
    I think what you mean to say is you didn't intend to say that. Whether or not you actually did say that is another matter entirely. In this case, the majority of your post seems good. But the big bolded sentence that grabs your eye first seems to be implying that there's something wrong with an organization that uses Windows. I mean, imagine telling someone you don't like their cooking and then saying "The fact that you use margarine instead of butter says a lot." You're not directly saying anything bad about them personally, but most likely they're going to take it as a roundabout way of saying "Real cooks use butter, but you use margarine. Therefore, you're not a real cook."
    - jerf 16y ago
      "But the big bolded sentence that grabs your eye first seems to be implying that there's something wrong with an organization that uses Windows." So what if he did? By the time you've reached that point you really ought to have figured out the entire post is a subjective opinion. Here, I'll say it too: I don't want to work for an organization that primarily runs Windows by default. I don't have to justify it rigorously scientifically. Nor am I saying there are no skilled Windows developers in the world. In fact my company has quite a few in it ("some of my best friends are Windows developers", ahem). Nevertheless, I do not want to work for a primarily Windows company. I do not like Windows software culture.
Lost_BiomedE 16y ago
Interesting. It has been quite a while since i have done an interview for an office job, but I will start doing so soon. I worked in the restaurant industry as my last non-entrepreneurial career. Seeing the developing on Windows and deploying on Linux as a big flag sounds analogous to noticing a dirty walk-in fridge, burnt-out light in the dining area, or a deer in the headlights look and lack of smiles in a busy line-cook. Is it common for the interviewee to ask as many questions about the employer as the employer asks of the interviewee? In most business dealings or past job interviews, I have taken it as a red flag if this was not the case. Were you able to ask why they used Windows or was it expected that you were to just answer their questions?
michaelpinto 16y ago
You may vote me down but this reminds me a great deal of how things started to feel right before the last dot.com crash circa 2001. I imagine most of you are too young to recall it, but before we hit the end programmers were worth more than gold. You'd get kids who didn't even finish this CS degree looking for stock options, aeron chairs and other perks (...and do you have a sushi chef on site?). And small companies gladly did this because even getting a warm body was better than not. And then it hit. First one company and then the next. Each week you'd read about another 100 people being laid off. You knew that even if 1 in 10 razorfish employees were decent that 90 amazing people were now hitting the streets. Our guilty pleasured was reading f*ckedcompany -- a website that just covered the daily implosions. I hope that history won't repeat itself on that scale, but that said this point in time feels like that point in time. I see other signs too: For example a German car company just opened up a VC fund. I know that Facebook could be the next Google, yet I was recently shocked to see a content farm go public. With any luck the rest of the economy will recover to buffer an industry stumble, but you never know.
haberman 16y ago
I think it is unwise to send a letter with this tone to someone you've turned down. I say this as someone who used to do exactly the same thing. You think you're being honest, but to be on the receiving side of this it comes off badly. Especially as a new grad, it's not really your place to lecture someone about how Unix embodies the essence of good software engineering when they have probably been doing this a lot longer than you and have their own ideas about what good software design is. You could have given the same feedback in a way that is much less likely to come off badly by simply saying "I've really a UNIX kind of guy and a Windows shop probably isn't the best fit for me."
- Pahalial 16y ago
  I don't know that I agree: you're essentially advocating dishonesty, in my opinion. If he legitimately feels that a Unix shop by nature will espouse certain qualities, why should he hold back? They solicited his feedback. Unless he wants to hold them in his pocket as a fall-back, I can't see why he should sugarcoat his response. Yes, you could call his opinion essentially hubris if you disagree and wanted to be antagonistic, but it's at least honest, straightforward, and not unduly confrontational. I say this as someone who's been off-and-on involved with interviewing and sent out this kind of question to people who turned us down - the only two times I got a response, they were devoid of any information and just platitudes to butter us up. Literally not a single negative point about us or our process, which needless to say was not helpful and personally annoyed me far more than a letter like this would have done.
  - haberman 16y ago
    What about "I'm really a UNIX kind of guy and a Windows shop probably isn't the best fit for me" is dishonest or devoid of information? This makes it clear that he prefers UNIX and that was a factor in declining the position. It stops short of passing sweeping judgements on people who do not prefer UNIX, which is very likely to annoy somebody who prefers Windows.
    - jobeirne 16y ago
elbelcho 16y ago
