abadideaGeneral PSA: don’t apply for a job at Canonical. Do NOT apply for a job at Canonical. Treat the blatantly artificially enormous number of job openings they post as the mirages of trickster fae. They are unhinged. Mark Shuttleworth is unhinged. They will drag you through the mud, disrespect you and your time, and definitely not give you a job. This article I saw today is like the thirteenth of its kind that I personally have seen https://dustri.org/b/my-experience-with-canonicals-interview-process.html
XaetaCore 
@0xabad1dea The fact that they try to force Snapd and Netplan down people's throats should have been a good deterrent
Lily Star@XaetaCore @0xabad1dea Upstart, anyone?
ave@XaetaCore @0xabad1dea having applied for canonical despite hating those: market was bad, my employer was bankrupt. I had experience and the job listing fit my skills. I knew it sucked but I was desperate.
I got autorejected for my lack of academic background :)
Listen to your gut. Don't apply at canonical.
beaumains@XaetaCore @0xabad1dea what's wrong with netplan BTW? I don't mind it, but I also don't have a full grasp on how it works under the hood so I could be being swindled.
I am a snap hater though so I'm already aboard the roast canonical train.
@beaumains @0xabad1dea What i mind is that they are forcing you to use it, its their own software and it comes default on their systems, they also removed the /etc/interfaces file.
So all admins and users had to switch to a whole new stack out of nowhere because they couln'd get this tech to stick on other distros.
Flatpak imho is a way better alternative and using netplan instead of ifconfig/systemd-networkd/interfaces_file is just wierd.
Its forcing their own tech on its users because they don't want it to be a wasted investment.
And netplan has caused tons of issues on plenty of different production envs i have worked on for different companies too.
@XaetaCore @0xabad1dea those are all really good points. Its used by default on Debian cloudimg releases if I'm not mistaken, this saddens me.
Edit: netplan is indeed installed by default on Debian cloudimg releases 
gaytabase@0xabad1dea it's gotta be a funny world inside that guy's head. "he asks about school because it's all we've got in common".
Pxl Phile@dysfun @0xabad1dea let's come down to the choice of bread, because that's what we all have in common.
— Canonical probably
xinit ☕@0xabad1dea The job listings just sound so plausible and nice.
What's the harm if I just eat one of the cupcakes? Surely I won't be stuck there for eternity, tormented by imps and gnomes and agile sprites?
Damn it. Trapped by pretty frosting.
Julia Racsko@0xabad1dea I did not know one could use GDPR to get feedback on a job application
mirabilos@0xabad1dea … oh, bad hiring experiences at Canonical again? Third time in a couple of years I hear about them that way.
zl2tod
@0xabad1dea All those questions in the written part about school for a senior role.
I STUDIED COBOL IN SCHOOL.
How's that matter in a senior role with Ubuntu? Obsessed with how senior staff did 10+ years back. I barely remember or care what I did in another position 10 years ago, and I learned more there than I did in school.
Eva Winterschön@xinit @0xabad1dea agreed. I don't even bother putting the details of my job history prior to around fifteen years ago. Most of the companies either dissolved or went through a merger/acquisition, so whatever Perl or Cisco stuff I was doing back in the mid-2000s is really quite irrelevant to anything other than occasionally funny stories from a very different era. I list the roles and the years as bullet-points, but that's all.
@winterschon
The questions about ranking and performance in HIGH SCHOOL are also concerning. Is this some sort of "peaked in high school" thing for the CEO?
@xinit @winterschon I do get the impression Shuttleworth believes that only people who were already stunningly competent in high school will ever be any good at anything, so he doesn’t look at anything you did after that at all.
Jason Bowen 🇺🇦@0xabad1dea @xinit @winterschon I did quite well in school, but I'm 35 and just don't remember what my GPA was from high school or what my SAT scores were exactly. I've started applying for a couple of jobs that asked similar questions and withdrawn because it's not worth anyone's time for me to try to dig up that info when I have 13 years of work experience with references since graduating university.
Raccoon🏳️🌈@jbowen @0xabad1dea @xinit @winterschon
I feel like I'm one of the few people who would do well on this, considering I went to a magnet school and studied programming, meaning my GPA had to be at least 3.5 and I did in fact learn several programming languages and APIs before I turned 18.
I feel like I'm one of the few people who would do well on this, considering I went to a magnet school and studied programming, meaning my GPA had to be at least 3.5 and I did in fact learn several programming languages and APIs before I turned 18.
