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On a side note - has anyone applied to Canonical for a software job? Their first step is a written interview which requires as much, if not more, effort as a gr
by ss1996 3y ago
On a side note - has anyone applied to Canonical for a software job? Their first step is a written interview which requires as much, if not more, effort as a graduate college application.
- snapcaster 3y agoI decided not to because of the essay and not really wanting to fill it out
- ilayn 3y agoImmediately withdrew after seeing the high school grade questions.
- firmnoodle 3y agoWhat kind of student were you in high school. Tell us in 5,000 words or more. Now take this personality test. Now do this other crazy thing.
- tayo42 3y agoHah I stopped there too. Who thought that was a good idea. Why do they have a job while I don't lol
- the_only_law 3y agoWhat on earth. That’s definitely the sort of thing that would make me close the tab immediately. What are they trying to select for here? Are they hiring all 18 year olds, or does someone in their 30s, 40s, 50s or beyond need to justify themselves slacking when they were a teenager in the eyes of management. On the other hand, a lot of people that did well when I was in HS are the same who would diligently perform this sort of busywork no questions asked.
- diddlybopshubop 3y ago> or does someone in their 30s, 40s, 50s or beyond need to justify themselves slacking when they were a teenager in the eyes of management. That's exactly what they expect. Anecdote: MS was part of the tail-end of my interview process and after I brought up that it was a bit much asking me for justification of decisions I made decades ago, he stated - I'm paraphrasing here - that he believes that someone's decisions at that stage of their life are consistent with how they will react and respond later on, which is why they ask the questions to begin with. I nope'd on out afterward. Only advice I can give is beware companies that cultivate a cult-of-personality around one or multiple execs. You will be required to drink the Kool-Aid and - when you invariably don't - that's that.
- pseudalopex 3y agoMS was Mark Shuttleworth?
- anaisbetts 3y agoA friend of mine, a person with a Master's degree and multiple years of extremely relevant work experience, dropped out of their process after multiple interviews because they would not continue without having her high school report card. Absolute clown town.
- ecshafer 3y agowho even has access to their high school report card? I suppose maybe I could contact my high school? But I didn't keep a copy of my own grades for more than a week maybe even in school.
- grogenaut 3y agoI was signing up for EMT classes and they required proof of English comp and algebra. My highschool takes 3 weeks to approve a records request. The community college would not accept my passing grades in differential equations or tech writing and I had to pass tests instead. Turns out the emt class doesn't even require those competencies but the comm college did.
- DropInIn 3y agoSo they are actively discriminating against those who have suffered a life shattering event in which personal documents were lost? (Eg house fire) Sounds rather evil....
- klyrs 3y agoReport card??? This utterly stinks of ageism. I wonder if my school district even has that, approaching 30 years later...
- jlokier 3y agoWhat a strange requirement. I can't imagine how I'd get that card. I'm guessing the record doesn't exist anywhere. Another commenter talked of how this is not ok for people who lose their paper records in a disaster. But is "high school report card" even the sort of record people have and keep? I have nothing like it in my personal records. I don't think I have anything at all from my school days.
- amatecha 3y agoWait I thought you mean they ask questions of a high-school difficulty level. You mean they wanted to see your actual high school grades?!?
- ilayn 3y agoYes and I was applying for VP of IoT.
- gaza3g 3y agoI saw an entry for one of the positions there on LinkedIn. The application page wasn’t too bad at first glance since it doesn’t involve registration like Workday or Taleo. But as I began to scroll down, I saw those high school questions and that was enough for me to nope tf out of there.
- TheDesolate0 3y ago[dead]
- Twirrim 3y agoI've been chatting with someone as they go through the process just recently. It seems completely and utterly insane. Completely off-putting, and seemingly filled with nonsense that isn't providing actual value. There were so many bonkers things that I gave up trying to follow the particulars and just decided I'd never apply there.
- arachnid92 3y agoI did. I passed all rounds and was extended an offer, but the pay was way below what I expected and so I declined. They also don’t sponsor visas or relocation, which was a dealbreaker for me as well.
- basisword 3y agoIs it usual to go through all rounds of an interview process without getting a salary range and asking if they sponsor visas and pay for relocation? These are round one questions for me and I assumed everyone else.
