5 ms·

I applied to Qdrant a while back and got this response: "We are getting many applications for this position. Usually, a test task would help preselect suitable

by _mh56 3y ago

I applied to Qdrant a while back and got this response: "We are getting many applications for this position. Usually, a test task would help preselect suitable candidates. However, since we develop open-source software, we rely on contribution. You can build an open-source Qdrant connector to another framework or library. The simplest one would be, for example, a Streamlit data connector. But other ideas are more than welcome! No limitations and no deadline. As long as this job position is online, we accept submissions. After you are done, send us an email to career@qdrant.com with the link to the repo. We will review it and get back to you asap." No interviews, conversation before this email. Hope they see and fix this. Edit : No Pay.

Oras 3y ago
Do you expect a tech interview by just applying? From your perspective, you're filling out an application, maybe writing a cover letter, but on the other side, there are 100+ applications like yours. Not all of them are qualified, CVs are not a trustable source anyway. That's why companies add tests to filter first, then interview later.
- _mh56 3y ago
  I don't expect interviews. But I also don't want to spend 20 hours working before getting a "Unfortunately we've decided not to move forward" message. As a thumb rule, I'm happy to put 4x more effort than the company. If they interview me for 1 hour, I spend 4 hours doing the take-home. Anything more feels like exploitation.
  - epolanski 3y ago
    Well, they said they receive a lot of applications so they are in the position of setting the rules. You are absolutely right into setting your own rules as well, those haven't overlapped.
    - pclmulqdq 3y ago
      As a general rule of thumb, random series A startups are in much lower demand for top-tier talent than top-tier talent is in demand for these companies. That would mean that the good engineers should set the rules of engagement, and that any startup that thinks they set the rules is attracting worse talent.
      - Galanwe 3y ago
        Well, unless Qdrant writes a post complaining about the quality of their applicants, I don't see where the issue is. Also, not all companies try to maximize for "top tier developer", it seems they are maximizing for "top motivated developer", which does not seem stupid either.
        andre-z 3y ago
        Thanks. We will reveal our hiring strategy in more details soon.
        guappa 3y ago
        Maybe they maximize for "top gullible young inexperienced person that will fall for that"?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
        pclmulqdq 3y ago
        It sounds like they are instead maximizing for "free integrations," which seems to be a fine way to get neither free integrations nor high-quality candidates.
      - epolanski 3y ago
        The general rule of thumb is that companies are free to decide what they look for and how to find it and so are candidates. This is an open source database company, obviously the best candidates are contributors to the project first. Picky ivy league graduate that farms leetcode and system design question is very very low in the ranking of what such companies should look for.
  - otabdeveloper4 3y ago
    Then this job is not for you, simple as. Sounds like a win-win.
- 0xedd 3y ago
  Don't be ridiculous. HR gets paid to talk to candidates. I don't get paid to apply. The initial screening call is what allows a company to gauge the relevancy of a candidate. Let him speak about some of the topics and see how in-depth they go. Either the HR is familiar enough with the tech to understand proficiency (think a student listening to a maths professor) or they let a TL have a short conversation. I've overheard unqualified HR do their jobs badly, too; They laughed at picking them by looks and "feels". But, that's out of scope here. A large company has millions to invest in different areas. Intrinsically, it has a much larger margin of error. You accidentally overprovisioned some resources and cost the company 10k? Tis but a scratch. You POC some personal project and accidentally get billed 10k? That is not the same. A company can spend money on hiring. It is expected to. A private person can't spend money on applying to jobs. It isn't expected. It's interesting to see how the shift goes from the self to the company [and to the country]. A little bit of communist propaganda goes a long way, eh, comrade NPC?
  - unglaublich 3y ago
    Companies not paying for their applicant's time is communist now?
  - guappa 3y ago
    > NPC When someone calls others "npc", I understand that they are complete psychopaths that are somehow capable of thinking that the other people don't live the full human experience as they do.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
redwood 3y ago
That's a pretty smart way for them to seed the ecosystem with open source connectors! Are you implying that that's what they were really trying to do here? Or do you think it was a genuine filter technique?
simonw 3y ago
If they're paying you for your time, this is kind of smart. If they're not then it's a scandal.
- _mh56 3y ago