Chris Real@Raccoon @jbowen @0xabad1dea @xinit @winterschon
I suspect that your 'doing well' would rely more on how cheerfully you would allow yourself to be infantilized by Shuttleworth, less on your 'qualifications' . . .
Jonathan Hartley
Passwordsarehard4@Raccoon @jbowen @0xabad1dea @xinit @winterschon that’s awesome, someone cast an early net and caught talent they could nurture. It sucks for the girl in Missouri whose 3rd grade teacher thought a woman’s place is in the home so education was a waste of resources. She can’t start learning until she gets away from there. If she learns in 3 years what you got to do in 15 she deserves it at least as much as you.
Nentuaby@Raccoon @jbowen @0xabad1dea @xinit @winterschon It's so weird? I obliterated high school. First in class, 4.76 GPA out of 4, armfull of Academic Decathlon medals-- and I'd probably just close the Zoom window if somebody started asking me interview questions about it. It becomes so irrelevant after uni OR 2-3 years of job experience, let alone both.
chrisp@jbowen Is he gonna check it anyway? Will all high schools be able to verify it still? Will I have to sign something that they can give to the school to show I want them to have that information?
I was an unemployable prat at highschool who flunked a lot of classes and would have screwed up your computers, you wouldn't want to hire me at that stage. Once I had some experience with computers from my first computing job I was then awesome. I've had 3 jobs since then, why don't we focus on those?
Jim Salter@chrisp @jbowen I very nearly didn't even *graduate* high school, largely due to a very traumatic home life. But I'd like to believe what I've done in the nearly four decades since then is quite a bit more relevant to anyone thinking of employing me in 2025.
As a side note, it is **startling** how much less of this you get when offering business to business consulting as someone who owns their own business... Even if it's a solo business, and you charge 3x what an employee would cost.
Tony Yarusso@xinit @jbowen @0xabad1dea @winterschon I don’t think I could have told you my exact GPA while literally holding my high school diploma… “Quite good, but beyond that quite irrelevant”
Artemis@0xabad1dea @xinit @winterschon
I have the feeling that after I say "I was homeschooled" I'd be sent packing.
Basically it's the kind of thing where if your life was non-stereotypical in any way, then fuck you.
@artemis I don't have a degree, so I feel that :D
Sara Safavi@artemis you might make it through the gauntlet - I did, but this is what Shuttleworth said about it https://hachyderm.io/@sara/112117156883684126
Sara Safavi (@sara@hachyderm.io)
10. THE CALL Mark begins our call by saying: "I've read your essay responses. You say you didn't go to high school. Generally I only want people who are in the top 5%. You obviously can't prove that applies to you. So tell me why I should believe you were the equivalent to the top 5% of your peers at 16."
@sara
That CEO interview, though. "Can you prove X. Convince me yo really did Y."
Insufferable.
This all makes the spontaneous TED Talk on "any subject at all that I'm an expert in" look a bit more reasonable.
@sara
I wonder on what kind of people actually make it through that call.
@artemis @0xabad1dea @winterschon
I wonder on what kind of people actually make it through that call.
@artemis @0xabad1dea @winterschon
Kevin Granade@0xabad1dea @xinit @winterschon I would pass on the high school criteria and I also think this is incredibly wrong, what has happened since then is far more important.
Also if I'm applying somewhere and they give me a pseudoscience personality quiz I'm bailing on the process right there.
Chuckles ❤️🇪🇺🏳️⚧️🇺🇦❤️@xinit @winterschon @0xabad1dea it's because Canonical really only wants to employ people who are 23-29 years old, it's not mysterious at all.
@celeduc Then maybe something more like "Peaked in high school and still too young to come to terms with it"
@xinit @winterschon @0xabad1dea either that or Shuttleworth is obsessed with exacting symbolic revenge against the people who peaked in high school, and seeks to surround himself with a gang of outsider nerds who will, under his guidance, ascend to new heights of vengeance, performing a live-action Revenge of the Nerds V in a battle against (checks notes) Bill Gates?
@xinit @winterschon @0xabad1dea @celeduc 24er (with 6 YoE) who got rejected by canonical and now thriving elsewhere: nah
Buster | Felipe@xinit My bet is that he (and other billionaires) come from a supremacist mindset, so of course good candidates would have to perform well even in high school, if it comes in their genetics.