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoThere seems to be a whole school of HR / recruiting which tries to make it taboo or uncomfortable to ask those questions early on in the process. From what I'm reading here, I suspect a place like Canonical would end discussions early if you even asked. It sounds like they're looking for cheap talent.
- arachnid92 3y agoPart of what I remember about the process is that you don't actually get to speak to anyone until quite late in the process. I think I only finally got to jump into a call with the hiring manager after passing both the written essay and the personality test. I also have to admit Canonical was the first company to get back to me during my latest job search, and I the time I had no other offers so I just kept moving forward with them. Their process is relatively lengthy, however, so when I reached the offer stage I was interviewing with other companies and even had some verbal offers, so declining wasn't too hard.
- lisasays 3y agoYup, and a beauty that interview process is. They've even earned themselves a bit of fame for it: https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/thsrcp/this_was_the_first_step_in_the_interview_process/ https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/thsrcp/this_was_the_... Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678
- cmrdporcupine 3y agoWow, that's hilarious. I guess they have a surplus of people... because that process looks more intense and picky than e.g. Google's, and Google is only able to do what it does because they pay very high and had great perks and a reputation. All this stuff about high school performance, and choice of university -- really? Actually what I get from this is that they're aiming to hire cheapish new grads and have no interest in senior industry-seasoned talent. Because there's some serious arrogance there if they expect to put applicants through the ringer like this without a commensurate effort upfront. Any senior engineer is going to look at that and wonder why they should bother.
- red-iron-pine 3y agoUbuntu is cool and popular and that will drive a lot of applications. > Actually what I get from this is that they're aiming to hire cheapish new grads and have no interest in senior industry-seasoned talent. Pay em less, make crazy demands, less chance of rebellion, no context to know if behaviors are crazy, etc. Same idea with the video games industry, really
- ecshafer 3y agoThat's absurd. I am not answering questions about high school or college, especially to that degree. I am a decade into my career at this point. I would turn this into a "creative writing" exercise.
- reactordev 3y agoI applied and got to the essay and turned back. Feels like college admissions all over again. I’m too old and too mature for that. Technical questions? Fine. Behavioral, sure. Firing squad of 5 engineers for 3 hours of co-programming, ouch but ok… 1,000 words on why I love Canonical? I have just 6 letters: Ubuntu. If you really want to shave the neck beard down to 5: Debian.
- amelius 3y ago> 1,000 words on why I love Canonical ChatGPT to the rescue?
- gabereiser 3y agoThere’s only so many ways to say kubernetes. I don’t think LLM can write a pager on Canonical without sounding repetitive.
- saghm 3y agoI don't think a lot of humans could either; I doubt I could!
- jacobr1 3y ago[dead]
- roarcher 3y ago486 words. If there's one thing I've noticed ChatGPT sucks at, it's writing things with a specific number of words.
- bennettnate5 3y agoDebian is 6 letters as well, though I agree--Debian really brings most of what I love about Ubuntu.
- gabereiser 3y ago
- manifoldgeo 3y agoI applied to two different Canonical jobs, and the process was so off-putting I dropped out of both at different stages. One position required me to take a psychoanalytical test where they judge your personality traits to A.) make sure you have the desired personality traits for the role and B.) that you're smart enough for the role. I looked at the terms of service for the company they outsourced this test to, and it seemed like a data breach waiting to happen. I expressed my concern to the HR team in charge of hiring, and said I wouldn't feel comfortable having that kind of deeply personal info shared. I further expressed surprise that an open-source software company was using this test at all, given the usual penchant for data privacy in the FLOSS community. They (cordially) said I could either take the test or drop out-- I chose the latter. For the other role, the interview process was going well, and I made it to final round. But, I ran when I saw their tech stack and tech debt. Lots of Jenkins and heavy reliance on Launchpad for almost everything. Launchpad might not technically be proprietary since it's GNU-licensed, but it's as good as proprietary if Canonical is one of the few companies using it commercially. And Jenkins is just Java / Groovy garbage all the way down. It also struck me as a red flag that Canonical is 100% BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and they do not provide a work computer. You can apply for a _loan_ to buy a computer for work, but they will not pay for one. If a company is too cheap to provide a computer at a job where you work remotely and exclusively on a computer, I don't want to be a part of that company. Lastly, I read a lot of negative press about Canonical's CEO Mark Shuttleworth while researching the company. In general, Canonical seems like a sketchy place to work.
