A large portion of MS employees are vegetarian because many Hindus are vegetarian. At MS Build they always have both vegetarian and Indian vegetarian options.

Yea, but ... due to the visa situation the vast majority of those folks are not getting the maximal courtship, so to speak.

You are aware that there are many, many Hindus who are US citizens, yes? Who have been in the country since birth or early childhood?

There are, but I suspect they are not as prevalent in the software engineering profession? Even the CEOs of Google and Microsoft took that track.

If it doesn't matter if you miss a hire or not, why would you be going through the effort of buying a large fancy salmon and shipping it to the candidate? You could just not do that and not care about the ones you miss since they don't matter.

That's a very dismissive attitude to your hires, and it makes the salmon even more pointless.

If you want to make a point about how good the salmon is, invite them and treat them to the best salmon in town, instead of dumping a dead fish that nobody asked for on their doorstep.

Hey good idea, deliberately exclude people who don't eat meat. You know who might end up being CEO level material

"Don't send him the nice fish, he might be a vegetarian AND might be the next CEO"... Yeah, huh, I don't think that's the usual concern. I think many people wouldn't want to hire a person that takes offense from a misplaced but nice gesture, anyways - I would not.

If you're a hiring manager and can't even be bothered to know the most basic facts about me and that I might not like that piece or pork or salmon for religious or ethical reasons then that about says it all.

>If you're a hiring manager and can't even be bothered to >know the most basic facts about me and that I might not like >that piece or pork or salmon for religious or ethical >reasons then that about says it all.

If you are a hiring manager and you are attempting to learn someone's religious or dietary beliefs prior to hiring then then you should be sued/fired.

The video posted shows Forstall wondering if the dead fish was a threat. He might be making this up but the situation is strange at best, confusing, offensive or threatening at worst. The person doing the hiring screwed up, and clearly did need to do better.

If you're of that view then why could you possibly think sending a dead fish to a candidate without checking first is ok in the first place.

And yes when I've taken my candidates for lunch as part of recruiting I always ask for any dietary preferences so i can find a place that accommodates. It's just commonsense.

> Yeah, huh, I don't think that's the usual concern

Keep in mind that they missed out on Forstall. It seems unlikely he would have ended up CEO, but that’s not as far fetched as the prospects for most hires.