<story><title>No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback</title><url>http://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-company-because-of-constructive-post-interview-feedback-so-why-dont-employers-do-it/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>iagooar</author><text>In Germany every single lawyer or HR responsible would tell you not to send any reason at all, just a generic response.&lt;p&gt;This has to do with how law is structured here: giving feedback gives an attack surface to candidates that could sue you for the feedback you gave (because they do not agree with it).&lt;p&gt;So this is it, companies do not do this because they&amp;#x27;re evil, they do this because nobody wants legal consequences.</text></item><item><author>vector_spaces</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of &amp;quot;There&amp;#x27;s nothing in it for the company but risk&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;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&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s more risk involved in habitually treating people like garbage than like human beings.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>virgilp</author><text>While working at Adobe, an executive launched the &amp;quot;Red Box&amp;quot; innovation program (that eventually became &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;kickbox.org&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;kickbox.org&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;). The program itself is interesting, but what was MORE interesting is that he was able to pull it off - the whole thing is a legal minefield of epic proportions (1). Normally, if you go to the legal department and ask &amp;quot;can I do this&amp;quot;, nobody in their right mind will answer &amp;quot;yes, but&amp;quot;... you&amp;#x27;ll get an immediate &amp;quot;no way, get out of here, you&amp;#x27;re crazy&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The trick is to ask legal &amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;m doing this, how can I minimize our legal exposure&amp;quot;. Not to ask &amp;quot;can we do this&amp;quot;. The second question will invariably get you a &amp;quot;no&amp;quot; (if you thought to ask, there must be _some_ risk). The first question will get a lot of grumbling, but if you&amp;#x27;re in a high-enough position, will eventually lead to useful advice.&lt;p&gt;(1)  The basic idea is that in the early stages, you need to prove traction&amp;#x2F;market interest for your idea. As such, it needs to show no signs that it&amp;#x27;s backed by Adobe - it&amp;#x27;s trivially easy to get a BizzFeudNews article about &amp;quot;Adobe launches ShitDraw Pro&amp;quot; or whatnot; it&amp;#x27;s very easy to get thousands of people curious &amp;amp; signing up. All this is much harder when you&amp;#x27;re a John Doe, and don&amp;#x27;t lean on the brand recognition, but on the intrinsic value of your idea&amp;#x2F;product. 
However, this all means is that by design in the early stages you will have company employees, paying with company money, to &amp;quot;launch&amp;quot; services &amp;amp; get people to subscribe while hiding the true entity behind those services. No nefarious motivation behind it, but surely you can see the potential legal challenges.</text></comment>
<story><title>No engineer has ever sued because of constructive post-interview feedback</title><url>http://blog.interviewing.io/no-engineer-has-ever-sued-a-company-because-of-constructive-post-interview-feedback-so-why-dont-employers-do-it/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>iagooar</author><text>In Germany every single lawyer or HR responsible would tell you not to send any reason at all, just a generic response.&lt;p&gt;This has to do with how law is structured here: giving feedback gives an attack surface to candidates that could sue you for the feedback you gave (because they do not agree with it).&lt;p&gt;So this is it, companies do not do this because they&amp;#x27;re evil, they do this because nobody wants legal consequences.</text></item><item><author>vector_spaces</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m so disappointed to read comments on this thread to the effect of &amp;quot;There&amp;#x27;s nothing in it for the company but risk&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;sorry, not up to par. We need someone with more experience&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;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&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;s more risk involved in habitually treating people like garbage than like human beings.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hvidgaard</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t understand this. If I select a candidate of three to offer a job, then as long as I&amp;#x27;m not discriminating the others for things such as sexuality, gender, age, ect. then the person we feel is the best fit is just that. What we believe is the best candidate - no amount of arguing in a court is going to change that.</text></comment>