
No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback - leeny
http://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-company-because-of-constructive-post-interview-feedback-so-why-dont-employers-do-it/
======
vector_spaces
I'm so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of "There's
nothing in it for the company but risk".

I once put in about 8 hours on a take home project at a company (well known in
these parts) that I had tremendous respect for, only to get an email back with
"sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience".

I asked them for a couple quick points on what I could have done better. I had
zero intention of fighting them on it. No response

The whole experience made me feel very ill, especially after putting in as
much effort as I did, and obviously I feel quite differently about that
company now.

On the other hand, 5 years ago when looking for my first tech job, a virtually
unknown startup that rejected me after a take home project and day long onsite
gave me very thorough and specific feedback, encouragement, and even a bunch
of reading suggestions. Even though I didn't get hired, I have very fond
memories of that interview and reached out to them when I did land my first
job to thank them again.

Did it have any tangible implications for their bottom line to give me that
feedback? Not really. But they treated me with compassion rather than like
garbage. I have never named and shamed the first company and never intend to,
but I personally think there's more risk involved in habitually treating
people like garbage than like human beings.

~~~
hoka-one-one
I had a guy at Qualcomm Austin tell me to read Advanced Compiler Design and
Implementation by Muchnik. I read it and a few months later I was working for
Qualcomm San Diego. I've thought about thanking him but I doubt he'd remember
me, it was such a small comment.

~~~
bigiain
Do it anyway.

You know if someone you don't remember from an interaction ages ago emailed
you to say "Hey, you probably don't remember this, but you once told me
$thing, so I took $action, and now I've achieved $outcome. Thanks you for
that, it really helped my career!", it'd make you feel great and would
probably be the highlight of your day, right?

~~~
snide
As an anecdote. I once received something like this (on Twitter of all
places). It was a "you probably don't remember me but..." for someone I'd
passed on a decade ago. It really touched me and made me sit down and reflect
on my career. The person had gone on to have a successful career being
creative. Which honestly, is all we can ever ask.

I remembered the person, but not anything about what I'd said that day. I
assume it was just what I normally say. Having that last realization made me
feel even better.

The easiest, most rewarding thing you can do daily in your life is appreciate
the people around you. We all need that feedback.

~~~
Iv
Every word you speak, especially to the youth, is a seed. Handle them like
they were going to land on fertile ground.

~~~
jodrellblank
Is this, "grind them up so they won't be competing with you for sunlight" or
"don't shit on them, it will only help them grow stronger"?

~~~
bonzini
Technically, shit helps seeds grow stronger.

------
kenhwang
One time we gave feedback on request and the candidate contested the feedback,
then went out on a social media rampage. So yeah, we stopped after that. It
only takes one bad candidate to make it not worth the effort.

~~~
ddelt
Hot take: you could hire someone who did absolutely well in the interview, and
they could find a few weeks into the job that they loathe everyone, and go on
a social media rampage.

What I’m getting at is, there will always be bad apples, or people who react
in a way that damages your organization. But not providing useful feedback to
people who ask for it simply because one person went crazy is punishing a lot
more people because of that one. Who knows if all of their negative karma ends
up being worse in the grand scheme of things?

I personally avoid applying to places that other engineers tell me to avoid
because I trust their opinion more than I trust a company selling me the
highlight reel in an interview. If a trusted engineer said he got a rejection
in an interview, asked for feedback, and none was given, I’d avoid that place
too.

~~~
nkingsy
This is a tried and true practice in dating, and it translates well to hiring,
which is basically the same thing.

Most people, ESPECIALLY people who ask you for feedback, do not want feedback.
They want to get in a fight with you.

Edit: I don't remember ghosting anyone personally in either setting, but it's
happened to me plenty. Getting upset about it just means you're new to the
experience.

~~~
Apocryphon
Then maybe there can be a system that provides a disclaimer where they waive
all ability to sue or otherwise get into a fight with you.

~~~
bobthepanda
If they blab their mouth on social media and it goes viral they've already
done the damage before you could serve court papers. Why even bother with the
risk?

~~~
Apocryphon
Because that’s allowing risk adverse mentalities to prevent companies from
innovating in their hiring processes to build a more transparent and improved
culture of hiring, and a chance to differentiate themselves from competitors
with a reputation of good interviewing practices?

~~~
bobthepanda
Sure.

> Then maybe there can be a system that provides a disclaimer where they waive
> all ability to sue or otherwise get into a fight with you.

This ain't gonna help though, because it's not particularly useful at
preventing the damage that these companies are afraid of, so it's not really
going to tilt the existing balance.

~~~
Apocryphon
I just think companies don’t nearly take anonymous social media backlash as
seriously as this discussion alleges they do. Anecdotally, companies barely
take customer/client complaints on social media seriously, unless it goes
viral- but how would that happen in the case of giving feedback to an
applicant? Hard for it to be big news unless actual discriminatory practices
emerged- in which the current system already fails to protect against.

Perhaps companies are just behaving too conservatively, and there is room for
interviewing platforms to improving the hiring process by giving the helpful
feedback that applicants crave.

------
Afton
I got verbal feedback exactly one time (at Microsoft) during my attempt to
land a post-1-year of university internship. I had solved the algorithm in a
few minutes, but when trying to code it up, I struggled a fair amount before
figuring it out. The feedback I got was "You seem like a smart person, who
hasn't done very much coding. That makes you a bad risk. Go practice
programming and come back next year". It was incredibly valuable advice that I
got no where else, and it resulted in me coming back to MS a couple of years
later once I graduated (I'm not there anymore).

I wish more people would give real, actionable feedback on interviews.

~~~
criddell
> You seem like a smart person, who hasn't done very much coding. That makes
> you a bad risk,

Assuming Microsoft actually measures this stuff, that's kind of surprising to
me. I've never placed much weight on being able to write a program on the
spot.

~~~
allovernow
>I've never placed much weight on being able to write a program on the spot.

I don't disagree, and personally I _hate_ in person coding exercises, but if
you keep the question simple and allow the candidate to code in their native
language, something fizz-buzz like will go a long way in weeding out the
people who have languages on their resume but can't code.

At our company we offer two simple coderpad tasks to be done in advance with
no supervision or pressure - write a linked list in CPP and solve a simple
puzzle in Python. You pay attention to the candidates who use templates,
destructors, smart pointers, even if they make mistakes those are the ones you
probably want to hire.

~~~
quadrifoliate
> You pay attention to the candidates who use templates, destructors, smart
> pointers, even if they make mistakes those are the ones you probably want to
> hire.

Maybe I don't know enough C++ to understand this, but I don't understand why
using fancier features would make you like the candidate more when they are
making mistakes. Unless you ask them to write a templated linked list, why
would you grade them for automatically deciding to write one (and then making
a mistake while doing so)?

Trying to understand the thought process here since I have been on the
receiving side of some of these "Look I used the cool feature!" candidate
programs in Python, and they often make pretty bad mistakes while using said
advanced features. That personally marks them down slightly in my estimation,
but curious to know your view is the opposite.

