[throwaway2037]

    > you need some kind of feedback mechanism that allows you to improve even if you're not a good fit for a particular organization

"Need". That is a strong term. I disagree. It would be nice, but it is not a need.

This topic has been discussed ad nauseam on HN. In most companies, there is specific company policy that prohibits providing feedback to candidates. There is literally no upside for these companies to provide feedback to candidates that they reject (except Fake/Feel-Good Internet Points, only redeemable on HN forums). Really: There is no way around it, no matter how many tears are spilled about it on HN.

[thaumaturgy]

This is simply a defense of bad policy couched in unnecessarily dehumanizing language.

There is widespread resentment of this and many other common hiring practices in the tech sector, and that is further impacting both the quality of candidates as well as employee motivation and satisfaction. The upside for companies is higher quality candidates whose first experience with the company is a hiring process that makes the candidate want to work there.

[saagarjha]

I broadly agree with this being an unfortunate outcome but you do understand that making candidates who failed your interview want to work at your company is fundamentally limited in how much it actually helps you. Yes, yes, I know some of them may come back and pass the next time, or they tell their friends about how you were super nice and gave them great feedback, but this is pretty rare. If you're doing this, you're doing it out of the goodness of your heart, not because it helps your recruiting pipeline. And, even though I agree with the idea of providing feedback, assuming that people will have positive feelings when you tell them why you didn't accept them is misguided. I have friends who I know personally that have gotten interview feedback and not taken it well. Of course I tell them to shut up and stop poisoning the well for everyone else, but the point is that this is largely not the picture you are presenting it as.

[thaumaturgy]

Sorry, I wasn't clear. Providing constructive feedback to a candidate is unlikely to have a direct positive impact on the relationship between that specific candidate and that specific company. It's more of ... whatever the opposite of the tragedy of the commons is. A policy that, if improved, would broadly improve the quality of many candidates for many companies.

Companies have been optimizing for candidates that are an immediate ideal cultural and technological fit. They are all competing for candidates that are the idealized developer, with perfect social skills, a brilliant CV, and deep technical experience that is an exact match for whatever the company is doing at the moment.

That's fine and rational and all, but a necessary consequence of this is that that pool is quite small and there are lots of companies competing for those people. Meanwhile, there are a lot of very good candidates who are underemployed because they aren't getting the opportunity or resources needed to become those idealized employees. This is a game theory outcome where both parties are optimizing themselves into a losing position.

I've been employed in this industry, off and on, for a long time. I assure you that companies didn't always behave this way. There has been a clear, obvious, and severe decline in the hiring experience, and these policies are hurting the entire industry.

It's generally socially frowned-upon to go on a couple of dates with someone and then ghost them. It happens, but it's not considered good practice. We recognize that it's cruel but also leads to a more cynical, detached, overall worse dating experience for everyone. Saying "I don't think this will work out, you seem nice but you're not what I'm looking for right now" is difficult and awkward, but it's also a necessary skill that needs to be maintained. Sometimes people don't react well, but that doesn't make it less necessary: it closes a feedback loop that ultimately allows earnest people who are looking for relationships to learn and grow and become better candidates for the next relationship.

[saagarjha]

I agree, but my point is that the tragedy of the commons here is more divorced than usual. Companies can barely understand that doing layoffs hurts morale, and that connection is really easy to demonstrate. Trying to convince them that taking on some liability for a slightly better applicant pool seems difficult.

[silisili]

> In most companies, there is specific company policy that prohibits providing feedback to candidates. There is literally no upside for these companies to provide feedback to candidates that they reject

This is the long and short of it.

In the US at least, discrimination laws are expansive. You can -very- easily end up saying something that violates this and putting your company at risk, no matter how good hearted you were attempting to be.

[dns_snek]

How do you "accidentally" end up saying something that implicates you in discrimination on the basis of legally protected characteristics - what are some examples of that?

This has always felt like an excuse used by people who who just don't want to be caught in their own lies when asked to come up with a real, non-discriminatory reason.

[silisili]

The other comments gave good answers. A lot of people think it means saying something horrible and racist or something, but not at all.

As one pointed out, there's a "well you said it was X, but person Y who got hired did that too. And they're a different race or gender or religion, so that leads me to believe discrimination."

There's also you trying to be helpful, saying something along the line of "well you hesitated a bit and sounded unsure in your answers", only to find out they have some disability that caused that and now have admitted you're discriminating based on it.

Maybe you'll say "well, if I had known, I wouldn't have noticed it or cared." And a lot of candidates would likely say as much up front. But they don't have to tell you about it at all. See how that creates a weird dynamic?

Is it common? Probably not. But it obviously happened or else such rules wouldn't exist. It's one of those things that the bad actors ruin it for everybody. Bigots are never going to admit their reasons - good people will. But bad people will always try to take advantage, regardless.

[rgavuliak]

I think it's more of a case for legal and HR being conservative and super defensive. Not sure if you've ever handled a contract with an internal lawyer, but in my experience they often go for crazy suggestions that the other side would never accept for the sake of protecting the company as much as possible. Might be the same here - HR/legal being super protective and the hiring manager not caring enough to fight back.

[dragonwriter]

> How do you "accidentally" end up saying something that implicates you in discrimination on the basis of legally protected characteristics - what are some examples of that?

Say you say it was for failure to meet a specific performance standard (because that is the documented reason); then the ex-employee has a starting point for an discrimination claim by looking for evidence that trnds to support the claim that people who differ on some protected-from-discrimination axis who failed to meet that standard were not fired. No reason given, no starting point. In theory, this policy helps make false nuisance claims more work and less likely, but a substantive reason for it is that HR knows that they cannot eliminate all prohibited acts by managers that would create liability, so making it harder to get a starting point for gathering evidence is important to prevent valid claims from materializing. HR policy does not exist to protect employees from unlawful treatment, it exists to protect the company from liability for such treatment. Sometimes thise two interests align, but when it comes to information about firing decisions they do not.

There’s similar things that can be done with other prohibited reasons for dismissal, loke retaliation; but the idea is any information you give makes it easier for them to make a case against you.

This is also, in reverse, why, as a departing employee (whether departing voluntarily or not), you should never participate in an exit interview or, if you must as a condition of some severance or other pay or benefit, never volunteer any information beyond the bare minimum necessary; one significant purpose of such interviews is to document information useful either for potential claims against you or to defend against any potential claims you might have, including those you have not yet discovered, against the company.

[Bjartr]

Part of it is, if anything can be taken slightly out of context to imply something discriminatory, there are those who will abuse the system and sue. At a large enough scale this can become a real problem. If the company policy is "never say anything" there's nothing to be taken out of context, reducing the chance of a lawsuit.

I bet you this comes back to insurance, as many things do in the corporate world. Sufficiently large companies probably have insurance coverage for discrimination lawsuits, or at least employment disputes in general. The coverage probably costs less if you have a "no feedback" policy.