@xinit @0xabad1dea I can understand looking at something like a high school GPA as a very inexpensive filter when one is investing very little in an interview process, but it's a *ludicrous* measure to include in a process as lengthy as the one you describe.
I have to say that, apart from the weird and clearly unnecessary CEO interview, this sounds like identically dystopian hell to any time I've tried to apply unsolicited for a position in any enterprise sized business, though.
jmelesky@xinit @0xabad1dea In addition to the CEO’s “high school is destiny” thing, I’m convinced they include stuff that far back as a soft way to do age discrimination. No evidence for it, mind you, but it has a smell about it like that.
Stepland@0xabad1dea welp, my intuition was right again
@0xabad1dea A while ago I applied for a position, the interview steps were so fucking bonkers before I would even get to talk to any living person that I dropped out
@0xabad1dea first they have a "quick" pre-screen where you fill a short form and they email you back if they liked what they saw THEN you have the REAL screening
@0xabad1dea 37 (THIRTY-SEVEN) questions that you have to answer IN DETAIL in a word document, each question going SO FAR BEYOND anything they'd actually need to assess your fitness for the position
@0xabad1dea it took me ... upwards of 15 hours to answer everything. next step ? an IQ test 💀💀💀
I dropped out
@0xabad1dea first I think that's straight up illegal in France (possibly the whole EU), second I'm not even remotely entertaining the idea this is normal, third why the F would I want to work with people who think it is ??
I'm now going by the general mantra of "whatever happens during the interview is a good preview of the actual job" and oh BOY I did NOT like whatever happened in this one
@0xabad1dea I am SO GLAD I dropped out "early" because WHAT DO YOU MEAN there's a personality test after the IQ test, then SEVERAL technical tests, then UPWARDS OF 10 ROUNDS of interviews ???? I absolutely despise this trend of endless hiring processes
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen@Stepland @0xabad1dea Frankly it sounds more like a recruitment drive for Scientology than for a job.
@0xabad1dea what are they even testing FOR, this process is giving equals amounts of :
- we will only hire someone who's autistic + whose specific interest is the exact job description
- we hate people with the 'tism so fucking much we'll invent the Torment Nexus of hiring processes
@0xabad1dea "someone from the team I applied for told me that the role has been empty for more than 18 months, and offered a polite smile when asked why she thought that was the case."
We LOVE a good lack of self-awareness
@0xabad1dea they are SO SCARED to hire anyone they would rather leave the role empty for 18 months
Robin Syl 🌸
@Stepland @0xabad1dea IQ test has to be illegal like what the fuck
@robinsyl @0xabad1dea their website is all like "NO DON'T SAY IT'S AN IQ TEST IT'S DEFINITELY NOT AN IQ TEST, IT JUST MEASURES YOUR ABSTRACT REASONING ABILITY, IF IT'S NOT FROM THE IQ REGION OF FRANCE IT'S JUST SPARKLING PHRENOLOGY"
@robinsyl @0xabad1dea the fact they feel the need to defend themselves from the IQ tests allegations in the first place is ... surely something interesting
Nina Kalinina@0xabad1dea yay that was my experience too, and my friend's as well.
Alex@rtnVFRmedia Suffolk UK@nina_kali_nina @0xabad1dea I'm the other side of 50, how in the hell am I going to even remember my test scores in high school? I can barely remember what O levels and GCSEs I got. it was over 3 decades ago..
halva@0xabad1dea every single time i hear about canonical's culture it's somehow the exact same thing, for years every single time
how do they manage to not improve at all
how do they manage to not improve at all
Cassandrich@halva @0xabad1dea Because people keep using their shit Linux distro and treating it like the gold standard.
They should have been irrelevant and out of business a decade ago.
Nechesh@dalias @halva @0xabad1dea their distro didn't start out shitty. When I first tried it #Ubuntu was cleaner and easier to use than anything else. Over time it got worse and worse, as did Canonical business practices. I dropped them about 12 years ago and never looked back. It makes me sad that it's still the standard that non-free software uses to build packages for.
Chris [list of emoji]@nechesh @dalias @halva @0xabad1dea
Point of order. Their distro has always been excellent, because it's based on Debian, which is excellent. Ubuntu just made the installation and setup process easier, and that was enough to make it the reference Linux platform for a lot of important software.
@suetanvil @dalias @halva @0xabad1dea hard disagree. There's a fair amount of things related to UI (e.g. Mir display, their own desktop experience) service management, package installation, capturing searches and sending ads based on those searches that are not part of Debian and made it objectively worse.