Meta: Maybe the problem with hiring via takehomes/code samples is precisely
exemplified by the above discussion.

~~~
allovernow
>Maybe I don't know enough C++ to understand this, but I don't understand why
using fancier features would make you like the candidate more when they are
making mistakes.

It's not about cool features. It's about using the correct modern features
which make the code safer and easier to follow.

Templates are a relatively advanced feature but trivial to write for such a
case and I'm looking for a candidate who understands containers are typically
generic and knows how to add the two lines. I take it as a marker of
experience.

There's no excuse other than inexperience or old fashionedness to not use
smart pointers.

Destructors are also a sort of minimal knowledge because they show that a
candidate thinks correctly about memory management.

There isn't really a score to what we do. And in all honesty the first few
times we gave the test I didn't really know what to look for, this is my first
time from the other side. But it isn't too much to expect a competent cpp
programmer to know these things and I'm looking for candidates who are willing
to use the open ended opportunity to flex their muscles, provided their code
is well structured and doesn't have severe, obvious bugs. I don't claim that
this is perfect but it seems suited to screen for the basic kind of knowledge
we look for. These are not entry level positions either.

------
_cairn
So many comments in the vein of "who has time to waste on candidates we aren't
going to make an offer to?" \- You are damaging your companies brand thinking
this way. You want people who you reject to say to themselves "I can't wait to
study up and interview here again, they said no, but I still want to work
here!"

~~~
komali2
> I can't wait to study up

Surely if a rejection was for a reason that a couple weeks of study could
"fix," it wasn't worth a rejection, right? Are hirers out there really being
THAT picky?

I'm going through resumes right now and rejecting people if I think they need
a year or more experience under their belt than what they're presenting. If
it's because they know react and not vue, that's not reject worthy at all...

~~~
dickjocke
Why can't this be on the scale of 3 or 5 years? I'm reminded of the Maya
Angelou quote: "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people
will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them
feel."

I don't remember 99.9% of what recruiters have said to me, but I do remember
the two companies (Hulu and LinkedIn) that made me feel like crap and jerked
me around. It was 2 years ago and I'm sure most of the people who were a part
of that are gone, but I still kind of have that grudge.

~~~
komali2
> Why can't it be on the scale of 3 to 5 years

Where I work is an agency, so essentially a collection of already experienced
designers, engineers, etc that need to be building quality products pretty
much day 1. Any of our time we aren't billing to clients is just coming out of
our cut.

It's a somewhat ruthless calculation, but we already skim billed time to do
things like give ourselves 20% freetime to work on libre projects, train
ourselves on new tech, etc. Some of us use that 20% to mentor bootcamp grads
(me) which is the kind of help I want to give to green engineers - I'm a
selfish boi and don't wanna lump a billable hour cut on top of that. We
_absolutely_ don't have time to be pulling someone in that needs 3 more years
before they're engineering at the level we need.

~~~
Apocryphon
Sounds like your firm is in a specific niche of consultancy that is atypical
compared to the majority of non-hourly billed companies.

~~~
komali2
Sure I guess, but I can see a startup thinking the same way.

------
rchaud
The hiring process is a black box for a reason. The HR department's role is to
protect the company first, not the employees, and certainly not prospective
employees. If feedback can be interpreted as being discriminatory, or
reflective of bad company culture in general, well, word gets around.

For much of the time, the reason people don't get the job is that there was
someone marginally more qualified/attractive/likeable, or some combination of
the three; the classic "there were many qualified candidates and we could only
choose one" line in the rejection email.

That doesn't help the interviewee beyond telling them that it's a numbers
game, but that's the truth.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Bingo.

After the interview is done and the answer is a solid NO, as a company we have
NO BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP with you. Any iota of effort we put towards you is
essentially wasted effort, even if very minor.

What changes that discussion further is that there is a small, but still quite
real, possibility of lawsuit, social media rant (as another comment
mentioned), or even a disgruntled applicant shooting up the place.

(I believe Pres. William McKinley was shot by a disgruntled would-be
bureaucrat who didn't get a job...)

A perfunctory if generic rejection is a safer choice. Short-list candidates
who made it to a 3rd interview, or folks who we reached out and headhunted
(but didn't choose) may be a different story, but those are rare edge cases.

~~~
kryptiskt
In a vacuum that might be true, but software engineers know other software
engineers, and there are plenty of forums for discussing hiring experiences,
including HN. If a company systematically treats people they don't intend to
go further with like crap, their reputation with other candidates will suffer.
You'd like failed candidates to not talk shit about your company when their
friend considers applying.

~~~
wvenable
Not giving feedback though is not "treating them like crap" in fact the
opposite is far more likely to be true (as interpreted by the non-hired
candidate). You literally can't go wrong doing nothing.

~~~
bradlys
You can do wrong - I do not reinterview with startups that do not give
feedback at the end of the interview process. So, if you're a startup that's
struggling to hire - good luck getting that candidate to come back in 6 months
to a year when you're struggling. (Plenty of companies flip-flop on hire/no-
hire as time goes on)

~~~
TheRealPomax
That's not doing wrong as far as the company is concerned, though. Harsh as it
may sound, this is just another version of a customer going "I will take my
business elsewhere!" and walking out of a store: the store couldn't care less,
because your business is irrelevant. In the same way, "your" interviewing is
entirely irrelevant, the only thing the company cares about is that they get
applications from qualified folks, whether that's repeat applications or not.
You not coming back in 6 months doesn't stop them from getting new
applications from other folks with just as good a skill set as you.

Of course for you, personally, it sucks and you want to know how to improve,
but for the company the very act of talking to you after your temporary
relationship is over _does_ come with the potential for incredible harm. It's
unlikely, but a liability they have zero responsibility to take on. As far as
companies are concerned, not interacting with anyone they don't have a
business relationship with is solid business practice, and while applying,
you're just an application; you're not someone whose education and growth path
they are responsible for. You would be, if you got hired, but _until then_ you
are not their responsibility in the slightest and any unpaid, no-contract
interaction between them and you is a liability to them.

Doing nothing is by far the smartest thing the company can insist on. Even if
it sucks for us applicants.

------
plake
Because giving good feedback is hard work, and candidates won't always take it
well (even if they don't sue). If the employer has already decided not to hire
you, there's just not that much in it for them.

For what it's worth, as an interviewer I'm happy to give feedback in person,
at the end of the interview, if the candidate asks for it. It's much easier to
do when you're both in the same room, and asking e.g. "is there anything you
think I could improve on?" makes a positive impression either way.

~~~
zippergz
I hate it when candidates put me on the spot at the end of the interview,
because it feels like they're trying to get me to tell them (or at least hint
to them) if they're going to get an offer or not. Even if that decision were
wholly within my hands (it rarely is), I'm not ready to discuss it with them
at that point. The other way it sometimes goes, if I do cave and give some
feedback, is that they try to disprove me or show that they actually can do
the thing I said they need to work on. It just ends up creating awkwardness,
and doesn't benefit either of us.

~~~
Impossible
When I interviewed at a FAANG company, I had multiple candidates do this to me
after it was clear that their performance wasn't great. One person even asked
me if they could interview with another team. This usually happened after it
was clear that the candidate didn't perform very well. It was extremely
frustrating for the reasons you mentioned. These were candidates that should
have gone through multiple hiring cycles and known what the process is like,
that I'm only doing the coding interview and recruiters and potentially hiring
managers have final say based on my feedback.

------
ihodes
As an anecdote, the major consulting firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain), all provide
constructive interview feedback after interviews. They do this regardless of
if the candidate is moving on to the next level of not.

It's strange that other industries haven't followed suit.

~~~
SilasX
That kinda blows a hole in the argument from risk aversion, since they're the
definition of risk aversion.

------
wpietri
I have given it and will continue to give it. Some people do initially react
badly to it. Heck, I've reacted badly to it sometimes. But that doesn't mean
that it isn't helpful in the long run. My responsibility isn't just to my
employers. It's also to my profession and my society, and to the extent I can
help well-meaning people to improve, I'm glad to do it.

~~~
techslave
if it’s a phone screen i always tell then right at the end how i’m going to
score them. in person i don’t because they have other ones to get through.

people here say no feedback because they had a bad experience once. meh. of
course you’re going to get pushback some times. that’s part of it, not a thing
to avoid at all costs.