  Edited :|
- cj 3y ago
  They can easily make it not a scandal by changing things so applicants contribute to an open source project that they don't directly benefit from as a business. Easy solution
  - treprinum 3y ago
    Let's just make qdrant to pinecone/weaviate/redis/etc. data exporters, that would make the company super happy! Free labor benefiting their competitors.
- guappa 3y ago
  Why pay when you can get free labour?
infecto 3y ago
This sits somewhere in the middle for me. On one hand I probably would not do this exercise for most companies but I probably would for a company I was excited about. It kind of makes sense if they are getting high volume of applications, you definitely will miss great candidates doing this but does it not also servce as a self-selection for the type of candidate they want? Curious if the co-founder who was posting in here will share his take.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lysecret 3y ago
  Yes I agree. I think you could easily add if the pr is merged we reward it with some money etc and it would be perfect.
- _mh56 3y ago
  To give more context from an employee's point of view [just my opinion and might be completely wrong] For a job switch, I need to spend time in three different stages: --------------- Preparation: Leetcode (Blind 75) : 150 hours System Design + DBMS + OS + Networking : 100 hours Behavioural Questions (preparing STAR format answers): 10-20 hours ------------ Application: Avg time for sending 500 applications: 20 hours (Assuming 1 application every 2.5 minutes) ------------- Interviews: Let's say I got 25 callbacks and 10 of them asked for takehome. Person to person interviews time: 25 * 3 = 75 hours Takehomes: 10 * 6 hours = 60 hours. ------------- All in all, I'm already spending 415 hours of unpaid work to get x% of salary increment. Not including the side projects or hackathons we may need. So having a takehome exercise asking to make an active contribution to the company is....bad. Sure i can reject it but not everyone will. which is what led us into the multiple rounds of algo interviews hellhole. I apologize if what I'm saying is harsh. All I want is for leadership to see us as humans with families and not monkeys jumping through hoops.
  - infecto 3y ago
    Not harsh and I don't disagree. On the flip side though if they have a large volume of applicants and they are a sub 50 company right now, it probably does not matter what kind of hoops they make people jump through, they will most likely identify candidate that match their fit. What I am saying is that nobody is wrong in this situation.
shizcakes 3y ago
I don’t see a single such submission in their pull requests, open or closed, in the past couple weeks.
- simonw 3y ago
  Read that comment more closely: they didn't ask for PRs to one of their own repos, they asked for a brand new repo to be created, and a link to that repo to be emailed to them.
nijave 3y ago
You could always release and license under BUSL or AGPL or some other business non friendly and relicense if you got the job.
- LudwigNagasena 3y ago
  You can simply publish it without any license, in which case you reserve all rights.
  - sgc 3y ago
    Nobody is going to hire you if you can't follow basic instructions.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
beernet 3y ago
[flagged]
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
osigurdson 3y ago
This is actually kind of brilliant.
anonylizard 3y ago
Most of the prestigious and elite indie game firms (Those that pay very well, fully remote, have a hugely successful product that can be sold for decades) basically only hire modders into their team. Like, you had to have actively developed mods for them, for free, for years, and be famous in the community, then they'll hire you (If you want). This works because the working conditions there are far far better than your average game company. And probably much more fun than say a bank.
- mpawelski 3y ago
  What concrete companies you are talking about?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sireat 3y ago
For some reason this does not seem as exploitative as most of the interview circuit elsewhere. Over the years I've read/heard plenty of stories (here on HN and elsewhere) of people getting hired for their open source contributions to some stack that some company is using/developing. So here I am willing to give some slack here to Qdrant. They get extremely qualified candidates who can jump right in, and candidates get told the rules of the game up front. It feels fine? Surely much better than fake take home tests, whiteboard tests, leetcode onslaught, and 7 layers of interviews. So if creating a high quality repo is 60-90% of your job interview that seems pretty good. As long as they are not ghosting high quality contributions that is. I will change my view if they get 20 high quality connectors out of this and noone gets hired from that pool of candidates.
redskyluan 3y ago
[dead]
wdroz 3y ago
> No Pay From this job posting [0] > Compensated Interview Tasks: We value your time and effort; candidates will be compensated for completing interview tasks. [0] -- https://join.com/companies/qdrant/10275180-core-rust-engineer https://join.com/companies/qdrant/10275180-core-rust-enginee...

