5 ms·

On paper Canonical is a company I'd rather enjoy working for. I love the product (despite its flaws) and have a lot of relevant experience. I wouldn't even obj

On paper Canonical is a company I'd rather enjoy working for. I love the product (despite its flaws) and have a lot of relevant experience. I wouldn't even object to the long interview process as such. Written materials? Sure! I'd love to see the bar raised on developers' writing skills! Why not. But man, that High School question? The implicit agism and the shere fuck-you irrelevance of my circumstances 35 years ago just stops me in my tracks every time. Are you hiring me or 16-year-old me? Well then. Last time this came up here, Shuttleworth popped up to tell us it was just what they needed so there you go. No need to apply. :shrug:

eschneider 3y ago
Yeah...I applied when I was job hunting at the beginning of the year and I hard stopped on the high school question. I've got over 30 years of relevant experience and if that's what they're asking, I'm obviously not the sort of person they're looking for. Implicit ageism describes it well. Was it age discrimination? I wouldn't go that far based on what I saw, but they either don't want older/experienced people or they have no idea how bad that looks. Either way, I had options so I didn't go any further with them.
- mojo74 3y ago
  I just trod water through my high school (read secondary school in the UK) years. Like you I am not the boy I used to be so hiring 'him' would not be a good fit.
- linuxftw 3y ago
  Same exact thing happened to me. I'm not writing an essay about my high school life, that's ridiculous. I don't do asymmetrical interviews. I'll consider a take in coding test in lieu of something else (or a very trivial one), but a written essay means I'm spending time and they are not. A phone or face to face interview requires an actual investment in their time, and doesn't treat my time as completely disposable.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    If your job involves communication in some form, it's reasonable to want to see an example--though I'd generally be pretty open to seeing previously written or recorded examples rather than something created specifically for the interview process.
znpy 3y ago
> The implicit agism and the shere fuck-you irrelevance of my circumstances 35 years ago just stops me in my tracks every time. > Are you hiring me or 16-year-old me? Well then. i wonder what is preventing you from just lying. like, how are they going to confirm or deny what you're saying ? Frankly it seems like a way to have something they can use to reject you with something that's hard to debate against.
- dcminter 3y ago
  > i wonder what is preventing you from just lying... Integrity? Also the self-interest of not wanting to work with liars and yes-men. Basically the same reason I don't lie during the rest of an interview process.
- ghaff 3y ago
  That seems like a really terrible way to start off with a new company. But then I feel like that way about most of the scuzzy things some percentage of people have no qualms about doing if they can get off with them (e.g. working two full-time jobs at the same time).
- _ea1k 3y ago
  I had the same thought. People have rightly pointed out the age bias, but there's also an implicit bias toward embellishment. People who are comfortable doing that can post lots of positive and mostly unverifiable things there. Then again, we don't know how they evaluate this. Maybe overly positive unverifiable statements are actually negatives for them.
hpcjoe 3y ago
I just went through this process. Got autorejected after the personality/IQ test thing. My essay was 13 pages. As for notable things I've done, I worked on an experiment in undergrad, which won the PI (small group) the Nobel in physics in the late 90s, writing computer software for experiment control. That and getting a PhD in physics from a student of a student of a different Nobel laureate. I founded and ran my own company for about 14 years getting to millions in revenue with no external initial investment. I worked with my business partner to try to raise money to build accelerators for computing in 2002-2007 as I'd argued that they would be the dominant form of HPC in the mid 2010s. No investor would bite. But sure. Ask me about high school. Not the 40 years since high school. Canonical is a complete waste of time/effort. Ubuntu is a fine distro, but the hiring process is so completely flawed, as this article and many others (check out glassdoor, my interview is now up as well) That someone (likely very senior) greenlit this process, signed off on it, and thinks it is successful enough to keep doing it, is a massive set of red flags about this company. The company reviews (not interviews) on glassdoor tell me the same story. Its like their employees have written a collective "WTF", and management is completely impervious, blissfully clueless, as to how broken, how disfunctional, their processes are. The implicit assumption in this is that if they were aware, they would adapt and change them. I do not believe this to be the case. So, in summary, steer a wide path around this company. You don't need their crap. Maybe, eventually, they will get a clue. Though I think this would only happen when there is a materiel leadership change at the top.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  > The company reviews (not interviews) on glassdoor tell me the same story. Its like their employees have written a collective "WTF", and management is completely impervious, blissfully clueless, as to how broken, how disfunctional, their processes are They know, and it's been discussed often. They want young motived people who they can pay sub-par wages and convince to work long hours. 30 year veterans would rock the boat and demand too much money, and dip when it's clear the middle mgmt are clowns.
  - hpcjoe 3y ago
    Ugh ... that's depressing.
MockObject 3y ago
Asking about high school is ridiculous, but how is it age-ist? They had high schools back in the old days, too.
- dcminter 3y ago
  Because it strongly implies that they are looking for people for whom high school experience was recent enough to be relevant to who they are now. For a 20-something this is (debatably) plausible. For a fifty or sixty year old it is at best a tenuous indicator.