------
riazrizvi
You generally don't get technical interview performance feedback because
technical interviews are constrained by the interviewer to put themselves in a
technically confident light against the candidate. The interview is as much a
crapshoot for the interviewer, because they might be less/more/similarly
skilled to the candidate, but they absolutely cannot reveal themselves to be
less skilled because they would undermine their status if the candidate gets
hired. So interviewers stick to the same random technical question that they
feel very confident of, answers to it are studied. The myth is that this posed
problem is a general test of skill for the candidate, but the primary
motivation is for the interviewer to maintain the appearance of professional
dominance. Hence the technical discussion is kept to a narrow problem domain.
Obviously there is a spectrum here, and it's more true when the interviewer
feels insecure. Only when the interviewer is very skilled/confident relative
to the candidate do people go off script and give advice. I confess this is
how I have seen it from both sides of the interview, I'm no saint either.

~~~
JshWright
My favorite interview question is a real life issue I faced where a short
sighted database design wound biting us in a pretty serious way. It's a good
technical problem to talk through, and provides a lot of useful information
about the candidate, but it's also an excuse to set very clear expectations
that I'm not looking for the "right" answer (in real life it took half a dozen
smart people a couple hours to come up with a right-ish answer).

I try to use it early in the interview, and I find it sets a helpful tone,
avoiding a lot of that posturing you describe.

~~~
cheez
Ah so a good interview question for a candidate is something that YOU have
experience in.

Does that seem odd?

Do you think you would be an expert in something the candidate had experience
in? Probably not. Should you find out how they speak about something THEY are
experts in? Probably.

But like the OP said, tech interviews are about posturing so that the
interviewer feels better about themselves.

~~~
bagacrap
does that seem odd? Not at all! How can anyone evaluate a someone else's
performance in a domain if they don't know the domain? You ask the question
many times over so you can judge performance relative to others. Yes, the
interviewer should be familiar with the topic of the interview.

~~~
cheez
If the idea is the answer is not important, the process is, then how many
variables should you have? Your way, you have two variables:

1\. Knowledge of the domain 2\. Process

So, your question is not matching your goals.

------
mbesto
> While researching this piece, I spoke to a few labor lawyers and ran some
> Lexis Nexis searches to see just how often a company’s constructive feedback
> (i.e. not “durrrr we didn’t hire you because you’re a woman”) to a rejected
> eng candidate has resulted in litigation.

This is confirmation bias at its finest.

1\. "speaking to a few labor lawyers and ran some Lexis Nexis searches" is
hardly what I would call conclusive.

2\. Companies have been generally instructed not to give feedback in the last
few decades, so yes the chances of it happening are now quite low.

3\. People don't sue for "they gave me constructive feedback", they use
constructive feedback as evidence for some other more legitimate legal reason.

4\. Many of these cases get settled (no employer wants to fight them), so you
won't find them in public records.

The point isn't that people get sued for providing feedback, it's that the
feedback can be used as evidence to build a case.

Look, NO ONE in an org wants to be the person that brought on a lawsuit to the
company, so even if orgs don't want to do it, an individual person doesn't
want to be _that_ person even if the risk is technically low.

~~~
user1980
I agree. I'm instantly skeptical of any "X has never occurred" claim: Absence
of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Let's see some Taleb-esque "skin in the game": Not just the author's toothless
footnote, but a cash bounty.

------
chadash
The key word in the title seems to be "engineer". I can't find a specific
lawsuit relating to an _engineer_ but there are plenty of lawsuits to be
found.

For example,
[https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/10-26-17.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/newsroom/release/10-26-17.cfm)

When you do a google search for lawsuits related to hiring discrimination, you
are far far more likely to find the cases that became publicized because they
have merit. Journalists and other organizations don't tend to write headlines
along the lines of "Google got sued by candidate for baseless claim of
discrimination, but suit was quickly tossed out". It doesn't mean these
lawsuits don't happen.

In fact, it's a huge PITA to defend youself when someone accuses you of
discrimination. Imagine an engineer who isn't very bright, but doesn't think
that of themselves. So you tell them that they didn't do well, but they
disagree. And then they sue on grounds of discrimination. Now, _you_ have to
prove that you don't discriminate, which can be pretty hard to do.

~~~
cogman10
It cuts both ways. Imagine you tell someone of a protected class "Hey, you did
really well" and they don't get hired. What's worse, what if some non-minority
gets hired.

You've just opened yourself to a mess proving that the reason you didn't hire
one vs the other was because of experience.

------
tstrimple
Ain't nobody got time for that. When I was hiring developers, I was conducting
dozens of interviews based off of hundreds of applications. My goal is to hire
people who can help me solve problems. Running an interview improvement
service isn't something I have time for.

~~~
eropple
This is a bad, bad take. You aren't "running an interview improvement
service". You're being a decent human being to another human being.

Being decent is important.

~~~
blaser-waffle
Being decent is a prompt, if perfunctory, rejection without humiliation or
insult. You're asking for something more.

~~~
eropple
No, I'm not. They've invested their time, which is _significantly_ more
limited than yours at any company that's at a scale to be hiring, in jumping
through your hoops. The least a decent person does is provide them with why it
was for nothing.

And if your employer thinks you shouldn't be decent, quit.

------
bastawhiz
I think the comments that feedback is hard to write are very surprising. Do
you not have to write notes about why you are rejecting or approving a
candidate? I have never been in a role where interviews are ended with a
simple boolean of whether the candidate passed or not. Every company should be
keeping detailed notes on the reasons a candidate did well or poorly, even
just to be able to compare if the candidate applies again in the future (or
makes a claim that they were treated unfairly). Candidates should be rejected
or hired for documented, justifiable reasons.

Additionally, in a medium to large org, it's impossible to evaluate the
efficacy of interviewers if there are no notes. If the recruiting team can't
look at the output of an interview and say "Huh, X keeps rejecting candidates
because they use tabs instead of spaces in their Python code," how is the
company supposed to maintain any hiring bar?

The effort to write comments in a way that can be shared externally should not
be a huge amount of extra effort. Even if feedback is only shared on request,
it should not take a monumental effort to distill some high-level bullet
points from interview notes.

------
manfredo
There's nothing in the company's interest to give feedback. It takes working
time to compile this feedback and give it to the candidate. The candidate
isn't going to interview at the company again until probably a year or more -
if ever. And the company has a reputation risk if the candidate decides to
revel this feedback and allege bias or ineffective interviewing.

~~~
codezero
The upside as others have mentioned is that good feedback means you may get to
hire that person later (maybe not even at the same company, people remember
you if you give good feedback, because it is so uncommon)

I’ve seen this and done this as a hiring manager at multiple companies.

If you are honest, clear, and direct, and your interview (key point) does a
good job quantifying the candidate’s performance, and their expectations are
well set before the interview, there’s little risk of a reputation hit.

I’ve had folks push back or disagree, but it’s pretty rare and I’ve never been
worried about someone dragging the company into a spat.

------
WalterBright
I suppose it is like getting turned down for a date. The other person will
rarely be honest about why, and the reasons given (if any) are worthless.

~~~
aniham
I agree on both counts. In fact, the examples of constructive feedback the
article provides seem fairly worthless. If your advice is that the candidate
should try doing some problems on leetcode in order to be successful in your
interview process, then that's something you'd ideally mention prior to the
interview, as a suggestion on how they should prepare.

I think FAANG do a really good job of preparing you for exactly what kinds of
questions to expect as well as resources to study for them. That also
generally reduces the need for feedback afterwards.

------
anm89
Half joking answer: because no engineer has ever received interviewing
feedback

~~~
kenhwang
I have a handful of times. They we're quite insightful and entertaining,
though mostly not helpful since most of time they were commenting on things
that just weren't meant to be. "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still
lose. That is not a weakness; that is ~life~ interviewing."

