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I've made lots (thousands? hundreds at least) of commits to the Linux kernel and have been working on it since pre (git) history, have developed a number of nov

I've made lots (thousands? hundreds at least) of commits to the Linux kernel and have been working on it since pre (git) history, have developed a number of novel concurrent data structures / algorithms for it. I decided to talk with a FANG recruiter a couple of years ago who must have scraped my name from mailing list or commit histories. Despite first making it clear by email I wasn't interested in a job interview at the moment but was just curious about some things, on the call they pretty soon demanded to know what I thought the best Big O notation was for a sort algorithm. They were rather insistent that I answer them this before they would move on and spend much more of their time explaining why they contacted me or answering my questions. Fortunately I hadn't wasted a lot of my time at that point either. Strange, rude, entitled behavior. Sadly, they probably do hold real power over graduates and new developers, and those without jobs or much experience, or just those who dearly want to work for these companies. So they can get away with treating people like this, putting out these drag nets, paying no real interest or respect to any individual (at least not until they think their canned questions have filtered out most of the useless scum).

arethuza 5y ago
A couple of years back I managed to have three job offers at the same time - all of which I turned down. One recruiter got really angry with me, one basically disappeared the moment they heard I wasn't immediately accepting their offer and the third had a sensible and mature conversation about it. Guess which one gave me a good impression of their company and who I might work with again?
- codeOnMaster 5y ago
  I'm curious why you put in the effort to apply to several places and passed up on all the offers.
  - arethuza 5y ago
    They approached me, I had interviews with each one thought about it and and on reflection once I found out more about each company and the roles decided I was better off staying where I was at the time. At the time the company I was working for had some commercial trouble (not related to me) so I thought it was wise to be informed about what opportunities were available but I wasn't desperate. Since moved somewhere else and am very happy with my new role.
xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
To play devil's advocate, having a standardized process for all candidates has some benefits. I've witnessed otherwise stellar candidates with amazing open source contributions absolutely bomb coding interviews. Real "write a function that does X" in whatever language you're comfortable with and whatever tools or resources you want. Simple stuff. So yeah maybe the Big O stuff is lame, but sometimes it's also a filter for entitlement on the behalf of the candidate. Hiring isn't hard, but it's not easy.
- throwawaylinux 5y ago
  > To play devil's advocate, having a standardized process for all candidates has some benefits. I've witnessed otherwise stellar candidates with amazing open source contributions absolutely bomb coding interviews. Real "write a function that does X" in whatever language you're comfortable with and whatever tools or resources you want. Simple stuff. I'm not sure if you're playing devil's advocate very well here, because this suggests to me that the interview process did not work well. Do you want to hire someone who can write a binary tree insertion in 30 minutes, or someone who can make amazing contributions to real software projects? > So yeah maybe the Big O stuff is lame, but sometimes it's also a filter for entitlement on the behalf of the candidate. Hiring isn't hard, but it's not easy. My point wasn't that hiring is easy or even that programming quizzes do not have a part in interviews. It is the level of contempt that some of these companies and their recruiters and hiring processes show to people. To be fair I did open myself up to it having responded to an unsolicited message, but I always try to politely decline if I get a message from a real person. They responded with something interesting and hooked me to agree to a call. I made it clear I was not interviewing for any position, and again while on the actual call I declined the Big O question. It just shows they were perfectly happy to send out probably mass spams and waste people's time, but were not willing to even read what I wrote or listen to me, or worse they did and decided they'd just ignore what I said anyway. My point is treating people like people, not like bycatch in your drag net. Simple stuff.
  - xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
    > I'm not sure if you're playing devil's advocate very well here, because this suggests to me that the interview process did not work well. Do you want to hire someone who can write a binary tree insertion in 30 minutes, or someone who can make amazing contributions to real software projects? Most companies want malleable, fungible engineers. Most companies are not stable, something is usually in flux -- projects, teams, organizations, business models. Most managers would rather have someone who can write a binary tree insertion in 30 minutes. But that is not how I personally hire, it's just reality. I'd rather have someone I can work with. In my experience, a lot of big open source contributors are not good colleagues. Are they going to focus on their job or spend their hours in the office working on their passion? Are they going to put their head down and get the work done or write essays debating in a mailing list? If we can't even have a conversation about algorithm complexity then there are better ways I can spend my time. > It is the level of contempt that some of these companies and their recruiters and hiring processes show to people. I really don't think this is true contempt, at least not usually. Recruiters, for better or for worse, vary widely. They are rarely good representations of the rest of the business. They're usually just sharks. A good recruiter is worth their weight in gold. But mostly they're ignorant, greedy, and have no care for you or the company you're interviewing for. > It just shows they were perfectly happy to send out probably mass spams and waste people's time, but were not willing to even read what I wrote or listen to me, or worse they did and decided they'd just ignore what I said anyway. Look, I'll be honest. I've conducted nearly a thousand interviews. I've hired at FAANGs, unicorns, YC companies. I almost never look at a candidate's resume/CV. If I'm not doing a coding interview and I want you to go into detail about something you worked on, I might take a glance. But otherwise, I actually do not care. I don't have time to peruse your GitHub profile or past projects. I don't even have time. One in a hundred applicants even get interviews, and I'm often interviewing 2-3 times a week. If it's important to you, tell me about it! I'd rather talk to you than read about you! In my experience, the resume/CV/published work is not a strong signal for making a good hire. It sounds like it's already helped you get your foot in the door, I wouldn't recommend expecting it to do anything more. I'm sorry you had a shitty experience with this company, but I encourage you to be humble and give them the benefit of the doubt. Unless they're a tiny, boutique company with a lifestyle or OSS-focused culture, they are busy people. If they don't ask these questions, then more often than not, by the time we're in a room or on a call together it's a waste of both our time.
neilv 5y ago
I wouldn't necessarily blame the recruiter for that particular one, since I'd guess the question was on a form that the org or manager required them to fill out. The recruiter might've been especially metrics-driven, though. And maybe they were playing to metrics in a way that the org/manager didn't intend. Or maybe the org/manager did intend your experience, and it was behavioral screen, for candidates who'll submit to whatever the emergent behavior of a corporate behemoth ends up doing to them. :)
paganel 5y ago
For what it's worth I spent the last few days wfh-ing with a close family friend who happens to be a manager at a FANG company. Those few days convinced me to not wanting to work at a FANG company (or at any big company, for that matter) unless there's no other way to pay the bills and buy food for out two pets, it seemed like almost everything at that company was based on politics and how to sell yourself as a programmer (or IC-er, or whatever the correct term is) or as a manager, almost no talk about the product itself.
lobocinza 5y ago
Getting frustrated by that after graduation I decided to work as contractor instead of "getting a job".

