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Comment by FirmwareBurner | Hacker News Reader

>This seems common in American companies.

If that same American culture is all over companies worldwide now, is it still American culture anymore?

>For example, American companies won't tell job applicants why they get rejected, lest they get sued by the rejected candidates.

Same in Europe, you get ghosted or at best, you get the same bland cookie cutter politically correct copy-paste rejection massage, no matter what the actual reason is, even if you explicitly ask for detailed feedback and promise to be open minded and not sour about it.

So back to my original question, is that still an American company thing, or just a $COMPANY_THING now?

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This is absolutely not true in Europe, unless you're talking UK or a subject of an US company.

Yes it's true for Europe. (big) companies' HR just ghost you or reject you with the same legally safe cookie cutter template messages. Maybe at very small companies if you only interacted with the hiring manager he might have the time and inclination to give you some personalized feedback but that's very rare.

No, not UK, just Austrian companies in Austria for example. Swedish companies in Sweden. Also German companies in Germany. In Eastern Europe too. Is that enough of a sample size for my opinion on European companies?

Austrian resident here, checking in. I have yet to see this heinous practice in the Austrian job market, but I guess ymmv. Every single time [*] I've asked for feedback on the interview process, I've gotten it - including details for why I was not considered for a position.

Perhaps you just need to ask.

[* - except Qualcomm, I just remembered...]

Oh, I have asked, and only got ghosted. Even by Austria's biggest telecom company in Vienna too ;)

90% of the time the feedback is "sorry, we can't move forward because we have better candidates in the pipeline" and asking for details leaves you ghosted.

You probably live in a different Austria. Or maybe because I'm a foreigner with dark skin :)

Well, I live in Vienna and have never had an issue with getting good feedback on why I didn't pass an interview - except from Qualcomm, who responded "we have no comment on the interview process, we just didn't feel it was a good fit", which actually just made me feel relieved to have not passed their criteria.

Never been ghosted, either. So I dunno, our subjective experiences differ. I'm also a foreigner, but maybe our experience levels are just different.

What I have found is that Austrian companies will interview you even if they don't intend to hire anyone for the position, and that can be frustrating at times.

It could also be the cultural differences between companies that are engineering driven first, versus companies that are primary sales/management/consulting driven first and the engineering part is a distant second.

And the likes of QCOM and all these international big-tech pay so much above the low Austrian market rates, that they can afford to treat candidates as disposable commodities as they have virtually unlimited applicants, so it could be a problem of scale besides the culture and liability concerns.

>What I have found is that Austrian companies will interview you even if they don't intend to hire anyone for the position

But how could you tell they weren't intending to hire anyone when interviewing you? I doubt they straight up told you that. :)

>But how could you tell they weren't intending to hire anyone when interviewing you?

I was told after the interview in two cases that they had to finish the interview process, but had a candidate already selected - and that I was 'on hold' in case they didn't accept the offer.

I'm not saying Austria isn't without its glib bureaucracies and Kafka'esque recruitment nightmares - just that they are a little more empathetic towards workers than, in my experience (Australia, USA, Japan, UK), that of other nations ..

>I was told after the interview in two cases that they had to finish the interview process, but had a candidate already selected - and that I was 'on hold' in case they didn't accept the offer.

Ouch, that must hurt knowing you're just the reserve, but to be honest I wouldn't hold a grudge over this, I expect most companies in the world do this, as most candidates also do this with companies when interviewing. It's fair game and you hedge your bets.

> just that they are a little more empathetic towards workers than, in my experience (Australia, USA, Japan, UK), that of other nations ..

I have no idea what it's like in the US, Asia or Oceania, but compared to most of EU, including the UK, I haven't found any extra empathy to candidates or employees in the Austrian private sector, especially that here employment is basically at-will compared to the rest of EU so you're always an easy scapegoat to find yourself unemployed for some failing of an incompetent manager (and Austrian management is really next level Kafkaesque)

It is absolutely not the same in Europe. Maybe it depends on the country. In Germany, you are expected to give honest (and sometimes brutal) feedback, but always with a way to improve in mind. But the idea of taking a company to court for something like this in Germany is laughable.

>It is absolutely not the same in Europe.

It is my experience across 4 EU countries and 30+ interviews. If it doesn't match your own experience there's nothing I can do about it.

>In Germany, you are expected to give honest (and sometimes brutal) feedback, but always with a way to improve in mind.

You are expected by ... law? In which case it's a legal requirement and not an expectation. Or expected by ... candidates?

Also, the devil is in the details as German culture and language is often designed to cleverly camouflage negative feedback as neutral or positive to avoid lawsuits, so you can definitely have generic cookie cutter rejection messages that legally qualify as "honest" like for example in your Arbeitszeugnis.

How would you legally challenge that if otherwise? Do you sue the company because you feel like their feedback wasn't brutally honest as per your expectations as it was too generic and "nice sounding" and had nothing bad to say about you?

IMHO you choose a bad example as German corporate culture is not as "brutally honest" as you portray it to be, quite the opposite, it's just very good at pretending to be honest.

From my personal experience across several countries, I've noticed the more difficult it is to fire someone and the more anti-discrimination laws exist in that country, then the less honest and more generic your feedback will be, if you get any feedback at all and it's not a generic automated rejection.

I chose the example I have experience with. I don't have experience with other EU countries, so I can't comment on those. I also don't have experience with massive large companies, so maybe this is a problem of scale rather than culture. Although it does seem like smaller American companies have the same problems.

It's not that complicated. In no countries do companies want to spend staff time and effort and risk lability by giving tailored feedback to people they won't hire anyway. In short, it's not worth it for them, it's that simple.

Sometimes they do, but that's very rare nowadays. I think companies were more willing in the past, but all it takes is one angry rejected candidate with a chip on his shoulder and a lawyer on speed-dial, to change that company's culture on "honest feedback" forever.

It's why we can't have nice things, there will always be someone to abuse the system and take it down with him.

> In no countries do companies want to spend staff time and effort and risk lability by giving tailored feedback to people they won't hire anyway.

Actually, it's not that hard. Provided you have had a discussion with your team on why not to hire the candate, it's easy to send them a short summary without revealing too much information.

I should clarify, I don't mean this for every candidate. Just for those who have gotten pretty far into the process.

There is still the calculus of why bother?

There are legitimate reasons (you want rejected candidates to still have a good impression of the company, you think the feedback could help them improve and want them to interview again in the future, you want to include them in your professional network, etc.) but I think it is best if that is an intentional choice.

>Actually, it's not that hard.

You underestimate how lazy some companies are when it comes to non-billable hours/tasks. The question on their end is "why bother, what's in it for us?".

>Provided you have had a discussion with your team on why not to hire the candidate, it's easy to send them a short summary without revealing too much information.

That's the problem, it's NOT easy to send feedback that's truthful yet at the same time is 100% iron clad against any potential expressions that might be interpreted as discriminatory. Engineers are not good at formulating such things and their bluntness is a liability.

Which is why engineers are left with the technical part, and the final candidate-feedback communication and rejection is left to the HR who's main job is eliminating employee/candidate liability for the company, so they usually take the route that makes their job easier and send the same generic message to everyone, especially that in many companies HR is understaffed.

When I interviewed at IBM in Germany in the late 00s I was rejected and got crystal clear feedback on why - and that is a big American company in Germany.

Same but in the US (NYC) -- and I've thought a little better of them ever since!

I don't know, Valve (proton team) gave me the most complete feedback I ever received.

Frankly I was not a big steam fan, but now I'm close to defend Gabe like Tesla fans defend Musk.

Really great people, if someone from that team read this: kudos.

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