I'd be interested to know if the author finds this article embarrassing in 10 years. When I started in professional software development 10 years ago (about), I probably would have made many similar points. I see a lot of the same attitudes in CS students today. They are just absolutely CERTAIN that the entire world can be easily categorized into their predefined concepts. As you get older and more experienced, you'll realize that a lot of your early opinions were naive at best. I have a feeling the article's author will feel similarly in the future.
- jarin 16y ago
  I've been a developer for just over 10 years now, and I would say the opposite for myself. 10 years ago, I would never have written a response like this. Now, I would in a heartbeat. I do think that he will find it embarrassing in 10 years, but for different reasons (like in 10 years, Windows is a super awesome development platform, or running on Amazon Web Services is like running on IIS, or jQuery is the new VBScript, or something like that).
  - gaius 16y ago
    There is nothing about "the cloud" today that wasn't said about "the mainframe" back in the day...
    - vparikh 16y ago
      Except for one big difference -- today, I or the company I work for, doesn't have to own "the mainframe". Basically its a return to the "mainframe" with the cost and exclusivity. That is a huge difference.
      - gaius 16y ago
        In the 70s you had "computer bureaus" that owned the mainframe that you would rent time on by the hour. A lot of the early MUDs ran in spare capacity on these. Exactly like the cloud...
jrussbowman 16y ago
My experience has me at the point where I won't go into detail explaining why I don't take s position. I tried when I turned down a government contractor for a position maintaining a couple servers for a position where I would be responsible for a few hundred for a lot less. They just pushed the money and got offended not understanding I needed the challenge and learning experiences. I left the situation feeling a little guilty and then just figured out you need to do what's right for you and not get into explaining it to people who won't even remember you in a few months.
coffeemug 16y ago
The degree of entitlement among new grads in the software development industry is incredible. I know because I've been there. Now I see it from the other side as an employer, and when I think of the way I acted after I graduated, I want to go back and kick myself. In retrospect, this was a sign of immaturity and self-aggrandizing. I genuinely believed at the time that Emacs and Linux and Common Lisp somehow made me special, when in reality I just wanted to convince myself that I was a better developer than my peers. I wasn't. I was a good coder, but I was immature, wasted a ton of people's time, and refused to listen to people who wrote code that solved real problems while I was on my "let's switch to Linux and Lisp" crusade. I can point out a ton of examples where Windows is significantly better than Linux and vice versa. Same goes for most programming languages, development environments, and software methodologies. Saying "I like UNIX more and prefer to develop in it" is one thing. Saying that a choice of the OS tells me something about an organization and that their particular system of choice is somehow based on worse philosophical principles than my alternative is naive and condescending beyond belief. The rule of thumb is to understand before you decide you've understood. If we used this principle more often, the industry overall would be a much more nourishing environment to work in.
- dasil003 16y ago
  On the other hand, for a while it seemed that more often than not an idealistic stand against Windows was the only viable type, and I daresay we're all better off for those who took it.
  - davidw 16y ago
    I've been using Linux since I started developing professionally, in 1997, and for the things I've worked on (mostly the web), it's always been a valid alternative.
    - rbanffy 16y ago
      I moved over from Windows to Linux in mid 2003. For me, it has not only been a valid alternative, but a superior one.
pz 16y ago
i'd be interested to see him revisit this letter after he's had the chance to sit on the other side of the table in an interview.
jbarnette 16y ago
I don't get the impression that many of the commenters here are spending a lot of time trying to hire good people right now. I am, and I'd be grateful to receive an email like this. I wouldn't like it, but honest, personal feedback on an interview process is hard to find.
grammr 16y ago
Considering how strongly the author feels about developing exclusively on *nix, I found it surprising that it took as much as an interview for him to learn that "company X" uses Windows. Almost all software job reqs. offer reasonable insight as to what key technologies they use. Other than that, I found his response reeking of condescension and inexperience.
- dhume 16y ago
  I found it surprising that it took as much as an interview for him to learn that "company X" uses Windows. I didn't catch anything in the post saying he didn't find that out until the interview.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    Then why did he interview? If it was a phone interview... sure, no biggy. But an onsite interview requires some DD by the applicant. You don't even accept the interview if there's no chance you'd work there. And if you do it anyways, maybe for practice, then you don't give this type of feedback. It's like going out on a date with a girl you're not attracted to just for practice. And then when she asks why you didn't go on a second date saying, "Because you're frankly not very attractive." You were kind of a jerk for going on the date in the first place, but the feedback made you a certified one. In any case either the candidate doesn't do the type of reasonable DD that I'd expect from an applicant, even a college hire. Or he's bordernline unethical.