by _mh56 3y ago

Oras 3y ago

Do you expect a tech interview by just applying? From your perspective, you're filling out an application, maybe writing a cover letter, but on the other side, there are 100+ applications like yours. Not all of them are qualified, CVs are not a trustable source anyway. That's why companies add tests to filter first, then interview later.

_mh56 3y ago
I don't expect interviews. But I also don't want to spend 20 hours working before getting a "Unfortunately we've decided not to move forward" message. As a thumb rule, I'm happy to put 4x more effort than the company. If they interview me for 1 hour, I spend 4 hours doing the take-home. Anything more feels like exploitation.
- epolanski 3y ago
  Well, they said they receive a lot of applications so they are in the position of setting the rules. You are absolutely right into setting your own rules as well, those haven't overlapped.
  - pclmulqdq 3y ago
    As a general rule of thumb, random series A startups are in much lower demand for top-tier talent than top-tier talent is in demand for these companies. That would mean that the good engineers should set the rules of engagement, and that any startup that thinks they set the rules is attracting worse talent.
    - Galanwe 3y ago
      Well, unless Qdrant writes a post complaining about the quality of their applicants, I don't see where the issue is. Also, not all companies try to maximize for "top tier developer", it seems they are maximizing for "top motivated developer", which does not seem stupid either.
      - andre-z 3y ago
        Thanks. We will reveal our hiring strategy in more details soon.
      - guappa 3y ago
        Maybe they maximize for "top gullible young inexperienced person that will fall for that"?
        deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - pclmulqdq 3y ago
        It sounds like they are instead maximizing for "free integrations," which seems to be a fine way to get neither free integrations nor high-quality candidates.
    - epolanski 3y ago
      The general rule of thumb is that companies are free to decide what they look for and how to find it and so are candidates. This is an open source database company, obviously the best candidates are contributors to the project first. Picky ivy league graduate that farms leetcode and system design question is very very low in the ranking of what such companies should look for.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  Then this job is not for you, simple as. Sounds like a win-win.
0xedd 3y ago
Don't be ridiculous. HR gets paid to talk to candidates. I don't get paid to apply. The initial screening call is what allows a company to gauge the relevancy of a candidate. Let him speak about some of the topics and see how in-depth they go. Either the HR is familiar enough with the tech to understand proficiency (think a student listening to a maths professor) or they let a TL have a short conversation. I've overheard unqualified HR do their jobs badly, too; They laughed at picking them by looks and "feels". But, that's out of scope here. A large company has millions to invest in different areas. Intrinsically, it has a much larger margin of error. You accidentally overprovisioned some resources and cost the company 10k? Tis but a scratch. You POC some personal project and accidentally get billed 10k? That is not the same. A company can spend money on hiring. It is expected to. A private person can't spend money on applying to jobs. It isn't expected. It's interesting to see how the shift goes from the self to the company [and to the country]. A little bit of communist propaganda goes a long way, eh, comrade NPC?
- unglaublich 3y ago
  Companies not paying for their applicant's time is communist now?
- guappa 3y ago
  > NPC When someone calls others "npc", I understand that they are complete psychopaths that are somehow capable of thinking that the other people don't live the full human experience as they do.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

redwood 3y ago

That's a pretty smart way for them to seed the ecosystem with open source connectors! Are you implying that that's what they were really trying to do here? Or do you think it was a genuine filter technique?

simonw 3y ago

If they're paying you for your time, this is kind of smart. If they're not then it's a scandal.