Definitely a few times where I raised an eyebrow at obviously-not-HR-approved
comments that made it through.

Only benefit these companies got from providing feedback was some word-of-
mouth to my friends to interview there.

------
PopeDotNinja
I used to give feedback. Until one day when I gave feedback to a desperate
alcoholic. They showed drunk up in the lobby of the office demanding a 2nd
chance & I had to explain what the heck was going on.

------
nobleach
Got feedback, "you didn't really know anything about Ruby on Rails". I was a
Rails developer at the time, but no questions were asked about Rails during
the interview (asked me nothing but JavaScript). I mentioned that to the
recruiter, but when a recruiter is calling you to tell you that you didn't get
the job, that's not the time to lodge a protest. Since this was an internal
recruiter for the company, I thanked him kindly for actually calling me
instead of sending an email. That was a solid move in my opinion.

~~~
mbreedlove
I applied and interviewed for an Angular position a few years ago. I was
interviewed by a consultant doing work for the company while they built up
their engineering team. He absolutely grilled me about .NET intricacies,
including some of my favorites, "Where is the .NET GAC stored on the
filesystem?" and "Why is n-tier better than MVC?".

Not surprising, they declined to move forward citing my inexperience working
with .NET enterprise architecture. I could have told you them that from
beginning and saved everyone a few hours.

~~~
flukus
.net + angular seems to be popular around here and I've been on the other side
of that, knowing .net but rejected for not knowing angular (but plenty of
experience with other frameworks).

The only time I've received real feedback was for a ruby job with a small
project interview. Apparently I wasn't doing TDD because the tests and fixes
were in the same commit. At least that kind of feedback let's you know you've
dodged a bullet.

------
Aeolun
To be honest, reading all the interviewing.io feedback makes it clear that I
would never want to use it. It’s literally leetcode with interviews.

I don’t think I could do anything with the feedback if it was something like:

> ‘you didn’t say that the alghorithm you were using here was using the
> bayesian-green notation, and you should have used n+1 instead of n++’

~~~
LordFast
I think it's always been this way though in essence. I think it's actually
better nowadays because more people are at least talking about the problem.

"How willing are you to jump through all the hoops that I had to jump through,
plus a couple more, in order to get this job?"

------
oxfordmale
Because it would take time to write up the feedback and it would have to be
reviewed by HR to ensure it is not phrased in a way that in violation of local
laws. This is a large investment for a candidate that is not going to work for
your company and from a business point of view, this time is better spend else
where.

~~~
downerending
Meh. I've been told in a few cases that I'm "too old", which is legally
actionable in my country. But suing is time-consuming and rarely productive--I
suspect most of us just let it slide.

------
roland35
I just went through interviews with several companies, and a few of the
rejections I got was that I was either too senior or too junior for what they
were looking for! I think they may have just been letting me down politely
though. They must have known how much experience I had ahead of time!

~~~
jugg1es
Don't be too harsh on your interviewers here. There are many cases where HR
gets some vague idea of the open position and then forwards seemingly
qualified resumes, which the recipients are then obligated to interview
regardless of whether HR understood the need or not.

------
itsdrewmiller
I think the article generalizes the author's experience with first line
interviews of wholly unqualified people to all post-interview feedback, and
definitely shouldn't. People who literally can't Fizz Buzz are not going to
argue with you about how no they are actually great devs. People who are
borderline candidates who didn't quite get there in a final interview on
fuzzier attributes (too slow, spaghetti code, etc.) are a lot more likely to
take feedback poorly.

I tried giving post-full interview feedback for a while, but I stopped based
on low cost/benefit.

------
simonebrunozzi
How would you know that no one has ever sued?

It if happened (and I'd bet it did many times), it wouldn't be public
knowledge.

~~~
pmiller2
> While researching this piece, I spoke to a few labor lawyers and ran some
> Lexis Nexis searches to see just how often a company’s constructive feedback
> (i.e. not “durrrr we didn’t hire you because you’re a woman”) to a rejected
> eng candidate has resulted in litigation.

> Hey, guess what? IT’S ZERO! THIS HAS NEVER HAPPENED. EVER.

> As some of my lawyer contacts pointed out, a lot of cases get settled out of
> court, and that data is much harder to get.

It seems like this is the best possible methodology (Lexis Nexis + survey of
labor lawyers) that one can ask for.

------
valleyjo
I interviewed recently and didn’t get the job. I thought I did well enough so
I wasn’t sure what went wrong. The recruiter told me exact detailed results
for each interview including the hire / no hire outcome and why no hire for
the no hire ones.

While I was disappointed to not get the job, it really gave me a sense of
peace to know what went wrong and what I can do to improve.

I wish this was more common.

------
lunias
I think it's common courtesy to offer some feedback in exchange for the amount
of time that these interviews often take. It's the consolation prize that
helps you have a better chance of winning the real prize next time.

I've only been turned down once after interviewing so I don't have a lot of
data on who does and who does not provide feedback. The time that I was turned
down, I spent a day working on a programming assessment and 6 hours on-site
interviewing with 4-5 different groups of people. I felt like everything went
really well. I left and heard in a week or so that they were "pursuing other
candidates". I asked about feedback, they said they don't give it.

Cool, then where's the ~$600 for my time? It's a Fortune 500 company (in the
top 50). I'll never interview there again and I'll recommend to everyone that
I know to vote with their talent and stay away from big, soulless companies
that have forgone basic respect.

------
ComputerGuru
I am in a somewhat unique position of interviewing and hiring for two
completely different industries. Whether it’s true or not that no engineer has
sued for constructive post-interview feedback, it’s unfortunately absolutely
not possible to make the same claim for teachers/adjunct faculty.

That said and for both industries, it’s _usually_ pretty clear who’s the
litigious type (heck, they oftentimes go out of their way to make sure you
know) and who’s not, and I feel like if someone came to interview in earnest
and put an honest effort, they at least deserve some return of the gesture.
But my time is worth something too, so I only bother if the person is within
an order of magnitude of the skill set we are looking for (or clearly has the
potential to be). If they can’t write a proper conditional statement, they’re
not going to benefit from an explanation of how their code will also run into
a pathological edge case in the GC.

------
excerionsforte
It is funny for companies to expect candidates to spend time to give feedback
about their hiring process, but to spend an iota of time to give candidates
feedback about performance: Risky! Lawsuit! Rant! You've more chance of damage
by rogue employees than a candidate that's looking at multiple companies.

------
lgregg
I interviewed at a startup here in NYC. It was one of my very first interviews
as I interviewed for my first job.

In the final thank you email thread I asked:

Hi [redacted],

I really appreciated the speed of this entire process. I must admit, I'm
bummed but understand; I also really do appreciate the feedback, both positive
and negative. If you have any specifics on where I was specifically lacking, I
would appreciate knowing but if Tempest's policy limits you from going much
deeper, I understand that too.

I wish you the best at building your team; You'll find the person you're
looking for. :)

Till next time!

Best, lgregg

So, I then got direct actionable feedback. They’re not long explanations (I.e.
on X you should have considered Y) but we’re very specific and super helpful.

I now have told this story many times and pointed people to try that company.

I think startups are more inclined to do this than companies after their
Series C.

------
scarejunba
I write a form letter. If someone asks for feedback, I give it to them.
Nothing's ever happened to me, but one of my colleagues once had a guy get
very angry and say that he _had_ , in fact, solved the problem and yell at him
and then go write this angry Glassdoor review.