    - dhume 16y ago
      You don't even accept the interview if there's no chance you'd work there. You don't know that there's no chance of working there until you know what your other options are. If you're still interviewing (i.e. you don't have offers/rejections in hand yet), you don't know what options you have. You might know that you won't accept Company X's offer if Company Y also makes you an offer, but that's quite a different situation from knowing there's no way you'd accept Company X's offer.
zafka 16y ago
I agree with the sentiment of your letter, I feel that it might not have been the most diplomatic thing to say, but there is a pretty good chance you won't have to worry about it. Keep improving your skills so you can voice opinions with out worry that it will kill your career.
biotech 16y ago
I see many comments pointing out that it may be a good technical decision to develop on Windows. This is a good point; many skilled engineers target Windows and .NET with great success. In that case, having a Windows development environment makes sense. However, it sounds like the organization in question was not deploying to Windows - from the article: ...it seemed to me that most of your development happens on Windows (though it’s almost needless to say that you deploy to Linux) I won't judge you for using Windows over Unix (even though I prefer Unix), but I will judge the choice of using Windows for development when you are targeting Unix. I have had this experience, and it was a Management decision - not an Engineering decision, and it resulted in significantly less productive work environment. Given two opportunities that are otherwise equal, I would definitely choose the company that develops on the same platform that they deploy on (assuming we're talking about Unix or Windows - there are obvious exceptions in the embedded world). One caveat: It is common for an organization to use both Windows and Linux for different tasks. In that case, the choice of development environment is more complicated. Either way, I'd say that the candidate should have asked up front during the interview, "Why are you using Windows for development, and could I use Mac/Linux instead?", instead of judging them based on what seems like a lack of information. They may have a good reason. If they don't, your decision is that much easier.
- asnyder 16y ago
  It would be nice to know what type of shop they were, after all in some places your OS just provides a text editor or IDE where you work on files remotely and run in a browser off of a *NIX server. If that was the case it doesn't matter what OS they're developing in, as anyone should be able to develop in the OS and text editor of their choice so long as it can hook up to SSH.
Luyt 16y ago
The asymmetry of the situation strikes me. Where a company which decides not to hire someone can only say "we're not following through with your application at this moment" out of fear of litigation, the candidate can freely comment on his decision to not take the job. It would be nice when companies were able to do the same.
- v21 16y ago
  I live in the UK, and have gotten good feedback from jobs I didn't get. Even though they were rejections, I often agreed with their points and choices. I liked the companies more as a result. If I had solicited, and then received this email, I would be very grateful - this kind of opinion must be very difficult to find.
pnathan 16y ago
I believe that things can only be improved with honesty and transparency. I would rather work with someone who gave real feedback than give a mealy-mouthed reply. The OP is very straightforward and - to me - non-insulting. It might be a bit of a bitter pill to swallow, but when one asks for feedback, one should be grateful when it is given... my 2c.
mruniverse 16y ago
What a little snot. He likes Unix because that's what he knows and he's not comfortable developing in Windows. I know a lot of middling developers (I include myself in that group) that are like this. The really good devs I know don't care much about the OS. They're more interested in the problems to be solved.
d4nt 16y ago
What I hear when reading this is "I feel a greater sense of belonging with Compant Y". Everything else could be just rationalisation after the fact, people are amazingly good at rationalising why they believe the same thing as their friends.
ideamonk 16y ago
I got in a similar situation, I interviewed for company X & company Y. I fulfill all the requirements of company X's jobs page. But when it came to the interview, they threw 4 well known questions after a short introduction which sounded more like a pointless formality unlike a real conversation I get when I meet devs at confs. That night I was interviewed by an employee of Y, and he did spend first 20 minutes asking me questions on two of my side projects, grilling down to details, catching up on new trends. And then there were questions to test my cs skills, and an invite to face-to-face. Overall I loved the way interviewer from Y dealt with me. I definitely could connect more to the person from Y than from X.
cnunciato 16y ago
Of course tools and technology definitely matter, and do influence culture, which also matters, but if someone sent me a letter like this one I'd be genuinely relieved it didn't work out.
arethuza 16y ago
I honestly don't see what the problem is with what chap wrote - it's more than 20 years since I graduated and I felt pretty much as he does about Unix, and to a certain extent I still do (even though I don't have any problem using Windows). I've hired a lot of people over the years, for my own company and for others, and if someone wrote this to me I'd thank them for their feedback and wish them the best luck with their career.