_mh56 3y ago
Edited :|
cj 3y ago
They can easily make it not a scandal by changing things so applicants contribute to an open source project that they don't directly benefit from as a business. Easy solution
- treprinum 3y ago
  Let's just make qdrant to pinecone/weaviate/redis/etc. data exporters, that would make the company super happy! Free labor benefiting their competitors.
guappa 3y ago
Why pay when you can get free labour?

infecto 3y ago

This sits somewhere in the middle for me. On one hand I probably would not do this exercise for most companies but I probably would for a company I was excited about. It kind of makes sense if they are getting high volume of applications, you definitely will miss great candidates doing this but does it not also servce as a self-selection for the type of candidate they want? Curious if the co-founder who was posting in here will share his take.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lysecret 3y ago
Yes I agree. I think you could easily add if the pr is merged we reward it with some money etc and it would be perfect.
_mh56 3y ago
To give more context from an employee's point of view [just my opinion and might be completely wrong] For a job switch, I need to spend time in three different stages: --------------- Preparation: Leetcode (Blind 75) : 150 hours System Design + DBMS + OS + Networking : 100 hours Behavioural Questions (preparing STAR format answers): 10-20 hours ------------ Application: Avg time for sending 500 applications: 20 hours (Assuming 1 application every 2.5 minutes) ------------- Interviews: Let's say I got 25 callbacks and 10 of them asked for takehome. Person to person interviews time: 25 * 3 = 75 hours Takehomes: 10 * 6 hours = 60 hours. ------------- All in all, I'm already spending 415 hours of unpaid work to get x% of salary increment. Not including the side projects or hackathons we may need. So having a takehome exercise asking to make an active contribution to the company is....bad. Sure i can reject it but not everyone will. which is what led us into the multiple rounds of algo interviews hellhole. I apologize if what I'm saying is harsh. All I want is for leadership to see us as humans with families and not monkeys jumping through hoops.
- infecto 3y ago
  Not harsh and I don't disagree. On the flip side though if they have a large volume of applicants and they are a sub 50 company right now, it probably does not matter what kind of hoops they make people jump through, they will most likely identify candidate that match their fit. What I am saying is that nobody is wrong in this situation.

shizcakes 3y ago

I don’t see a single such submission in their pull requests, open or closed, in the past couple weeks.

simonw 3y ago
Read that comment more closely: they didn't ask for PRs to one of their own repos, they asked for a brand new repo to be created, and a link to that repo to be emailed to them.

nijave 3y ago

You could always release and license under BUSL or AGPL or some other business non friendly and relicense if you got the job.

LudwigNagasena 3y ago
You can simply publish it without any license, in which case you reserve all rights.
- sgc 3y ago
  Nobody is going to hire you if you can't follow basic instructions.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

beernet 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

osigurdson 3y ago

This is actually kind of brilliant.

anonylizard 3y ago

Most of the prestigious and elite indie game firms (Those that pay very well, fully remote, have a hugely successful product that can be sold for decades) basically only hire modders into their team. Like, you had to have actively developed mods for them, for free, for years, and be famous in the community, then they'll hire you (If you want). This works because the working conditions there are far far better than your average game company. And probably much more fun than say a bank.

mpawelski 3y ago
What concrete companies you are talking about?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sireat 3y ago

For some reason this does not seem as exploitative as most of the interview circuit elsewhere. Over the years I've read/heard plenty of stories (here on HN and elsewhere) of people getting hired for their open source contributions to some stack that some company is using/developing. So here I am willing to give some slack here to Qdrant. They get extremely qualified candidates who can jump right in, and candidates get told the rules of the game up front. It feels fine? Surely much better than fake take home tests, whiteboard tests, leetcode onslaught, and 7 layers of interviews. So if creating a high quality repo is 60-90% of your job interview that seems pretty good. As long as they are not ghosting high quality contributions that is. I will change my view if they get 20 high quality connectors out of this and noone gets hired from that pool of candidates.

redskyluan 3y ago

[dead]

wdroz 3y ago

> No Pay From this job posting [0] > Compensated Interview Tasks: We value your time and effort; candidates will be compensated for completing interview tasks. [0] -- https://join.com/companies/qdrant/10275180-core-rust-engineer https://join.com/companies/qdrant/10275180-core-rust-enginee...