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Comment by haberman | Hacker News Reader

I think it is unwise to send a letter with this tone to someone you've turned down. I say this as someone who used to do exactly the same thing. You think you're being honest, but to be on the receiving side of this it comes off badly.

Especially as a new grad, it's not really your place to lecture someone about how Unix embodies the essence of good software engineering when they have probably been doing this a lot longer than you and have their own ideas about what good software design is.

You could have given the same feedback in a way that is much less likely to come off badly by simply saying "I've really a UNIX kind of guy and a Windows shop probably isn't the best fit for me."

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I don't know that I agree: you're essentially advocating dishonesty, in my opinion. If he legitimately feels that a Unix shop by nature will espouse certain qualities, why should he hold back?

They solicited his feedback. Unless he wants to hold them in his pocket as a fall-back, I can't see why he should sugarcoat his response. Yes, you could call his opinion essentially hubris if you disagree and wanted to be antagonistic, but it's at least honest, straightforward, and not unduly confrontational.

I say this as someone who's been off-and-on involved with interviewing and sent out this kind of question to people who turned us down - the only two times I got a response, they were devoid of any information and just platitudes to butter us up. Literally not a single negative point about us or our process, which needless to say was not helpful and personally annoyed me far more than a letter like this would have done.

What about "I'm really a UNIX kind of guy and a Windows shop probably isn't the best fit for me" is dishonest or devoid of information?

This makes it clear that he prefers UNIX and that was a factor in declining the position. It stops short of passing sweeping judgements on people who do not prefer UNIX, which is very likely to annoy somebody who prefers Windows.

Which "sweeping judgements" did I pass on people who do not prefer Unix? All I've said in this article is that, given the choice between Windows and Unix, I prefer Unix. I went on to add points on why I like Unix, which admittedly is a little extraneous, but I never voiced any negative judgement on Windows. Many seem to infer that themselves.

Let's be honest, you were basically singing UNIX's praises for a little bit. While I agree with them, you have to admit that saying that "Unix encapsulates, and indeed was built on, many core principles of good software design" is a sidelong criticism of Windows which you imply is not built upon core principles of good software design. I imagine this could easily be construed as an insult.

Consider if a Windows user said he didn't want to work at a Unix shop because Windows is a better-designed operating system. Would you not consider this a judgement of Unix?

Good points. I agree that it's reasonable to construe what I was saying as a swipe at Windows.

What I really meant, and I guess I didn't do a sufficient job at getting this across, was that I know Unix is rock-solid; I don't know the same about Windows. Truth be told, I know very little about Windows since I haven't used it for 4 years. I was going for a positive point about Unix, not a negative one about Windows.

But you have a pretty good point about my praise of Unix being a vacuous swipe at Windows.

I only use Windows because I am always in too much of a rush to pass through the pain of adopting a new operating system on my desktop machine. We do deploy onto Linux.

I don't have any local Linux / Unix help.

Perhaps if you joined the team, many of the other developers would also have switched. I might have if I was from this company.

Consider if a Windows user said he didn't want to work at a Unix shop because Windows is a better-designed operating system. Would you not consider this a judgement of Unix?

Judgment of a platform and judgment of its users are separate issues.

I guess I mostly disagree with the "very likely to annoy somebody who prefers Windows" statement. I love Windows as a desktop OS, and am typing this on it right now. Nonetheless, my love for it is really irrelevant when I'm developing for Ubuntu Lucid. I guess I feel strongly about this because I've actually been the sole guy in a small shop sticking to Windows while all my colleagues were on Ubuntu (which was the target OS.) I tried to justify it to myself for as long as I could, and frankly at the end of it there was simply no good reason to be on a different platform than the target. It caused me no end of headaches and wasted dev time - although part of this was because I was pulling from a repo shared with ubuntu devs, it was mostly that the target was ubuntu.

TL;DR: If an interviewee two years ago had seen that I was on Windows, turned us down, and cited my Windows development as the reason for their refusal, I would probably have switched to ubuntu six months sooner and saved myself (and the company) upwards of 100 hours of dev troubleshooting. So it's hard to view the raw "You're on Windows developing for UNIX. Just what?" as worse than "I'm not a Windows developer, sorry."

pahalial, i agree with you; feedback is king. you can take it with a grain of salt, but if you learn to take things constructively, it could possibly lead to improvement.

i think this candidate's response was quite detailed, like for example the fact that he didn't see value in the being grilled on theoretical puzzles.

I agree. Softening, sugarcoating, removing the negative aspects of a comparison, is dishonest. It is incomplete and misleading. And as such it is not the most useful information for the recipient.

One great thing about techie and science culture is the wide agreement that being straight and blunt is the way to go. It allows us to identify the problem instead of getting into a game of reading between the lines and trying to figure out what was really meant. In this case the interviewer wanted to know why his offer was rejected. The more complete and direct the answer, the better.

I don't see why it's unwise at all, unless employers start using past interviewers as references. It's not like he insulted the guy's mom, he gave his honest and straightforward opinion. And as a non-"new grad" who's been a developer for over 10 years, I agree with pretty much all of his points.

Not to mention that some "new grads" have also been programming for 10 years (probably not all in a professional environment, but nevertheless), whether they started programming at 13 or just finally got around to getting a degree.

If feedback and criticism are asked for, there's little point to apply sugar, especially when you probably won't have much contact in the future. Sugarcoating is required in environments where saying something that could be taken as insulting can get you killed or a much lower status.

Right on. I've met some new grads who are absolutely amazing at what they do and someone with 10-15 years on them isn't going to do it better always.

After 25 years or so coding professionally I also agree with pretty much all of the points.

And let's remember this wasn't the initial "thanks for your time, but sorry" letter. It was solicited explicitly. The OP delivered. And there's every reason to think the recipient of this will be smart enough to take it as a data point for the future.

Thanks for your honest advice.

    You could have given the same feedback in a way that is much
    less likely to come off badly by simply saying "I've really
    a UNIX kind of guy and a Windows shop probably isn't the
    best fit for me."

This makes a ton of sense. I admit that I saw a chance to soapbox, though I thought constructively, and leapt at it.

> You could have given the same feedback in a way that is much less likely to come off badly by simply saying "I've really a UNIX kind of guy and a Windows shop probably isn't the best fit for me."

This also has a good chance of being interpreted badly. Depending on who reads it, picking Windows for your development environment could make sense. Lots of Java development is done on Windows and Windows laptops are a very common sight on Java-related conferences.

As an employer I usually ask and like to hear this kind of feedback... So it really depends on the person on the receiving hand and what kind of vibe you have from him...

I fully agree. Technology and platform choice is often the most thought-over decisions that a company's engineering staff has to make. I personally would shy away from saying anything that indicates the slightest criticism on that particular decision. However, I'm sure the review of company X's interview strategy will be very helpful.

I agree, but I suppose those are the lessons best learned first hand. I'm sure he's very sharp, but once he's gotten his ass handed to him a couple times, he'll come around. There are some great opportunities for new grads now, it almost seems like a waste to give that to people before they've learned what to do with it :-)

Youth is wasted on the young, eh?

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