- lbhdc 3y ago> It also struck me as a red flag that Canonical is 100% BYOD (Bring Your Own Device), and they do not provide a work computer. You can apply for a _loan_ to buy a computer for work, but they will not pay for one. If a company is too cheap to provide a computer at a job where you work remotely and exclusively on a computer, I don't want to be a part of that company. That doesn't seem so bad to me. I have always preferred personal device whenever possible. Why not cut out the ewaste?
- pixl97 3y agoEh, because it sounds like the violation of labor laws in many places. My company gives me a stipend for use of my own phone every month.
- TheCondor 3y agoI don't know why, but I've sort of expected them to get bought up by MS or something like that for a while. Are they special because they can be ultra selective with who they bring in to the fold and have a loyal army of "true believers" working for them? Or something else? I get it, I watched a fabulous company get nearly ruined by a couple of bad hires. I'm a big believer in culture adds vs. culture fits and every time you bring someone in they're adding various traits to your culture, some are good and some are bad. We choose to be a little different, try to find the best fit, try to avoid wasting time, and then after 1 to 2 quarters ask some hard questions about if they're actually working our or not. I suspect that there is something in his message about it not being the company he was excited to work for 12 years ago.
- monocasa 3y agoOxide was similar. Something like 12 pages written just to be ghosted.
- tptacek 3y agoWhat was the Oxide process like? What did they have you write? What was the role? Thanks!
- monocasa 3y ago> What was the Oxide process like? Can't speak to the complete process, first step was fill out a google doc just to submit an application, and was ghosted from there. > What did they have you write? Work Samples, Writing Samples, Analysis Samples, Presentations Samples, Psychological Questionnaire > What was the role? Rust Embedded Systems Engineer or some such. Which given that I was previously the lead for a high availability modern C++ RTOS, had programmed in Rust professionally since 2017, and would regularly give talks on the state of embedded systems work in Rust (using slides running as a bare metal application on an Nintendo 64 written in Rust to put my money where my mouth was), I figured I should at least get to talk to someone there. Starting with a giant doc you have to fill out just to apply should have been a sign to just not even bother, but I had a lot of respect for bcantrill. Some of which has now eroded.
- tptacek 3y agoI'm surprised by the Psych Questionairre. Can you say more about it?
- monocasa 3y agoQuestions like when have you been happiest in your career? Unhappiest? A bunch of stuff about their core values and examples of how you or previous organizations have reflected those, have not reflected those, when two came into tension, etc.
- 3y ago
- marcinzm 3y agoFrom what I read they pay low rates but have a certain group of people really wanting to work for them. So an involved process seems good at very cheaply filtering out people unlikely to fall into the latter category. I also suspect going through such an involved process that includes praising the job would psychologically make it more likely that you'll take the low pay.
- wazoox 3y agoNot yet but I'm considering it. Though I may reconsider given the comments below :)
- elroyjetson 3y agoI applied a while back. Made it through months of tests, interviews, all the way to an interview with Mark Shuttleworth. I respect what he has built, but the interview only really focused on what I had done in high school. I graduated 36 years ago - I just don't see the relevance. I am glad he passed on me given all the news coming out since.
- klyrs 3y agoAs I recall, high school was a big focus of the essay questions when I applied, too. Like you, that was a lifetime ago, and my growth since then is much more important. If I was a lawyer, I might try to round up a few grayhairs that have had similar experiences for a class action suit.
- idlephysicist 3y agoI noped out right there. I thought it was absolutely ridiculous. If they cannot make a decision after two interviews (three at the absolute most) then I probably won’t want to work there. Oh and they asked me if I would be willing to use my own laptop… Below is the list of interview/application stages: - Initial screening - Personal essay - Standardised aptitude and personality tests - Culture interview - General interviews - Recruitment screen - Technical assessment - Role-specific interviews - Hiring manager interview - Executive interview
- phone8675309 3y agoI did and they ghosted me.
- zshrdlu 3y agoIt's horrible. Yet somehow they still manage to hire and have a thriving company ¯_(ツ)_/¯. Seems to work for them.