5 ms·

This is dumb. If you don't want to apply, don't. If you think something is no one else's business, don't tell them. But don't cry when they discard your appl

This is dumb. If you don't want to apply, don't. If you think something is no one else's business, don't tell them. But don't cry when they discard your application because they think it IS relevant, because shockingly you don't personally have a monopoly on truth...

dymk 4y ago
Personally, I'm thankful the author made a blog post about this. I can now safely skip Canonical on my next job hunt, so that's time well saved.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  Having proven conclusively that no job at this company could possibly be worth the desperately painful application process, we now just need to eliminate 100mil more companies one by one...
modriano 4y ago
Canonical makes infrastructure that I (and a significant slice of the world economy) depend on. If they want to significantly bias their application pool to people who are willing to tolerate that question, then I'm a bit concerned that I've invested years and years building on a decaying foundation, and now I have to investigate.
- LatteLazy 4y ago
  Wait until you find out about the application process for literally every large company you have ever used...
  - justin66 4y ago
    A larger company would likely separate out "new grads" and give them the stupid high school questions.
    - LatteLazy 4y ago
      Actually it's the opposite in my experience: Small companies don't care because they want someone who can do the work. Large companies' decision makers are much more risk averse. They're looking for a reason not to hire you. If you're a poor employee that makes no difference to the,, they are fine, if they take a risk by hiring you despite you once getting a B in high school spanish in 1837, they're the ones that will be embarrassed. This is why small companies will take a CV, interview twice and hire you. But big companies have a dozen committees, a HR "portal" that takes a CV AND then asks for all the same details and more field by field and insists on giving you personality tests and a full horoscope. Those are not there to find good employees (or to weed out the old). They're just arse covering by middle management. And for that purpose they work. So you can stand outside shouting that it's "not relevant" or you can apply elsewhere or you can jump through the hoops. No approach is right or wrong, they're just pragmatic decisions based on what you want.
      - justin66 4y ago
        Just an observation: what I said in my comment is falsifiable. I'm pretty certain you'd find, if you polled a bunch of job application sites for various-sized companies, that large companies are a lot more likely to separate out new grads and entry-level candidates into a separate funnel from more experienced professionals, with separate candidates and more "basic" questions.
  - outworlder 4y ago
    > Wait until you find out about the application process for literally every large company you have ever used... Good companies don't ask about high school unless they are getting interns (and even then they usually ask about college)
- JonChesterfield 4y ago
  Canonical's model is to copy Debian testing, change the branding and apply some set of patches to it, then ship it. Every six months or so they pick up the new Debian testing and repeat. Debian is solid. Ubuntu's layer on top is a bit ymmv.
  - modriano 4y ago
    Question: Would I regret switching from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to Debian Bullseye 11.X (and would I have to use Debian 10 to use an LTS version [0])? How many creature comforts does Ubuntu add onto the Debian base? Just based on the vibe I get from debian.org, I feel like my life would involve a lot more yak shaving (which I don't necessarily mind if it teaches me something that will negate future yak shaves). Context: In 2019 I built a desktop (my personal workstation) and it was my first machine without a windows or Mac OS partition. That machine is still my personal daily driver (outside of work). Using it for ML/MLOps/misc engineering projects has taught me a ton about parts of how Linux works and is organized. [0] https://wiki.debian.org/LTS https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
    - dcminter 4y ago
      I'd like to get a view on this too. Perhaps post it as a top level 'Ask Hacker News' ?
    - JonChesterfield 4y ago
      Debian testing will feel very like an Ubuntu install that doesn't crash on you. One package manager instead of N. Occasionally third party repos only package for Ubuntu, though they're likely to work about as well on Debian as they do on Ubuntu anyway. For a long time Debian refused to bundle closed source firmware with the installer but they've relented on that now. The holdout I know of is Ubuntu have zfs in the kernel and Debian as a package. That seems to make no difference in practice.
yamazakiwi 4y ago
There's a difference between starting a discussion around a topic you find unprincipled and "crying". With your logic we should never question anything or anyone because positing our own truth is irrelevant.
eesmith 4y ago
If a company were to ask about my star sign, then I know that their idea of what is relevant is not grounded in reality and will avoid employment with them. Someone asking me about my strengths in high school, which was decades ago, then that tells me they are looking for young people. (And from the link at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678 you can see they don't care about my grad school experience, which was much more formative to my career path.) In the US, age discrimination for employment for people 40 years or older is illegal. As the author of the linked-to essay correctly points out, these questions comes across like trying to discriminate on the basis of age without outright saying it. Which trespasses on a special form of government monopoly that it can enforce.

dymk 4y ago

Personally, I'm thankful the author made a blog post about this. I can now safely skip Canonical on my next job hunt, so that's time well saved.