214 points by jobeirne 16y ago

I picked my first career essentially on the basis of interviewers. My undergrad (at U.Cincinnati) required all engineering students to take a co-operative education job for 6 months a year. You pick your first job after the freshman year. At that stage in the game, I had no idea what I would find most rewarding (I was in an electrical and computer science program, which left a lot of room to choose). Most companies sent engineers to the campus recruiting center. They tended to ask dry questions about classes and training. The guy from RCA Semiconductor was personable, warm, and knew how to sell his company. He also "got" that frosh aren't really at the stage where grilling them on technical knowledge makes much sense when deciding who to take a chance on, so he steered the conversation more toward life experiences, interests, and working style. I went with RCA, with no reservations. Happily for me, it turned out that Tom reflected the company culture in the factory that sent him. Was it the "best" decision? I can't say, but I do know that a truly professional interviewer had a profound impact on the path I followed for many years of my professional career.

pdenya 16y ago

A lot of good points that would definitely influence me in picking a company. Especially developing on windows, I would personally list that heavily in the cons column.

redthrowaway 16y ago
It would be for me as well, but there are many people who swear by Visual Studio, and Microsoft is generally very developer-friendly. I'm sure there's reasons beyond corporate dictate that many companies choose to develop in Windows.
- jrockway 16y ago
  I've used Visual Studio at work. The first C++ program I wrote caused the compiler to segfault. It was hello world compiled as managed code using the .net string class. The solution was to wait for the next version of Visual Studio to be approved by the Internal Software Approval Team. I switched to Haskell + Emacs and never looked back. If you're stuck on Windows, that's a damn good development environment. Miles ahead of anything Microsoft could offer. (But visual studio lets you refactor shit by right clicking. Yeah, but Haskell lets me write code that actually works.)
  - MortenK 16y ago
    So you were at a competency level where you couldn't get Hello world to work, switched to another language and based on that, conclude that your choice of language plus editor is miles ahead of anything MS could offer?
    - alextingle 16y ago
      I think he said that the MS toolchain was incapable of compiling a simple hello world program. How did you make the mental leap from that to questioning his competence??
      - waterlesscloud 16y ago
        I don't think it's much of a leap to question the programmer rather than the compiler when "Hello World" won't compile. Maybe it's the compiler, but there would need to be some evidence that it was so before I went with that option.
        jrockway 16y ago
        We called Microsoft and they said, "yeah, don't use managed C++ in this version of VS."
        jarek 16y ago

lwhi 16y ago

Bravo on scoring two jobs, but a little bit boastful all the same. What a show off :P

InfinityX0 16y ago
In the developer job market, I think this is OK - because they are in such high demand. If this compared jobs as entry-level marketing associates, I would've felt more dissonance towards what you mention - but in this situation, I think it was OK and not too ego-driven.
- lwhi 16y ago
  Why would an applicant care whether other employers score good developers over sating their own desire for an ego boost? I don't buy it.
  - mkelly 16y ago
    Hiring qualified people is hard. Just because you're the applicant today doesn't mean you won't be an interviewer tomorrow. It's better for all of us if there's more communication about these things.
    - lwhi 16y ago
      I'm a cynic, but maybe yr right.

gyepi 16y ago

Great points. As someone hiring for a "company Y", I firmly believe in the design process and culture and try hard to make candidates feel that they would play meaningful technical and cultural roles in the company.

j_baker 16y ago

It may seem arbitrary, but the platform an organization uses is indicative to me of a whole lot. Was anyone else a bit annoyed by this statement? It's a good, wholesome, and healthy thing to say "You guys use Windows and I like using Unix", but it's wrong to say "You guys use Windows, and that says something about your organization." Why do techies have such a tendency to phrase "I don't like x" as "It is wrong to use x".

