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Comment by mtlynch | Hacker News Reader

Related: This was the first step in the interview process at Canonical – I withdrew (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678

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Based on the process, Canonical is the choosiest beggar I've bothered to apply to in the tech world.

It was quite obvious to me I would be rejected, as the form is much more focused on "things that look good on paper" rather than "what this person can do", e.g. asking for your GPA.

This presumably reflects the internal culture which leads to a history of user-hostile decisions: snap, Unity, that Amazon fiasco. They probably looked good on paper.

I'm only salty because I think people with atypical profiles like mine could truly make their software better and more adapted to today's FLOSS world. Oh well, guess I'll just keep working on maximizing someone's profits.

> snap, Unity, that Amazon fiasco. They probably looked good on paper.

Hahaha. I miss Unity though.

> the form is much more focused on "things that look good on paper"

What more could you ask for from a form?

I think you're conflating "how should one answer the questions on a form" with "how should the form be written"?

They're inherently related. The medium dictates the context of both the questions and responses. Trying to communicate things on a form that are not accurately communicated on a form is a fools errand. Interviews, code tests, etc exist to communicate things that aren't well communicated in that format.

The form could simply ask for your name, contact info, and availability.

They really do want the people that will crawl through broken glass for them.

The whole tech industry is insane. Can we please go back to: I give you work, you give me money. And if you want passion then I want equity.

There are 8 billion people on the planet and remote work & automation is changing the game.

If you won't crawl through broken glass, cool, there are 5000+ people in India who might, and a couple hundred jr IT support types a lot closer who are being replaced with an IAM system.

Two World Wars killed the main working segments of entire generations -- young men -- and allowed the West to take the lead for a while. The tech booms prolonged that a little further. But now them halcyon days are over homie. Hustle, or I'm replacing you with a math whiz from Delhi.

Go ahead. That math whiz can't deliver solutions fit for the real-world. I've seen it time and time again. But hey, I'm hoping you throw your money at that math whiz because you wasting your time and money is how I'm going to beat you!

Maybe you want that, but some people like working beside people who give a shit. Some of those places give equity, some give good paychecks, and some give a good work-life balance. Not everyone is motivated the same way you are.

So work for a place that gives out equity? Maybe I'm getting a totally different view of offers to engineers (at non-Canonical companies) than you are, but most of mine have contained passion-inducing amounts of equity - if you believe in the 409A. Which you can't, until you can.

The great thing about being FI is the lack of worry over this garbage. I would have truthfully answered that I was a terrible student, that I could only focus on subjects that truly interested me, and that one of those subjects fortunately happened to be coding.

They want to toss my resume for my struggles 20 years ago? So be it. It's as good of a filter for me not wanting to work for them as it is vice versa.

I'm pretty sure I'd have great answers for those questions, but that was also 30 years ago and the fact that those questions are being asked tells me I don't want to work there.

I've hired lots of software engineers in my life, and even for ones right out of university, I'm not sure I could recall what university they attended.

I wonder if the real test is to get a candidate who will do something like "I took a look at the interview questions and determined that most of them aren't a productive use of time for either of us, here's why. Now, here's a short description of why you should hire me and what I'll bring to the company." Like looking for someone who can cut through the bureaucracy.

Nah. You don't have to think outside the box with HR. In fact, you should think firmly inside _their_ box.

Nothing in the history of Canonical suggests they are that clever.

Usually, if it quacks like bureaucracy, it's a bureaucracy.

Good grief, that's definitely the bigger WTF. Each of those engineering questions could be its own essay. What's even left to talk about if you answer all of those?

A Canonical dev in the replies offhandedly mentions that they read every one thoroughly whether its "3 or 30 pages" which is certainly an ask when you have people submitting an autobiographical novella as the first step in your interview process.

Well now I don't want to apply OR work there!

If this is meant to hire people in the US it's flat out illegal.

But then everyone except Duke Power has ignored Griggs v. Duke Power.

It seems they are building a monoculture of people who have been nerds uniformely throughout their life. No room for experimentation here, lads.

Good for them. The nerds who have dared to live, the misfits, and just about anyone else who finds that whole spiel atrocious will go somewhere else.

Fuck that noise!

The first sentence of the questionnaire says it's to work on Ubuntu WSL.

It's funny to imagine that the barrage of questions from Ubuntu is merely a tactic to suppress the obvious question from the candidate: why is the company seeming to fall for that move by MS.

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