I guess I've got to thank this guy for any mild resistance to giving feedback
that I have.

The sad answer for why my feedback isn't great, though, is that I can't bring
myself to care about someone who is so far outside my Dunbar number. At the
point where we've decided not to work with this person, they're just some
rando. It's like if someone walked up on the street and asked me for feedback.

I mean, I try anyway, but I know I'm not doing the best job.

------
taytus
Because it's pointless.

A company didn't think you are a good fit. That's it.

The criteria they used to evaluate that is totally different than the criteria
other companies will use.

What is the point of providing feedback for a data point that does not
correlate with other interviews?

~~~
lbriner
That's not necessarily true. If the reason that the person is turned down is
that they are massively over-reaching their experience then there is a good
chance that they will experience the same rejection elsewhere.

If they want to take that on board, it's up to them and it might well be
helpful moving forwards.

I will personally give people feedback if its tangible and reasonably
objective but if someone just feels wrong, I think it is easier to say they
were not a good fit and leave it at that.

------
milesvp
My wife used to work with students to help them get through interviews, and
one of her pieces of advice when interviewing is to ask near the end of the
interview is if they have any concerns about them as a candidate. It gives the
interviewer a chance to address the concerns and gives them a chance to get
feedback to make future changes. I’m not sure how well this would work for a
technical interview loop, since my wife was working with law students, and the
interviews aren’t the same kind of technical, but it might sidestep/short
circuit typical lack of feedback technical people complain about.

~~~
meej
I witnessed a candidate ask a question along these lines in a group interview
and I found it extremely awkward, because there was huge potential for
disagreement amongst the interviewers, and also because this group consisted
of people who had a stake in the hire as future coworkers for the role, but
were not members of the search committee making the final hire decision, we
were just providing feedback to the search committee. One person answered no,
but at least two of us in the room were no-hire on the candidate. This
question and some of the others the candidate asked also struck me as
inauthentic, they sounded like they came straight out of an interview skills
book. So I would be cautious with implementing this advice... at minimum,
reserve it for 1:1 interview contexts.

~~~
gowld
> group interview

Off. That's not a good look.

~~~
meej
Don't ever interview at an academic library, then. It seems to be the only way
we do interviews at mine, and I gather it's not an unusual practice in this
field.

That said, I have participated in group interviews when I still worked in the
tech industry, and I have found I prefer it to 1:1 interviews. As an
interviewer, it feels more conducive to behavioral interviewing, and more
people get to weigh in on the hire. As an interviewee, I found it makes the
interview more conversational and sets me more at ease. I wish it was more
common.

------
supernova87a
Real, genuine, useful feedback takes time and effort to think about,
summarize, and deliver in the right way. It takes thinking about what you
observed about the person, when you observed it, and what you would like them
to change to improve. Think about how long that takes to do correctly.

We take the time and effort to do this for people we care about, and not those
we're never going to see again (unless you're just letting off steam yelling
at someone in traffic). That's why at work, if someone gives you feedback, you
should value it as they see you as someone worth correcting / giving feedback
to. If you're getting no feedback, you might start to worry that you're not
someone worth taking the time to give feedback to.

That's why companies and people don't bother giving feedback. Until you turn
into someone they care about, what benefit would there be to them to spend
resources to do this? And with uncertain reaction from the person (as pointed
out by many stories here)?

So that's why, if you really want meaningful feedback it's a challenge to find
-- you have to pay someone to do it (which is hard, because casual
acquaintances don't know your deeper job-related behavior or performance),
someone close to you (which is hard, because it's not easy to give friends
honesty), or someone who has the time and interest to do it (rare to find). Or
you have to be in a company where this is part of the culture (rare).

------
duxup
On the topic of form letter rejections:

I WISH I even got those... durring my last job hunt most of the time the
company just goes dark and stops contacting me or doesn't respond.

I say this and other recruiers tell me they're shocked and yet getting ghosted
seemed to be the rule rather than exception durring that time.

Maybe I'm such a bad canidae that they don't even want to bother with a form
letter.

Strangely one company who ghosted me contacted me recently about some
opportunities. I told them I wasn't interested and about being ghosted
previously.

They didn't respond...

~~~
LordFast
Don't take it personally. As someone who's hired a lot of people, the
unfortunate times when I "ghosted" people were mostly due to internal company
problems, not candidate problems.

Anecdotally, these were always situations when I wanted to pass someone but
received weird resistance from other stakeholders and it ended up being a
situation of stalemate. So, you could have faced similar things.

~~~
duxup
Yeah I experienced enough of it to where it just seems like it is how things
work ;)

Job hunting is / often is pretty brutal / stressful so I try to avoid taking
anything personally.

------
nimbius
>Does the fear of getting sued even make sense?

No. most job offers are liberally padded to seek a massively overqualified
candidate in the unrealistic hope of attaining one that hasnt gone to work for
a much nicer competitor, or in order to give the interviewer and HR ample
reasons to reject an applicant that arent pertanent to their manner or person
(which would get them sued.) the latter is also effective in ensuring jobs
that require an outside posting will always favor an inside candidate, or a
nepotist's ringer.

------
mixmastamyk
Accurate time-sensitive communication is very hard in my experience. I've
heard thru the grapevine on a few interviews over the years, that often the
interviewer gets the wrong impression on some subject. Due to the fact there
are say ten+ candidates for a position, one wrong impression is often enough
to torpedo your chances.

For example, I'm good at what I do, but not the kind of person to brag about
it (hah). In fact I instinctively tend to downplay things I've done as no big
deal. In some sense true, but in an interview it's enough to lose the offer.
Trying to correct this but it is not easy.

Once I was referred to a position by a colleague, but didn't get it. Weeks
later I heard, "not enough db experience." What? While I don't write SQL every
day, I've used dbs consistently over decades, know the theories, etc. Sure, I
might need to hit the manual for a week to get up to speed, but that is
incredibly common and no hurdle whatsoever.

So, post-interview feedback is good, but asking questions/feedback during the
interview itself would have been a lot better. I wonder if (when there are so
many candidates), interviewers don't want to revisit past assumptions and
prefer to just get on to "the next one."

~~~
sickygnar
Bizarre. I had a similar experience. I was told "I didn't seem comfortable in
language X". I'd been writing it for ~10 years, and have written a handful of
native extensions, with lots of open source examples. It was strange and very,
very upsetting. Triplebyte gave me this feedback. I won't be using their
platform again (or any interviewing platform), but unfortunately, I'm sure
they have sold my data and told everyone I suck. I had a bad day.

------
samastur
I bet ones view on this really depends on personal experiences both as an
interviewee and an interviewer.

I work for a small start-up and recently went through hiring another developer
to our team. I know how awful it is as a candidate to get little or no
feedback of what is happening, so my goal was for our process to be more
humane.

At first I answered all rejected submissions with a reason why that happened.
There was rarely just one, but I would pick those were they clearly did not
meet one of few inflexible requirements.

Because of a huge volume applications, vast majority of which poorly matching
our requirements, that was almost all I was doing for the first few days,
having difficulties finding time to move successful ones further, let alone do
any other kind of work. I also quickly learned that many applicants see these
feedbacks as an invitation to argue with often the only way to end it is by
just not responding any longer.

So, I stopped doing this and resigned myself to sending generic rejection
promptly unless I was asked for feedback explicitly. In my opinion candidates
still quickly learn where they are at and have opportunity to learn more which
is better than with most companies.

Few asked and I send feedback to all of them, but since I am not paid to
persuade candidates that my decision is the right one for my company, these
feedbacks admittedly were not as detailed as they would have been without that
previous experience.

I am not happy with how the whole thing transpired, but I am comfortable with
my decisions even though many here are telling "me" how I failed as a human
being because I did not spend more of my off-clock time providing detailed
feedback to people who mostly seemed to have keyword match our job ad and
skipped reading it.

------
thrwaway5556
There's no _real_ affordance for engineers to sue or censure the process.

I once did some interviewing with a broken wrist that dragged on me two ways:

1) I basically couldn't speed-code at all. Typing was inhibited for sure, but
the friction point threw off my whole thought process.

2) Whiteboard coding was easier, but due to swelling, I usually had to have my
arm atop my head or hold it in weird positions.

So by law companies are supposed to provide an accommodation, and what I often
asked for was to minimize or skip keyboard-based coding since the injury
clearly prejudiced my completion time.

Did companies oblige? A couple did, but several, including one who you could
say was doing a "hiring spree" did not. At said company, I was shoved a laptop
to code upon, which I told them I couldn't use without hurting my wrist, but
the recruiter was like "IDK." After that interviewer I had a lot of swelling
and the next guy was outright mean and made fun of me for having to raise my
hand. At the end of that interview, I asked him "what are you looking for in
candidates?" and he said "people who can complete their jobs on time" and
gestured towards my arm.

So, what could one do here, file an EEOC complaint? Write bad reviews? EEOC
complaints get basically zero consideration without tons of documented
evidence, and if you lose your initial complaint then lawyers usually will
decline to take up your case. I did write the recruiters and agency who
connected me with this company and guess what? Nothing happened; the agency
continues to make money feeding this company candidates.

So to be clear, candidates have in reality zero leverage individually. Even in
egregious cases like these.