jobeirne 16y ago
I never said using Windows is wrong or implied anything negative about its use; I said that I don't prefer to develop on Windows and that I like the principles behind Unix.
- j_baker 16y ago
  I think what you mean to say is you didn't intend to say that. Whether or not you actually did say that is another matter entirely. In this case, the majority of your post seems good. But the big bolded sentence that grabs your eye first seems to be implying that there's something wrong with an organization that uses Windows. I mean, imagine telling someone you don't like their cooking and then saying "The fact that you use margarine instead of butter says a lot." You're not directly saying anything bad about them personally, but most likely they're going to take it as a roundabout way of saying "Real cooks use butter, but you use margarine. Therefore, you're not a real cook."
  - jerf 16y ago
    "But the big bolded sentence that grabs your eye first seems to be implying that there's something wrong with an organization that uses Windows." So what if he did? By the time you've reached that point you really ought to have figured out the entire post is a subjective opinion. Here, I'll say it too: I don't want to work for an organization that primarily runs Windows by default. I don't have to justify it rigorously scientifically. Nor am I saying there are no skilled Windows developers in the world. In fact my company has quite a few in it ("some of my best friends are Windows developers", ahem). Nevertheless, I do not want to work for a primarily Windows company. I do not like Windows software culture.

Lost_BiomedE 16y ago

Interesting. It has been quite a while since i have done an interview for an office job, but I will start doing so soon. I worked in the restaurant industry as my last non-entrepreneurial career. Seeing the developing on Windows and deploying on Linux as a big flag sounds analogous to noticing a dirty walk-in fridge, burnt-out light in the dining area, or a deer in the headlights look and lack of smiles in a busy line-cook. Is it common for the interviewee to ask as many questions about the employer as the employer asks of the interviewee? In most business dealings or past job interviews, I have taken it as a red flag if this was not the case. Were you able to ask why they used Windows or was it expected that you were to just answer their questions?

michaelpinto 16y ago

You may vote me down but this reminds me a great deal of how things started to feel right before the last dot.com crash circa 2001. I imagine most of you are too young to recall it, but before we hit the end programmers were worth more than gold. You'd get kids who didn't even finish this CS degree looking for stock options, aeron chairs and other perks (...and do you have a sushi chef on site?). And small companies gladly did this because even getting a warm body was better than not. And then it hit. First one company and then the next. Each week you'd read about another 100 people being laid off. You knew that even if 1 in 10 razorfish employees were decent that 90 amazing people were now hitting the streets. Our guilty pleasured was reading f*ckedcompany -- a website that just covered the daily implosions. I hope that history won't repeat itself on that scale, but that said this point in time feels like that point in time. I see other signs too: For example a German car company just opened up a VC fund. I know that Facebook could be the next Google, yet I was recently shocked to see a content farm go public. With any luck the rest of the economy will recover to buffer an industry stumble, but you never know.

haberman 16y ago

I think it is unwise to send a letter with this tone to someone you've turned down. I say this as someone who used to do exactly the same thing. You think you're being honest, but to be on the receiving side of this it comes off badly. Especially as a new grad, it's not really your place to lecture someone about how Unix embodies the essence of good software engineering when they have probably been doing this a lot longer than you and have their own ideas about what good software design is. You could have given the same feedback in a way that is much less likely to come off badly by simply saying "I've really a UNIX kind of guy and a Windows shop probably isn't the best fit for me."

Pahalial 16y ago
I don't know that I agree: you're essentially advocating dishonesty, in my opinion. If he legitimately feels that a Unix shop by nature will espouse certain qualities, why should he hold back? They solicited his feedback. Unless he wants to hold them in his pocket as a fall-back, I can't see why he should sugarcoat his response. Yes, you could call his opinion essentially hubris if you disagree and wanted to be antagonistic, but it's at least honest, straightforward, and not unduly confrontational. I say this as someone who's been off-and-on involved with interviewing and sent out this kind of question to people who turned us down - the only two times I got a response, they were devoid of any information and just platitudes to butter us up. Literally not a single negative point about us or our process, which needless to say was not helpful and personally annoyed me far more than a letter like this would have done.
- haberman 16y ago
  What about "I'm really a UNIX kind of guy and a Windows shop probably isn't the best fit for me" is dishonest or devoid of information? This makes it clear that he prefers UNIX and that was a factor in declining the position. It stops short of passing sweeping judgements on people who do not prefer UNIX, which is very likely to annoy somebody who prefers Windows.
  - jobeirne 16y ago

elbelcho 16y ago

I'd be interested to know if the author finds this article embarrassing in 10 years. When I started in professional software development 10 years ago (about), I probably would have made many similar points. I see a lot of the same attitudes in CS students today. They are just absolutely CERTAIN that the entire world can be easily categorized into their predefined concepts. As you get older and more experienced, you'll realize that a lot of your early opinions were naive at best. I have a feeling the article's author will feel similarly in the future.

