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I would much rather get an honest answer in any scenario, no matter what it is. There are people out there who would take that feedback and reflect on it in a p

by nickjj 2y ago

I would much rather get an honest answer in any scenario, no matter what it is. There are people out there who would take that feedback and reflect on it in a positive way. How else can you improve or be mindful of things in the future if you don't even know what happened or what went wrong? I sort of feel like the people who don't give honest feedback or ghost aren't trying to protect anyone's feelings or are avoiding conflict. They themselves have something going on internally that bothers them when it comes to giving or receiving feedback. They are maybe letting unrelated previous experiences dictate their current life and decisions. So now you have 2 types of people. People who want honest feedback and people who never give it. You can't force either one to do the other thing so we're always left with 1 side feeling unhappy. It doesn't make sense to me that this is how most folks are ok with operating.

rmgk 2y ago
Giving good individual feedback requires effort and is low priority. Those things tend to not happen without requiring complicated feelings to be involved.
fastasucan 2y ago
Interestingly you exemplify the problem here. You ignore their explanation and examples and rather fall down to prescribe some flaw to them. Ironically this is some of the outcomes of giving honest feedback that makes people don't bother.
Ferret7446 2y ago
Do you actually though? A lot of people say they would rather get an honest answer but don't react very well in reality. > They themselves have something going on internally that bothers them when it comes to giving or receiving feedback. The idea that some people would judge them like this certainly wouldn't help people to try to be more honest and open, especially if such a person is demanding an "honest answer".
- arp242 2y ago
  There's honest and there's too honest. I was once rejected with "you don't have the technical depth needed". I appreciate that's what they honestly felt, but sending it back like that was just too honest. Especially because I felt their technical screening process wasn't really all that brilliant (to put it mildly). Something like "we're looking for someone with a different skill set" would still be reasonable honest, but also wouldn't make me feel terrible. The notion that you can fully asses someone's technical abilities from a one-hour interview is mistaken anyway. So an honest reply should take that in to account. --- A second scenario is where I did a take-home code test thinghy. I went for the "simple but obviously correct and easy to implement approach". The performance for that seemed more than enough for the stated use case, and included some benchmarks and a bit of text to justify it. Performance wasn't mentioned in the task, but seems like the common sense thing to do. After a few weeks I got a one-line "doesn't meet expected performance" rejection. Well, you didn't mention what the "expected performance" is motherfucker. That's not what I sent back (I didn't reply at all), but what a fucked up way to evaluate and dismiss people.
  - nickjj 2y ago
    > I was once rejected with "you don't have the technical depth needed". I appreciate that's what they honestly felt, but sending it back like that was just too honest. Do you think if they were more specific it could have helped? As someone who does like honesty, that type of response would bother me too because it doesn't feel like an honest reply. It feels like a blanket statement to quickly say something and move on. If they said something like "when it came to thinking about and writing database queries, we felt like your solutions could have used more thought around performance optimizations and fundamental knowledge about joins". I'd be really happy with a rejection like that because it's super specific. Now there's 2 action items I can do to improve, such as focusing on query tuning and getting better at joins. These are things you could search for and find tons of content / examples to improve on. If you think about it like a loop, it's a loop that's complete. You did something poorly, you know what you did poorly, you can level up those specific skills and try again. The problem is when the feedback doesn't let you complete the loop.

by nickjj 2y ago

rmgk 2y ago

Giving good individual feedback requires effort and is low priority. Those things tend to not happen without requiring complicated feelings to be involved.

fastasucan 2y ago

Interestingly you exemplify the problem here. You ignore their explanation and examples and rather fall down to prescribe some flaw to them. Ironically this is some of the outcomes of giving honest feedback that makes people don't bother.

Ferret7446 2y ago

Do you actually though? A lot of people say they would rather get an honest answer but don't react very well in reality. > They themselves have something going on internally that bothers them when it comes to giving or receiving feedback. The idea that some people would judge them like this certainly wouldn't help people to try to be more honest and open, especially if such a person is demanding an "honest answer".

arp242 2y ago
There's honest and there's too honest. I was once rejected with "you don't have the technical depth needed". I appreciate that's what they honestly felt, but sending it back like that was just too honest. Especially because I felt their technical screening process wasn't really all that brilliant (to put it mildly). Something like "we're looking for someone with a different skill set" would still be reasonable honest, but also wouldn't make me feel terrible. The notion that you can fully asses someone's technical abilities from a one-hour interview is mistaken anyway. So an honest reply should take that in to account. --- A second scenario is where I did a take-home code test thinghy. I went for the "simple but obviously correct and easy to implement approach". The performance for that seemed more than enough for the stated use case, and included some benchmarks and a bit of text to justify it. Performance wasn't mentioned in the task, but seems like the common sense thing to do. After a few weeks I got a one-line "doesn't meet expected performance" rejection. Well, you didn't mention what the "expected performance" is motherfucker. That's not what I sent back (I didn't reply at all), but what a fucked up way to evaluate and dismiss people.
- nickjj 2y ago
  > I was once rejected with "you don't have the technical depth needed". I appreciate that's what they honestly felt, but sending it back like that was just too honest. Do you think if they were more specific it could have helped? As someone who does like honesty, that type of response would bother me too because it doesn't feel like an honest reply. It feels like a blanket statement to quickly say something and move on. If they said something like "when it came to thinking about and writing database queries, we felt like your solutions could have used more thought around performance optimizations and fundamental knowledge about joins". I'd be really happy with a rejection like that because it's super specific. Now there's 2 action items I can do to improve, such as focusing on query tuning and getting better at joins. These are things you could search for and find tons of content / examples to improve on. If you think about it like a loop, it's a loop that's complete. You did something poorly, you know what you did poorly, you can level up those specific skills and try again. The problem is when the feedback doesn't let you complete the loop.