arethuza 5y ago

A couple of years back I managed to have three job offers at the same time - all of which I turned down. One recruiter got really angry with me, one basically disappeared the moment they heard I wasn't immediately accepting their offer and the third had a sensible and mature conversation about it. Guess which one gave me a good impression of their company and who I might work with again?

codeOnMaster 5y ago
I'm curious why you put in the effort to apply to several places and passed up on all the offers.
- arethuza 5y ago
  They approached me, I had interviews with each one thought about it and and on reflection once I found out more about each company and the roles decided I was better off staying where I was at the time. At the time the company I was working for had some commercial trouble (not related to me) so I thought it was wise to be informed about what opportunities were available but I wasn't desperate. Since moved somewhere else and am very happy with my new role.

xyzzy_plugh 5y ago

To play devil's advocate, having a standardized process for all candidates has some benefits. I've witnessed otherwise stellar candidates with amazing open source contributions absolutely bomb coding interviews. Real "write a function that does X" in whatever language you're comfortable with and whatever tools or resources you want. Simple stuff. So yeah maybe the Big O stuff is lame, but sometimes it's also a filter for entitlement on the behalf of the candidate. Hiring isn't hard, but it's not easy.

throwawaylinux 5y ago
> To play devil's advocate, having a standardized process for all candidates has some benefits. I've witnessed otherwise stellar candidates with amazing open source contributions absolutely bomb coding interviews. Real "write a function that does X" in whatever language you're comfortable with and whatever tools or resources you want. Simple stuff. I'm not sure if you're playing devil's advocate very well here, because this suggests to me that the interview process did not work well. Do you want to hire someone who can write a binary tree insertion in 30 minutes, or someone who can make amazing contributions to real software projects? > So yeah maybe the Big O stuff is lame, but sometimes it's also a filter for entitlement on the behalf of the candidate. Hiring isn't hard, but it's not easy. My point wasn't that hiring is easy or even that programming quizzes do not have a part in interviews. It is the level of contempt that some of these companies and their recruiters and hiring processes show to people. To be fair I did open myself up to it having responded to an unsolicited message, but I always try to politely decline if I get a message from a real person. They responded with something interesting and hooked me to agree to a call. I made it clear I was not interviewing for any position, and again while on the actual call I declined the Big O question. It just shows they were perfectly happy to send out probably mass spams and waste people's time, but were not willing to even read what I wrote or listen to me, or worse they did and decided they'd just ignore what I said anyway. My point is treating people like people, not like bycatch in your drag net. Simple stuff.
- xyzzy_plugh 5y ago
  > I'm not sure if you're playing devil's advocate very well here, because this suggests to me that the interview process did not work well. Do you want to hire someone who can write a binary tree insertion in 30 minutes, or someone who can make amazing contributions to real software projects? Most companies want malleable, fungible engineers. Most companies are not stable, something is usually in flux -- projects, teams, organizations, business models. Most managers would rather have someone who can write a binary tree insertion in 30 minutes. But that is not how I personally hire, it's just reality. I'd rather have someone I can work with. In my experience, a lot of big open source contributors are not good colleagues. Are they going to focus on their job or spend their hours in the office working on their passion? Are they going to put their head down and get the work done or write essays debating in a mailing list? If we can't even have a conversation about algorithm complexity then there are better ways I can spend my time. > It is the level of contempt that some of these companies and their recruiters and hiring processes show to people. I really don't think this is true contempt, at least not usually. Recruiters, for better or for worse, vary widely. They are rarely good representations of the rest of the business. They're usually just sharks. A good recruiter is worth their weight in gold. But mostly they're ignorant, greedy, and have no care for you or the company you're interviewing for. > It just shows they were perfectly happy to send out probably mass spams and waste people's time, but were not willing to even read what I wrote or listen to me, or worse they did and decided they'd just ignore what I said anyway. Look, I'll be honest. I've conducted nearly a thousand interviews. I've hired at FAANGs, unicorns, YC companies. I almost never look at a candidate's resume/CV. If I'm not doing a coding interview and I want you to go into detail about something you worked on, I might take a glance. But otherwise, I actually do not care. I don't have time to peruse your GitHub profile or past projects. I don't even have time. One in a hundred applicants even get interviews, and I'm often interviewing 2-3 times a week. If it's important to you, tell me about it! I'd rather talk to you than read about you! In my experience, the resume/CV/published work is not a strong signal for making a good hire. It sounds like it's already helped you get your foot in the door, I wouldn't recommend expecting it to do anything more. I'm sorry you had a shitty experience with this company, but I encourage you to be humble and give them the benefit of the doubt. Unless they're a tiny, boutique company with a lifestyle or OSS-focused culture, they are busy people. If they don't ask these questions, then more often than not, by the time we're in a room or on a call together it's a waste of both our time.

neilv 5y ago

I wouldn't necessarily blame the recruiter for that particular one, since I'd guess the question was on a form that the org or manager required them to fill out. The recruiter might've been especially metrics-driven, though. And maybe they were playing to metrics in a way that the org/manager didn't intend. Or maybe the org/manager did intend your experience, and it was behavioral screen, for candidates who'll submit to whatever the emergent behavior of a corporate behemoth ends up doing to them. :)

paganel 5y ago

For what it's worth I spent the last few days wfh-ing with a close family friend who happens to be a manager at a FANG company. Those few days convinced me to not wanting to work at a FANG company (or at any big company, for that matter) unless there's no other way to pay the bills and buy food for out two pets, it seemed like almost everything at that company was based on politics and how to sell yourself as a programmer (or IC-er, or whatever the correct term is) or as a manager, almost no talk about the product itself.

lobocinza 5y ago

Getting frustrated by that after graduation I decided to work as contractor instead of "getting a job".