jarin 16y ago
I've been a developer for just over 10 years now, and I would say the opposite for myself. 10 years ago, I would never have written a response like this. Now, I would in a heartbeat. I do think that he will find it embarrassing in 10 years, but for different reasons (like in 10 years, Windows is a super awesome development platform, or running on Amazon Web Services is like running on IIS, or jQuery is the new VBScript, or something like that).
- gaius 16y ago
  There is nothing about "the cloud" today that wasn't said about "the mainframe" back in the day...
  - vparikh 16y ago
    Except for one big difference -- today, I or the company I work for, doesn't have to own "the mainframe". Basically its a return to the "mainframe" with the cost and exclusivity. That is a huge difference.
    - gaius 16y ago
      In the 70s you had "computer bureaus" that owned the mainframe that you would rent time on by the hour. A lot of the early MUDs ran in spare capacity on these. Exactly like the cloud...

jrussbowman 16y ago

My experience has me at the point where I won't go into detail explaining why I don't take s position. I tried when I turned down a government contractor for a position maintaining a couple servers for a position where I would be responsible for a few hundred for a lot less. They just pushed the money and got offended not understanding I needed the challenge and learning experiences. I left the situation feeling a little guilty and then just figured out you need to do what's right for you and not get into explaining it to people who won't even remember you in a few months.

coffeemug 16y ago

The degree of entitlement among new grads in the software development industry is incredible. I know because I've been there. Now I see it from the other side as an employer, and when I think of the way I acted after I graduated, I want to go back and kick myself. In retrospect, this was a sign of immaturity and self-aggrandizing. I genuinely believed at the time that Emacs and Linux and Common Lisp somehow made me special, when in reality I just wanted to convince myself that I was a better developer than my peers. I wasn't. I was a good coder, but I was immature, wasted a ton of people's time, and refused to listen to people who wrote code that solved real problems while I was on my "let's switch to Linux and Lisp" crusade. I can point out a ton of examples where Windows is significantly better than Linux and vice versa. Same goes for most programming languages, development environments, and software methodologies. Saying "I like UNIX more and prefer to develop in it" is one thing. Saying that a choice of the OS tells me something about an organization and that their particular system of choice is somehow based on worse philosophical principles than my alternative is naive and condescending beyond belief. The rule of thumb is to understand before you decide you've understood. If we used this principle more often, the industry overall would be a much more nourishing environment to work in.

dasil003 16y ago
On the other hand, for a while it seemed that more often than not an idealistic stand against Windows was the only viable type, and I daresay we're all better off for those who took it.
- davidw 16y ago
  I've been using Linux since I started developing professionally, in 1997, and for the things I've worked on (mostly the web), it's always been a valid alternative.
  - rbanffy 16y ago
    I moved over from Windows to Linux in mid 2003. For me, it has not only been a valid alternative, but a superior one.

pz 16y ago

i'd be interested to see him revisit this letter after he's had the chance to sit on the other side of the table in an interview.

jbarnette 16y ago

I don't get the impression that many of the commenters here are spending a lot of time trying to hire good people right now. I am, and I'd be grateful to receive an email like this. I wouldn't like it, but honest, personal feedback on an interview process is hard to find.

grammr 16y ago

Considering how strongly the author feels about developing exclusively on *nix, I found it surprising that it took as much as an interview for him to learn that "company X" uses Windows. Almost all software job reqs. offer reasonable insight as to what key technologies they use. Other than that, I found his response reeking of condescension and inexperience.

dhume 16y ago
I found it surprising that it took as much as an interview for him to learn that "company X" uses Windows. I didn't catch anything in the post saying he didn't find that out until the interview.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  Then why did he interview? If it was a phone interview... sure, no biggy. But an onsite interview requires some DD by the applicant. You don't even accept the interview if there's no chance you'd work there. And if you do it anyways, maybe for practice, then you don't give this type of feedback. It's like going out on a date with a girl you're not attracted to just for practice. And then when she asks why you didn't go on a second date saying, "Because you're frankly not very attractive." You were kind of a jerk for going on the date in the first place, but the feedback made you a certified one. In any case either the candidate doesn't do the type of reasonable DD that I'd expect from an applicant, even a college hire. Or he's bordernline unethical.
  - dhume 16y ago
    You don't even accept the interview if there's no chance you'd work there. You don't know that there's no chance of working there until you know what your other options are. If you're still interviewing (i.e. you don't have offers/rejections in hand yet), you don't know what options you have. You might know that you won't accept Company X's offer if Company Y also makes you an offer, but that's quite a different situation from knowing there's no way you'd accept Company X's offer.

