> Do you actually though? A lot of people say they would rather get an honest answer but don't react very well in reality.

For me? Yes, in almost all cases, especially if we're talking about either getting no feedback vs. honest feedback. There's been a number of times where someone said X, I thought about it and either changed or at least internally made a note.

I will say it really depends on the context and situation. For example, if it involves someone you care about then sure an honest 5 minute conversation can help eliminate a lot of assumptions from both sides or uncover unknown tensions from the other side. On the flip side, if nothing gets said then nothing will change.

Being honest and transparent doesn't always mean literally saying what's on your mind too. It could be trying to achieve an outcome, such as with a code review. There's lots of ways to provide feedback in a way where you can get the other person to self-realize something without you needing to say it just by asking questions a certain way. This isn't an easy skill and it's something I'm always trying to improve. It applies outside of coding too.

There's honest and there's too honest. I was once rejected with "you don't have the technical depth needed". I appreciate that's what they honestly felt, but sending it back like that was just too honest. Especially because I felt their technical screening process wasn't really all that brilliant (to put it mildly).

Something like "we're looking for someone with a different skill set" would still be reasonable honest, but also wouldn't make me feel terrible. The notion that you can fully asses someone's technical abilities from a one-hour interview is mistaken anyway. So an honest reply should take that in to account.

---

A second scenario is where I did a take-home code test thinghy. I went for the "simple but obviously correct and easy to implement approach". The performance for that seemed more than enough for the stated use case, and included some benchmarks and a bit of text to justify it. Performance wasn't mentioned in the task, but seems like the common sense thing to do. After a few weeks I got a one-line "doesn't meet expected performance" rejection. Well, you didn't mention what the "expected performance" is motherfucker. That's not what I sent back (I didn't reply at all), but what a fucked up way to evaluate and dismiss people.

> I was once rejected with "you don't have the technical depth needed". I appreciate that's what they honestly felt, but sending it back like that was just too honest.

Do you think if they were more specific it could have helped?

As someone who does like honesty, that type of response would bother me too because it doesn't feel like an honest reply. It feels like a blanket statement to quickly say something and move on.

If they said something like "when it came to thinking about and writing database queries, we felt like your solutions could have used more thought around performance optimizations and fundamental knowledge about joins".

I'd be really happy with a rejection like that because it's super specific. Now there's 2 action items I can do to improve, such as focusing on query tuning and getting better at joins. These are things you could search for and find tons of content / examples to improve on.

If you think about it like a loop, it's a loop that's complete. You did something poorly, you know what you did poorly, you can level up those specific skills and try again. The problem is when the feedback doesn't let you complete the loop.

> Do you think if they were more specific it could have helped?

To be honest I think it was just a "bad vibe" or whatever you want to call it, and/or didn't meet an exactly pre-defined approach they wanted during the "systems design" interview which was quite badly done IMHO, and felt like stumbling around trying to find the answer he was looking for while he was going out of the way to drip-feed me information.

But who knows...

But yes, I agree with you: it's non-actionable feedback. And also came across as quite personal (that is: the difference with "you're a bad coder" vs. "this is bad code").