<story><title>Why I went with them and not you: feedback to an interviewer</title><url>http://jamesob.nfshost.com/2011/04/01/them-vs-you.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>j_baker</author><text>&lt;i&gt;It may seem arbitrary, but the platform an organization uses is indicative to me of a whole lot.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was anyone else a bit annoyed by this statement?  It&apos;s a good, wholesome, and healthy thing to say &quot;You guys use Windows and I like using Unix&quot;, but it&apos;s wrong to say &quot;You guys use Windows, and that says something about your organization.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Why do techies have such a tendency to phrase &quot;I don&apos;t like &lt;i&gt;x&lt;/i&gt;&quot; as &quot;It is &lt;i&gt;wrong&lt;/i&gt; to use x&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dangero</author><text>I agree.&lt;p&gt;When my company is hiring, and we lose a candidate like this, I often send emails that are similar, &quot;Sorry to hear you&apos;re not accepting our offer. Can I ask why you didn&apos;t choose us?&quot; This is actually the potential hire&apos;s chance to pay me a compliment, give a small amount of feedback, and keep the door open for the future in case their other &quot;better&quot; option falls through.&lt;p&gt;I think this blog shows a terribly self absorbed reply. My response to receiving this would be to forward the reply to my team and say, &quot;Glad that didn&apos;t work out for us... Blessing in disguise. See below.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Know your audience. Remember, the person you&apos;re emailing works there, so you&apos;re essentially telling them that their job and work environment sucks when you write something like this.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why I went with them and not you: feedback to an interviewer</title><url>http://jamesob.nfshost.com/2011/04/01/them-vs-you.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>j_baker</author><text>&lt;i&gt;It may seem arbitrary, but the platform an organization uses is indicative to me of a whole lot.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Was anyone else a bit annoyed by this statement?  It&apos;s a good, wholesome, and healthy thing to say &quot;You guys use Windows and I like using Unix&quot;, but it&apos;s wrong to say &quot;You guys use Windows, and that says something about your organization.&quot;&lt;p&gt;Why do techies have such a tendency to phrase &quot;I don&apos;t like &lt;i&gt;x&lt;/i&gt;&quot; as &quot;It is &lt;i&gt;wrong&lt;/i&gt; to use x&quot;.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>lusis</author><text>It&apos;s not a matter of &quot;it&apos;s wrong to use X&quot;. It&apos;s a matter of &quot;I don&apos;t want to spend my time working in Windows and dealing with all of the headaches and banging my head against a wall with the differing OS paradigms.&quot;&lt;p&gt;True story. At my previous company, it wasn&apos;t made clear during the interview that Windows was the ONLY thing allowed on the network. Despite the fact that all of the servers were running Linux (this was a major financial institution), we were forced to use Windows XPSP3 and we couldn&apos;t even use VMware (that changed a month or so after I got there luckily).&lt;p&gt;Neglecting to mention that was a CONSCIOUS decision by the people doing the hiring because it cost them employees. Not only did it cost them employees who turned down the job based on that fact, they had people LEAVE once they found out about it (developers and operations folks alike).&lt;p&gt;Talented and skilled people can get a job anywhere. They don&apos;t have to put up with stupid bullshit illogicals like &quot;You have to use Windows even though we trust the financial records of customers of EVERY MAJOR CREDIT CARD COMPANY to live on and be processed by Linux servers&quot;.</text></comment>