zafka 16y ago

I agree with the sentiment of your letter, I feel that it might not have been the most diplomatic thing to say, but there is a pretty good chance you won't have to worry about it. Keep improving your skills so you can voice opinions with out worry that it will kill your career.

biotech 16y ago

I see many comments pointing out that it may be a good technical decision to develop on Windows. This is a good point; many skilled engineers target Windows and .NET with great success. In that case, having a Windows development environment makes sense. However, it sounds like the organization in question was not deploying to Windows - from the article: ...it seemed to me that most of your development happens on Windows (though it’s almost needless to say that you deploy to Linux) I won't judge you for using Windows over Unix (even though I prefer Unix), but I will judge the choice of using Windows for development when you are targeting Unix. I have had this experience, and it was a Management decision - not an Engineering decision, and it resulted in significantly less productive work environment. Given two opportunities that are otherwise equal, I would definitely choose the company that develops on the same platform that they deploy on (assuming we're talking about Unix or Windows - there are obvious exceptions in the embedded world). One caveat: It is common for an organization to use both Windows and Linux for different tasks. In that case, the choice of development environment is more complicated. Either way, I'd say that the candidate should have asked up front during the interview, "Why are you using Windows for development, and could I use Mac/Linux instead?", instead of judging them based on what seems like a lack of information. They may have a good reason. If they don't, your decision is that much easier.

asnyder 16y ago
It would be nice to know what type of shop they were, after all in some places your OS just provides a text editor or IDE where you work on files remotely and run in a browser off of a *NIX server. If that was the case it doesn't matter what OS they're developing in, as anyone should be able to develop in the OS and text editor of their choice so long as it can hook up to SSH.

Luyt 16y ago

The asymmetry of the situation strikes me. Where a company which decides not to hire someone can only say "we're not following through with your application at this moment" out of fear of litigation, the candidate can freely comment on his decision to not take the job. It would be nice when companies were able to do the same.

v21 16y ago
I live in the UK, and have gotten good feedback from jobs I didn't get. Even though they were rejections, I often agreed with their points and choices. I liked the companies more as a result. If I had solicited, and then received this email, I would be very grateful - this kind of opinion must be very difficult to find.

pnathan 16y ago

I believe that things can only be improved with honesty and transparency. I would rather work with someone who gave real feedback than give a mealy-mouthed reply. The OP is very straightforward and - to me - non-insulting. It might be a bit of a bitter pill to swallow, but when one asks for feedback, one should be grateful when it is given... my 2c.

mruniverse 16y ago

What a little snot. He likes Unix because that's what he knows and he's not comfortable developing in Windows. I know a lot of middling developers (I include myself in that group) that are like this. The really good devs I know don't care much about the OS. They're more interested in the problems to be solved.

d4nt 16y ago

What I hear when reading this is "I feel a greater sense of belonging with Compant Y". Everything else could be just rationalisation after the fact, people are amazingly good at rationalising why they believe the same thing as their friends.

ideamonk 16y ago

I got in a similar situation, I interviewed for company X & company Y. I fulfill all the requirements of company X's jobs page. But when it came to the interview, they threw 4 well known questions after a short introduction which sounded more like a pointless formality unlike a real conversation I get when I meet devs at confs. That night I was interviewed by an employee of Y, and he did spend first 20 minutes asking me questions on two of my side projects, grilling down to details, catching up on new trends. And then there were questions to test my cs skills, and an invite to face-to-face. Overall I loved the way interviewer from Y dealt with me. I definitely could connect more to the person from Y than from X.

cnunciato 16y ago

Of course tools and technology definitely matter, and do influence culture, which also matters, but if someone sent me a letter like this one I'd be genuinely relieved it didn't work out.

arethuza 16y ago

I honestly don't see what the problem is with what chap wrote - it's more than 20 years since I graduated and I felt pretty much as he does about Unix, and to a certain extent I still do (even though I don't have any problem using Windows). I've hired a lot of people over the years, for my own company and for others, and if someone wrote this to me I'd thank them for their feedback and wish them the best luck with their career.