~~~
LordFast
Yeesh. Sorry you had to experience anything remotely close to that.

The industry is shifting AFAICT. Callousness seems to be in and empathy seems
to be out. Unfortunately though I think the same thing happened to pretty much
every industry that came before software as well.

Hope you found something good so that you don't have to waste time with shitty
people anymore.

------
tracerbulletx
I wonder if a good middle ground between the two opinions expressed here would
be to have an interview rubric with clear descriptions of each metric. So that
receiving the feedback is more like getting results of a test back. Less prone
to individual nuances of specific wording and still gives some directional
guidance to the candidate for improvement.

------
jgwil2
A lot of the time hiring decisions are more or less arbitrary. It makes me sad
how unsystematic the approach to hiring is, but it often comes down to one
person that you talk to liking you enough after an hour of talking that
they're willing to go to bat for you. The fact is there often is not any good
feedback to give.

------
jsd1982
I was once asked in a web development interview how to asynchronously fetch a
resource. I answered something to the effect of "you just add a `true`
parameter in the xhr.open() call somewhere, probably the second or third
parameter" without being too specific about it since I did not have it
memorized.

The interviewer did not accept this response and after every rebuttal of mine
he just responded with "no" each time without elaboration or clarification. He
eventually gave up trying to coax me toward his accepted answer, apparently
thinking he had outwitted me, and revealed to me that the correct answer he
was looking for was to use "dollar q". I asked for a clarification on what he
meant by "dollar q" but he was unable to clarify.

It was only after the interview was over that I realized he was referencing
angularjs and its built-in "$q" service that handles asynchronous fetching. I
had not used angularjs before this interview (still haven't) and nowhere
during the interview was angularjs mentioned by name. The question was also in
no way leading to an answer assuming usage of angularjs either.

I'm left to conclude that he thought angularjs was synonymous with web
development and that "dollar q" was the one and only way to fetch resources
asynchronously.

TL;DR: how confident are we in these interviewer evaluation scores? Do we
always presume superior competency of interviewers over interviewees?

~~~
downerending
Ha. As far as I know, in their first HR screen, Google still asks a question
that requires a wrong answer. The answer depends on the cache characteristics
of the CPU and (shock) these have changed over the years.

------
SanderMak
At my current company we do a full Pull Request review of the take-home
assignment. After the interview, the review comments are shared with the
candidate. We're based in Europe, so that might make a difference in terms of
expectations around litigation.

------
telotortium
Getting a 402 from an embedded [https://plot.ly](https://plot.ly) graph right
at the top of the article. Given that article about 402 I read here a few days
ago, it's cool to see 402 in the wild for the first time.

~~~
fadifrancis
the 402 has been fixed! Take another read!

------
cheez
I implore all of you to stop wasting your life interviewing. Spend your time
more productively.

~~~
minimaxir
Generally, people don't interview _for fun_.

~~~
cheez
That's right. Sacrifice a little.

------
pfarnsworth
To be fair to Google, I once got some decent feedback from one of the
recruiters. I did fairly well, and made it through to the hiring committee.
The recruiter told me that although I did well, my scores weren't home runs
and that he's seen people with my scores have about a 50/50 chance of getting
in. If I had other offers on the table, he suggested I take those instead and
maybe reconsider Google in the future. I took that to heart and took the other
job.

Of course, the next time I interviewed at Google a few years later, I
absolutely bombed it so badly, I talked to the recruiter midway and told them
I wanted to end things early and left after 3 interviews.

------
brailsafe
It really seems like there needs to be a widely adopted social protocol for
engineers to basically say "Hey, if you're expecting this much from me, I
expect a reciprocal amount from you at stages 1,2,3,4 etc.."

I interviewed last year at a company that had me do some homework first, then
a first long interview where they went through that work—refreshing because
almost no companies do—which went well, then a 2nd and 3rd interview. Felt
pretty locked in, didn't get it. Ton of time wasted no doubt, but at least it
felt balanced.

------
wendyshu
Sounds like managers are risk averse because they'll get the blame if
something goes wrong but not the credit if it goes right.

But I don't think the risk has to be so big. By the end of an interview
process, candidates I talk to already know where I think they should improve
because that's part of the back and forth discussion in the interview itself.
I also like to actually get to know the person a little bit which helps me
judge how they'll respond. I'm also not afraid to make an offer on the low
side instead of rejecting outright, etc.

------
ledneb
I _sometimes_ give feedback, but only if requested and, to be honest, only if
the feedback request actually makes it through HR and to me.

What feels like a lifetime ago I went for an interview at Monzo, I think it'd
recently renamed from Mondo. I thoroughly enjoyed the process - a kind yet
thorough and revealing interview format. I didn't get the job - but it's not
an exaggeration to say their feedback and the process changed my career. If
somebody from there spots this; thanks :) (and I'm still sad I didn't get to
work with you!)

------
aaron695
> While researching this piece, I spoke to a few labor lawyers and ran some
> Lexis Nexis searches to see just how often a company’s constructive feedback
> (i.e. not “durrrr we didn’t hire you because you’re a woman”) to a rejected
> eng candidate has resulted in litigation.

It's not "durrrr" and this is why feedback is not given, this immaturity is
why people get sued.

Many non obvious statements can have implications about illegal
discrimination.

It is probably very rare, this is a quite valid point people get wrong. But
benefits are also probably rare, so it equals out.

------
scarlac
At a former job we ended technical interviews with the question: "So, how do
you think you did?". It allowed candidates to raise points and what they'd
want to do different. Some candidates used the chance to ask for feedback at
which point I could choose to agree with the candidate or elaborate on
solutions.

It avoids some of the defensive stances candidates may take when given
feedback (because they go first) although it doesn't tell a candidate how they
did badly if they weren't already slightly aware.

------
KwisatzHaderack
The article and many of these comments assume that hiring decisions are made
entirely based on talent. But hiring decisions are equally if not more
influenced on the vague and often problematic "culture-fit".

If the company is being completely honest, half the time, the feedback would
sound like "You're a talented engineer but you're not a great culture fit",
which can open the company up to litigation. Especially if the culture-fit
reasons are specifically based on demographics.