eschneider 3y ago

Yeah...I applied when I was job hunting at the beginning of the year and I hard stopped on the high school question. I've got over 30 years of relevant experience and if that's what they're asking, I'm obviously not the sort of person they're looking for. Implicit ageism describes it well. Was it age discrimination? I wouldn't go that far based on what I saw, but they either don't want older/experienced people or they have no idea how bad that looks. Either way, I had options so I didn't go any further with them.

mojo74 3y ago
I just trod water through my high school (read secondary school in the UK) years. Like you I am not the boy I used to be so hiring 'him' would not be a good fit.
linuxftw 3y ago
Same exact thing happened to me. I'm not writing an essay about my high school life, that's ridiculous. I don't do asymmetrical interviews. I'll consider a take in coding test in lieu of something else (or a very trivial one), but a written essay means I'm spending time and they are not. A phone or face to face interview requires an actual investment in their time, and doesn't treat my time as completely disposable.
- ghaff 3y ago
  If your job involves communication in some form, it's reasonable to want to see an example--though I'd generally be pretty open to seeing previously written or recorded examples rather than something created specifically for the interview process.

znpy 3y ago

> The implicit agism and the shere fuck-you irrelevance of my circumstances 35 years ago just stops me in my tracks every time. > Are you hiring me or 16-year-old me? Well then. i wonder what is preventing you from just lying. like, how are they going to confirm or deny what you're saying ? Frankly it seems like a way to have something they can use to reject you with something that's hard to debate against.

dcminter 3y ago
> i wonder what is preventing you from just lying... Integrity? Also the self-interest of not wanting to work with liars and yes-men. Basically the same reason I don't lie during the rest of an interview process.
ghaff 3y ago
That seems like a really terrible way to start off with a new company. But then I feel like that way about most of the scuzzy things some percentage of people have no qualms about doing if they can get off with them (e.g. working two full-time jobs at the same time).
_ea1k 3y ago
I had the same thought. People have rightly pointed out the age bias, but there's also an implicit bias toward embellishment. People who are comfortable doing that can post lots of positive and mostly unverifiable things there. Then again, we don't know how they evaluate this. Maybe overly positive unverifiable statements are actually negatives for them.

hpcjoe 3y ago

I just went through this process. Got autorejected after the personality/IQ test thing. My essay was 13 pages. As for notable things I've done, I worked on an experiment in undergrad, which won the PI (small group) the Nobel in physics in the late 90s, writing computer software for experiment control. That and getting a PhD in physics from a student of a student of a different Nobel laureate. I founded and ran my own company for about 14 years getting to millions in revenue with no external initial investment. I worked with my business partner to try to raise money to build accelerators for computing in 2002-2007 as I'd argued that they would be the dominant form of HPC in the mid 2010s. No investor would bite. But sure. Ask me about high school. Not the 40 years since high school. Canonical is a complete waste of time/effort. Ubuntu is a fine distro, but the hiring process is so completely flawed, as this article and many others (check out glassdoor, my interview is now up as well) That someone (likely very senior) greenlit this process, signed off on it, and thinks it is successful enough to keep doing it, is a massive set of red flags about this company. The company reviews (not interviews) on glassdoor tell me the same story. Its like their employees have written a collective "WTF", and management is completely impervious, blissfully clueless, as to how broken, how disfunctional, their processes are. The implicit assumption in this is that if they were aware, they would adapt and change them. I do not believe this to be the case. So, in summary, steer a wide path around this company. You don't need their crap. Maybe, eventually, they will get a clue. Though I think this would only happen when there is a materiel leadership change at the top.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
> The company reviews (not interviews) on glassdoor tell me the same story. Its like their employees have written a collective "WTF", and management is completely impervious, blissfully clueless, as to how broken, how disfunctional, their processes are They know, and it's been discussed often. They want young motived people who they can pay sub-par wages and convince to work long hours. 30 year veterans would rock the boat and demand too much money, and dip when it's clear the middle mgmt are clowns.
- hpcjoe 3y ago
  Ugh ... that's depressing.

MockObject 3y ago

Asking about high school is ridiculous, but how is it age-ist? They had high schools back in the old days, too.

dcminter 3y ago
Because it strongly implies that they are looking for people for whom high school experience was recent enough to be relevant to who they are now. For a 20-something this is (debatably) plausible. For a fifty or sixty year old it is at best a tenuous indicator.