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Tag: recruitment

  • Photograph of a looping steel rollercoaster against a setting sun. A logo of a flaming 'F' in the corner declares it Firstup: World's First Recruitment-Themed Rollercoaster. The track is annotated with the steps of the process in order, from application to screener to interview and so on.

    Firstup Recruitment

    I'll soon by starting in my new role at Firstup, after a rollercoaster of a recruitment process that rocketed through all the usual tech job steps... but in barely over a week. What a rush!

    Read more - about 6 minutes (1414 words)

    • Article
    • 14 comments
    • posted 2 July, 2025
  • Animated GIF showing Sublime Text editor flicking through six different languages, with equivalent code showing in each.

    I Wrote the Same Code Six Times!

    Could I rock an interview tech-test in a programming language I haven't touched in a decade? I wanted to know, so I found a tech-test... then solved it in six different programming languages in a single sitting.

    Read more - about 9 minutes (2125 words)

    • Article
    • 1 comment
    • posted 7 June, 2025
  • Photo of chicken nuggets with "AI" written on each of them.

    AI posts on social media are the chicken nuggets of human interaction

    Ruth shares her thoughts on the current state of generative AI, and I had a surprising amount to say about them. But mostly, I just love her metaphor about AI-generated social media posts!

    Read more - about 5 minutes (1119 words)

    • Repost
    • of this original
    • 2 comments
    • posted 10 September, 2024
  • Graph showing all 1.802 current Automatticians as coloured squares, ordered by their start date. Dan Q's square is squarely (LOL) in the middle.

    Automattic Growth

    After only two years at Automattic, Dan's now been there longer than most. Wait, what?

    Read more (362 words)

    • Article
    • posted 10 November, 2021
  • Two women in black dresses sit in a graveyard by candlelight and hold up the Automattic logo. Edited image based on original photo by Valeria Boltneva from Pexels (used with permission) and the Automattic logo (used under the assumption that they won't mind, given the context).

    Creed Cult-ure

    Automatticians seem to really believe in their creed. Is Dan's employer a cult? Let's try to work it out...

    Read more - about 5 minutes (968 words)

    • Article
    • 6 comments
    • posted 15 June, 2021
  • Image representing post: Tips for Text-based Interviews

    Tips for Text-based Interviews

    Dan shares a post by a coworker on making text-chat-based recruitment interviews work.

    Read more (144 words)

    • Repost
    • posted 23 April, 2021
  • Image representing post: Getting Hired at Automattic

    Getting Hired at Automattic

    Jerry Jones writes about his experience of Automattic's recruitment process, which is a more-readable summary than Dan's was!

    Read more (123 words)

    • Repost
    • posted 30 April, 2020
  • Riffle shuffling

    Time-Efficient Shuffling

    Dan proposes a more complexity-efficient alternative to the Fisher-Yates shuffling algorithm. And it's silly.

    Read more - about 5 minutes (988 words)

    • Article
    • 2 comments
    • posted 9 October, 2019
  • When Experienced Women Engineers Look for New Jobs, They Prioritize Trust and Growth

    Excellent research courtesy of my soon-to-be new employer about the driving factors affecting women who are experienced software engineers.

    Read more (155 words)

    • Repost
    • 1 comment
    • posted 4 September, 2019
  • Dan with a whisky.

    Automattic Recruitment (days -179 to -51)

    Dan reflects on the last 128 days since he applied to work at Automattic, and looks forward to the remaining 50 until he starts.

    Read more - about 17 minutes (3853 words)

    • Article
    • 25 comments
    • posted 30 August, 2019
  • Adactio: Journal—Code (p)reviews

    I’m not a big fan of job titles. I’ve always had trouble defining what I do as a noun—I much prefer verbs (“I make websites” sounds fine, but “website maker” sounds kind of weird).

    Mind you, the real issue is not finding the right words to describe what I do, but rather figuring out just what …

    Read more (73 words)

    • Repost
    • posted 1 May, 2017
  • A Research-driven Recruitment Story

    [It] was initially frustrating to not be able to tell you things about who I am and what I’ve done. But it’s great that it’s a level playing field. By the final interview I was liking the process so much that I was reluctant to share my CV and de-anonymize myself. – Successful Careers applicant…

    …

    Read more (60 words)

    • Repost
    • posted 9 June, 2016
  • We Hire the Best, Just Like Everyone Else

    One of the most common pieces of advice you'll get as a startup is this: Only hire the best. The quality of the people that work at your company will be one of the biggest factors in your success – or failure. I've heard this advice over and over and over at startup events, to…

    …

    Read more (56 words)

    • Repost
    • posted 15 March, 2016

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