------
theshadowmonkey
Giving feedback is bad for the companies initially as a lot of biases are
exposed when the feedback is reviewed. As in some engineer thinks something a
candidate doesnt know makes him dumb. Just because the engineer has worked a
lot on that problem and the candidate never saw it. In the longer term, I
think its good as even constructing the feedback makes you look at your biases
in an objective way and evaluate candidates better. I wish every company I
interviewed for would give me feedback.

------
afinlayson
When people ask me how they did, I try to frame it more general, like instead
of here's what you should do better, here's what I would do if I were
interviewing that would allow me to be more impactful. I've always got good
responses. And I've been told I'm in the clear legally.

The industry is too small to treat people like you will never run into them
again. There are many reasons why someone might not be right for the role
today, but will be a rockstar tomorrow.

------
gowld
About ~10 years ago, before the Facebook IPO, Facebook was famous for
recruiting alumni from other AANG companies, who re-did their old projects at
Facebook. For a few years, everyone from industry who interviewed at Facebook
got a vibe of "wow, this is like my old company but you fixed the crap that
annoyed me!"

One of those things they fixed was that they gave feedback on interviews.

The tale of the tape says that this strategy worked very well for Facebook
hiring and business growth.

------
otabdeveloper4
> No engineer has ever sued a company because of constructive post-interview
> feedback. So why don’t employers do it?

Because there's only risk and zero benefit in it for the employer.

Note: the risk isn't mythical 'lawsuits', the risk is in bad PR that
disgruntled rejected candidates generate. Even if one in 10 get offended and
start spreading shit-talk on the Internet, that 10% is still too much.

Without a post-interview explanation, there is no ammunition for internet
discussion.

------
innocentoldguy
The only company I've ever receive constructive post-interview feedback from
was a company in California that ships out patterns and materials for people
to make their own clothes. They said my code wasn't something they could drop
into their product. Of course, it wasn't! I intentionally wrote it so they
couldn't use my interview for free labor. I've worked at two companies that
did that and I find it highly unethical.

------
throwaway345036
Using a throwaway for obvious reasons. I just got rejected by Netlify after a
coding assignment, but the last thing in the rejection email was an offer to
set up a call to discuss feedback on the assignment and interviews. Other
startups, take note. (The rest of their hiring process was equally impressive
--no hard feelings at all.)

------
valbaca
Why can't companies provide feedback iff the candidate agrees that the
feedback is subject to NDA? Interview candidates already sign NDAs for the
coding questions asked.

Granted those NDAs are always ignored (based on coding interview sites) but
the NDA would at least provide the "protection" that these companies want.
Then the companies benefit from having candidates actually improving and
potentially coming back hirable.

~~~
throwawaypa123
like a company is going to sue over this.

social media and shame culture makes this silly to attempt.

------
rendall
Companies who don't give feedback because they believe there is no upside are
building a team that lacks empathy, with all that implies regarding technical
debt and final product. If the company is successful, it is despite the team,
not because of it. This is tantamount to a mathematical certainty.

I will always reject an offer from any company that I know does not give
feedback to their rejected candidates, and have done.

~~~
winrid
I think I've gotten turned down by at least a dozen companies. I never got
feedback, except for one and it was pretty silly.

~~~
rendall
I've been on both sides, interviewer and interviewee. I always give feedback
if asked, and endeavor to be scrupulously fair.

My take is that it's all pretty arbitrary, at the end of the day. Most
interviewers do not 1) spend time putting the candidate at ease, 2) ask the
same interview questions across candidates for the same position, 3) really
introspect about whether they are doing it well.

Interviews are a notoriously terrible way to get a good grasp of how someone
will do on the job, and most interviewers in my experience do not recognize
that. The more an interviewer is convinced they are good at it, the more they
really just suffer from Dunning-Kruger. No interviewer ever feels like they
have failed when they reject a candidate, although it's very well possible
that they did, and badly.

~~~
winrid
I agree. I was more or less pointing out that if I said no to every company
that didn't give feedback I wouldn't have a job. :p

------
cousin_it
If the interview task is objective (come up with an algorithm for this problem
and derive its big-O complexity), then feedback is less required, because the
candidate knows exactly what skills they should improve. Unfortunately, many
people today think objective interview tasks are "brain teasers", "toy
problems", "instead ask me how I can add value to business" and so on.

------
reallydontask
Interestingly the only time I've had any meaningful feedback is when I've gone
thru an agency and the feedback was given to me post interview by the
recruiter.

The feedback was fair and accurate and extremely unlikely to be made up by the
recruiter given the content.

I suppose that at once removed they could be more willing to provide feedback
as they can always claim that it was the recruiter

------
Johnny555
_they’re rarely told why they got the outcome that they did._

Well then it makes sense that no one has been sued or otherwise retaliated
against for something that rarely happens.

My company once gave honest feedback to a candidate that kept asking for it -
he used glassdoor to detail everything that was wrong with our evaluation of
him and the entire interview process.

------
dingribanda
One company in particular, gave me fairly useful feedback. For a design
question, I was going all over the place not taking hints from the
interviewer. I did not realize that I was trying to cram everything into one
hour. Anyways, I will consider them in the future. Usually other companies do
not bother.

------
exabrial
Remember to thank your Lawmaker friends as to why we can't do this.

In other parts of life, all of us would gladly do this to benefit a person
when it doesn't directly benefit us. But threatened with civil fines and
ultimately jail time, most of us choose the sensible 'ghost em' route.

~~~
astura
No, not in dating, the term "ghosting" came from dating. Friendships, too,
doesn't come with honest actionable feedback, you know if you get invited back
you "passed," but if you didn't get invited back there's no feedback
mechanism.

People aren't afraid of of "lawsuits" so much (that's a red herring).

------
timwaagh
Personally I'd rather not know, unless I do. Process of receiving feedback can
be awful. In a hiring role (done that too) I'd rather save people the
embarrassment of a dressing-down. I wouldn't want for them to bear more
resentment towards the company than necessary.

~~~
sobani
If you equate constructive feedback with a dressing down, I can only feel sad
for you.

"We noticed you used an unsorted list, where a dictionary/map would've been a
natural fit. Based on this we don't feel confident that you have the mastery
of algorithms that we require for this job. We suggest you take time to brush
up on your algorithms by reading the first volume of The Art of Computer
Programming by Donald Knuth or the first three chapters of Algoritms by Robert
Sedgewick. We believe this will also help you in your future career at other
companies. We wish you good luck in you job search."

If someone gets mad by that, that says a lot about their character and how
much you _never_ want to have them in your team. Also other people will either
know their character and discount their opinion or will not, which means they
will self-select themselves out of your candidate pool, which I see as a
positive.

------
irishcoffee
I had the most amusing realization at work the other day: most software
engineers “hate” how their coworkers write software. I took it a step further
and realized I hate software I wrote a year ago. Giving objective feedback
should be a cherished skill.

------
mathattack
For better or worse people don’t give feedback because they don’t want
candidates arguing with them. Picking candidates is very subjective in the
end.

I’ve become professional contacts with many folks I’ve interviewed and dinged.
Doesn’t need to be negative.

------
solinent
It's not in their best interest time-wise, unless they seek to employ you
afterwords.

Strangely, I've always gotten feedback, or at least "we decided not to
continue", which is better than nothing.

------
jimbob45
One hour coding test. Two one hour phone interviews. 5 hour interview with EA
Tiburon. Generic rejection two weeks later. Never again.