LatteLazy 4y ago
Having proven conclusively that no job at this company could possibly be worth the desperately painful application process, we now just need to eliminate 100mil more companies one by one...

modriano 4y ago

Canonical makes infrastructure that I (and a significant slice of the world economy) depend on. If they want to significantly bias their application pool to people who are willing to tolerate that question, then I'm a bit concerned that I've invested years and years building on a decaying foundation, and now I have to investigate.

LatteLazy 4y ago
Wait until you find out about the application process for literally every large company you have ever used...
- justin66 4y ago
  A larger company would likely separate out "new grads" and give them the stupid high school questions.
  - LatteLazy 4y ago
    Actually it's the opposite in my experience: Small companies don't care because they want someone who can do the work. Large companies' decision makers are much more risk averse. They're looking for a reason not to hire you. If you're a poor employee that makes no difference to the,, they are fine, if they take a risk by hiring you despite you once getting a B in high school spanish in 1837, they're the ones that will be embarrassed. This is why small companies will take a CV, interview twice and hire you. But big companies have a dozen committees, a HR "portal" that takes a CV AND then asks for all the same details and more field by field and insists on giving you personality tests and a full horoscope. Those are not there to find good employees (or to weed out the old). They're just arse covering by middle management. And for that purpose they work. So you can stand outside shouting that it's "not relevant" or you can apply elsewhere or you can jump through the hoops. No approach is right or wrong, they're just pragmatic decisions based on what you want.
    - justin66 4y ago
      Just an observation: what I said in my comment is falsifiable. I'm pretty certain you'd find, if you polled a bunch of job application sites for various-sized companies, that large companies are a lot more likely to separate out new grads and entry-level candidates into a separate funnel from more experienced professionals, with separate candidates and more "basic" questions.
- outworlder 4y ago
  > Wait until you find out about the application process for literally every large company you have ever used... Good companies don't ask about high school unless they are getting interns (and even then they usually ask about college)
JonChesterfield 4y ago
Canonical's model is to copy Debian testing, change the branding and apply some set of patches to it, then ship it. Every six months or so they pick up the new Debian testing and repeat. Debian is solid. Ubuntu's layer on top is a bit ymmv.
- modriano 4y ago
  Question: Would I regret switching from Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to Debian Bullseye 11.X (and would I have to use Debian 10 to use an LTS version [0])? How many creature comforts does Ubuntu add onto the Debian base? Just based on the vibe I get from debian.org, I feel like my life would involve a lot more yak shaving (which I don't necessarily mind if it teaches me something that will negate future yak shaves). Context: In 2019 I built a desktop (my personal workstation) and it was my first machine without a windows or Mac OS partition. That machine is still my personal daily driver (outside of work). Using it for ML/MLOps/misc engineering projects has taught me a ton about parts of how Linux works and is organized. [0] https://wiki.debian.org/LTS https://wiki.debian.org/LTS
  - dcminter 4y ago
    I'd like to get a view on this too. Perhaps post it as a top level 'Ask Hacker News' ?
  - JonChesterfield 4y ago
    Debian testing will feel very like an Ubuntu install that doesn't crash on you. One package manager instead of N. Occasionally third party repos only package for Ubuntu, though they're likely to work about as well on Debian as they do on Ubuntu anyway. For a long time Debian refused to bundle closed source firmware with the installer but they've relented on that now. The holdout I know of is Ubuntu have zfs in the kernel and Debian as a package. That seems to make no difference in practice.

yamazakiwi 4y ago

There's a difference between starting a discussion around a topic you find unprincipled and "crying". With your logic we should never question anything or anyone because positing our own truth is irrelevant.

eesmith 4y ago

If a company were to ask about my star sign, then I know that their idea of what is relevant is not grounded in reality and will avoid employment with them. Someone asking me about my strengths in high school, which was decades ago, then that tells me they are looking for young people. (And from the link at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678 you can see they don't care about my grad school experience, which was much more formative to my career path.) In the US, age discrimination for employment for people 40 years or older is illegal. As the author of the linked-to essay correctly points out, these questions comes across like trying to discriminate on the basis of age without outright saying it. Which trespasses on a special form of government monopoly that it can enforce.