
Andreessen Horowitz is relatively cool - jqm
A bit of background... I&#x27;m a self taught programmer who is not a start-up guy nor interested in the VC world. I write web apps for companies, manage some small databases and some servers. I know a bit about a lot of things but sometimes don&#x27;t know exactly what I know and what I don&#x27;t.<p>So... a few weeks ago Andreessen Horowitz posted a programming test looking for applications. I took it but didn&#x27;t submit a resume. When they contacted me telling me I wasn&#x27;t what they were looking for (no surprise...I didn&#x27;t send a resume) I asked to see how I did on the test. They actually emailed me back telling me how I did (it wasn&#x27;t as well as I had hoped but was ok for me I suppose). Not only that they gave me specific areas I should improve on, as well as those I did well on. They certainly didn&#x27;t have much to gain from responding. This is pretty cool behavior on the part of Andreesson Horowitz.
======
cessor
Getting feedback on an application would be really valuable. My girlfriend got
rejected by an acting college in London just last week - they didn't tell her
why or how she could improve. She was really disappointed. Everytime I had an
interview and was rejected I was told the reason why and got a suggestion
where to improve. Some people actually told me to go look somewhere else and
mentioned places, companies and people where I could offer my services
instead. I value this kind of feedback in general, even though I have no idea
who these Andreessen people are.

~~~
loumf
It's rough because it opens the company up to lawsuits. It's easier for
HR/Management to say "Don't give any feedback" than to give proper training
and oversight. You are much more likely to get the feedback from a principal
of the business who accepts the responsibility.

If you are just totally unqualified, that's easier feedback to give. When it's
a near miss and gets subjective, it's extremely hard to verbalize/express what
the mismatch is.

One thing to do is to see if people are willing to give you mock interviews
where there is no job or corporation involved -- do this for the express
purpose of getting feedback. I have offered this to many entry-level
programmers I have met who ask for advice on interviewing.

~~~
tptacek
When people ask, we do our best (which is often not great) to give reasons.

It's an article of faith among HR people and, apparently, employment lawyers
that explaining decisions to candidates exposes you to legal risk. There seem
to be two broad reasons why:

1\. A disgruntled candidate alleging discrimination could litigate the
conclusions in the rejection letter, by generating a convincing amount of
evidence that (a) you're wrong about the specific points you raise and (b) you
didn't expend a good-faith effort to reach your conclusion, which is really a
proxy for a discriminatory rejection.

2\. That same disgruntled candidate, again alleging discrimination, could
compel you to produce the applications for candidates that fared better, and
then litigate the distinctions between the candidate; "you rejected me because
I only have 1 year of Java, but then hired such-and-such who only has 3 months
of it".

To that, several responses:

* A lot of other things that are _de rigueur_ for hiring processes, such as "we'll keep your resume on file", can create other legal exposures --- some of them possibly for things other than discrimination, such as a perceived binding promise to alert the candidate to future openings.

* Presumably, an aggressive lawyer can compel production of competing applications no matter what the rejection letter says. The kind of person who interviews innocuously, gets rejected, and sues for discrimination is very likely to have an aggressive lawyer.

* Sadly, most of the protected classes which are most exposed in the interview process (disfavored race, gender) are not well represented in the candidate pool, and other protected classes (religion, say) don't tend to come up in sane interviews; you may be reasonably well shielded from discrimination claims for most candidates.

* Your lawyer (you're at the point where you're hiring, so you have one, of course) can probably up-armor your rejection letters to blunt the concerns about contractual reliance and comparative evaluation of offers.

To my mind, the bigger reason not to give detailed rejections is that
candidates will litigate them _informally_ with you. We're all nerds. Nothing
bothers a nerd more than hearing someone else say something wrong. A lot of
the time, if you reject a nerd, they're going to assume you're wrong. _About
them_. Angry nerd -> unpleasant conversation -> Twitter rage storm.

~~~
hcho
All of that is true but the main reason for lack of feedback is, some people
are really bad at handling rejection. Maybe a very small minority, but some
guys really don't take no for an answer, get argumentative, cost you a lot of
time...

------
ohashi
Is there a link to the test?

~~~
jqm
[https://www.hackerrank.com/tests/530697662bd88](https://www.hackerrank.com/tests/530697662bd88)

It's closed. You can still take the test but they won't review it. I did like
the format.

------
rmmw
Thanks for the shoutout :)