Are we cool on naming and shaming or should I save that for reddit?

~~~
tomglynch
We are cool with it.

------
ddispaltro
This reminds of restaurants throwing out food because the risk of giving it
away is too great, but as far as I know no one has ever gotten in trouble
because of it.

------
Yhippa
Honestly, I'd even take a rejection letter at this point. A lot of places have
gotten into the business of not letting you know if you got rejected.

------
cj
A generic rejection is a lot less likely to piss off the candidate (which does
happen). Not everyone is appreciative of feedback.

------
etxm
Is there another industry besides software that expects 6-8 hour interviews
and multi hour take home exams?

------
imvetri
Correct me if I misunderstood.

When developers get rejected by a company after an interview process, he can
sue the company?

------
SamReidHughes
For a lot of interviewees, particularly on phone screens, there is just no
constructive feedback to give.

------
barrkel
Some people are fucking nuts.

That's all it takes.

------
amriksohata
Other than the risk of opening an appeals process, not necessarily legal but
verbal via email tennis

------
maxcbc
I always get interview feedback, its the norm as a contractor.

Even as a perm, I always got it if I wasn’t hired.

------
martius
I wonder if one has ever been successful in using the data access and
protection laws (such as GDPR) to request access to his file and interview
feedback.

~~~
dkersten
I’m not sure if it’s ever been tested, but I’ve been told that the company I
work for does require notes and such to be recorded in a way to make this
possible and the company lawyers have said that he’s a candidate can do GDPR
data requests to get their interview data and that it must be honoured. So
it’s my understanding, at least if it’s a company in the EU, that they just
legally comply.

------
nindalf
I think I've taken around 50 interviews in the last year or so. I always end
the interview with "do you have any questions for me?" No one asks what they
could have done better, but if they did I'd tell them.

~~~
rconti
I would have worded this as "given around 50 interviews" because "taken"
sounds (to my ears) like you were the candidate, which I don't think is the
case here.

I would not ask an interviewer what I could have done better before I knew the
outcome, because I'd prefer to be a confident candidate not second-guessing
myself. But I'd like to know after the decision was made not to proceed. (or
even if the decision was made to hire me!)

------
gaogao
I give feedback on successful coding screens usually.

------
kcmastrpc
Perhaps if more people utilized glassdoor and talent steered clear, then we
might see a positive change here.

Until then, there is no incentive for employers to spend time formalizing and
providing that feedback.

~~~
heavyset_go
Glassdoor is absolutely filled to the brim with reviews clearly written by HR,
marketing firms or by current employees who were told to write reviews.

If a review's only advice to management are: "Continue doing what you're
doing!", "keep up the good work!" or "make sure our awesome culture isn't
diluted as we grow!", then they're fake.

If a review's only cons are reframing the cons left my legitimate reviewers as
sour grapes by someone who can't handle fast-paced environments, startups, or
responsibilities that aren't clearly defined, they're fake.

But the biggest red flag is positive reviews left in succession over the
period of a few days to a month.

Much like Amazon reviews, it seems that the only reviews you can glean
worthwhile information from are the bad reviews.

~~~
AmericanChopper
It’s also filled with reviews from disgruntled former employees who write
massively exaggerated reviews, or complete works of fiction. I also have no
reason to believe that people don’t write poor reviews for their competitors.
It’s an anonymous review system that has many incentives in place that
competing with “write thoughtful, honest reviews for you employers” along with
all the typical review system biases (like a strong selection bias).

~~~
vkou
Just because an employee is disgruntled, doesn't mean that their unhappiness
isn't justified.

~~~
AmericanChopper
It also doesn’t mean that it is. How many times have you read a review on
Glassdoor that said “great company, but I was fired for being a completely
toxic bully”? The lack of credibility in the reviews cuts both ways.

~~~
vkou
When one person says that their work environment is shit, that's one thing.

When five people say that their work environment is shit, there may be
something to it.

~~~
AmericanChopper
Maybe. I suspect there might be some value hidden in the aggregate data on
Glassdoor (but that really is just as susceptible to the same type of
manipulation). The number 5 may also be significant or insignificant depending
entirely upon the size of the organisation.

But really, if your reasoning was robust, it would work in both directions. I
don’t think you’d agree with the statement “if five people say that their work
environment is great, there may be something to it”. The system can be (and
is) gamed in both directions, and there are people who have incentives to do
so in either direction, for both “justified” and “unjustified” reasons. Any
reason you come up with to be skeptical of a good review also applies to a bad
one.

------
sys_64738
People are not very good at giving critical feedback. People are not very good
at receiving critical feedback. In the middle you have lawyers who must
protect the company from liability.

------
moopling
In the UK I've heard it said you can make a subject access request (SAR) for
any information a company holds on you. This would include interview notes for
example.

I assume something similar applies in the rest of europe due to GDPR?

~~~
senderista
That would clearly have unintended consequences (like all discussion of a
candidate happening in person or over the phone).

------
TwoNineFive
It's an advert for their product.

------
techslave
because none has ever received it!

------
draw_down
I think you could tell them a little something about why you decided not to
make an offer. But this is riddled with problems, sadly. For example,
candidates often take it as an invitation to a debate. You can agree with the
feedback or not, but you're not going to talk your way into an offer.

In sum, it's all downside with little upside. The lawsuit thing is a red
herring, imo.

------
Overtonwindow
Because America is a very litigious society and there will always be that
...one. Corporate protectionism will dictate to simply not say anything than
take the risk.

------
epicgiga
This is caused simply and merely by the absurd infringement of freedom of
association that prevails nowadays.

The fact is, you're never ever ever going to stop racists and sexists from not
hiring people outside their race and sex because of your laws. All that will
happen is precisely this: absurd levels of secrecy, which hurt those weakest
in society: those just trying to get a job so they can afford to eat and not
sleep under a bridge.

Even if they literally say "we don't want to hire you because you're white,
and we want to hire an asian", at least you now _know_ it wasn't because of
your skills, so you don't lose confidence, and instead know it was just
because they were racist assholes. Under the current regime, they're still
racist assholes, but you'll never know.

What we need is a bonfire of 90% of the statutes on the books, which will
never happen, so this treatment of candidates will continue, while our
respective countries wait for others to overtake them.

What we need is a massive renovation, resurgence, and uptake of unions, across
the board, not only to remove these matters from statutes and move them into
contracts (forced fair by force of numbers), but to enforce an organic defence
of workers, everything from a war against noncompetes and similar oppression,
through to clauses like "you'll tell our members _specifically_ why you
rejected them on interviews, or else you'll _really really_ regret it...".

~~~
dang
Please stop using HN for ideological flamewar. It's not what this site is for.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
epicgiga
Alright, but at the same time, HN is letting through fundamentally political
articles, such as the "How ‘big law’ makes big money" one, which isn't even
tangentially related to tech.

When HN does so, and concurrently says that's not OK material because it baits
flames, how are we supposed to know the limits of our public participation as
commenters, with those conflicting messages?

If an article is technical, people will tend to respond technically; if the
article is political (in this case, at its root: industrial relations), people
will tend to respond politically.

~~~
dang
HN is for more than "tech". That's in the first paragraph of the site
guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

Inevitably, there is political overlap in many of the articles that get posted
here—some more, some less. But when there's more, it's particularly important
that people stay within the spirit of the site and avoid posting in the
flamewar style. Note this rule: " _Comments should get more thoughtful and
substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive._ "

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

You're right that it's a tricky situation to navigate when some political
topics are allowed, and yet we're still trying to have discussion that doesn't
degenerate. I've written a lot in the past about how we approach this. Maybe
take a look? If you have questions that I haven't already answered in there
somewhere, I'd like to know what they are.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20overlap%20politic&sort=byDate&type=comment)

