4 ms·

I've met Joel in person, and he's bright, but not visionary. Some of his writing his interesting, but I'm generally unimpressed. Disclaimer: I'm not impartial.

I've met Joel in person, and he's bright, but not visionary. Some of his writing his interesting, but I'm generally unimpressed. Disclaimer: I'm not impartial. I interviewed with Fog Creek in the summer of 2008. I was rejected, which didn't upset or surprise me. However, when I called to ask why, I got a non-answer (HR: "we'll call if we can release this information"). I'd been unemployed for 4 months due to health problems, the economy was falling apart, and they wouldn't even help me out a little bit by telling me why they said "no". Amazing. If he'd had the courage to tell me why I was turned down, my opinion of him would probably be neutral-to-positive.

mhp 17y ago
Telling you why you weren't hired wouldn't have been courageous. It would have been a stupid business decision: http://www.ihavenet.com/career_Do-not-Bother-Asking-Why-Not-Hired.html http://www.ihavenet.com/career_Do-not-Bother-Asking-Why-Not-...
gecko 17y ago
Almost no company will tell you why you weren't hired. In the US, as soon as a company gives you a reason for why you were not hired, you can sue and argue that the grounds for rejecting you were frivolous. Worse, if the exact phrasing used in any way possibly implies that you might have been rejected for a protected class (even if that's not actually the case in reality) then you can sue for truly ludicrous amounts of money. Neither of these are hypotheticals; one company I worked for had had a couple of lawsuits due to the former, and last I heard, a friend's company was halfway through a lawsuit due to the latter. This is another area where you can thank the lawyers for making it a mess for everyone.