> I get what you are saying, but I have done tech recruiting for a long time and the reality is that everyone claims they have built complex production systems at scale
Then we need a better test, but the gamification and badgering isn’t effective imo.
> And once in a while some genius superstar 10x programmer comes along who is too good for these silly interviews... well that's fine we don't need that arrogance either.
It’s not arrogance to not want to be judged by someone who literally hasn’t done and probably could never do what you’ve accomplished.
The unspoken secret is that most software engineers in the industry (even at FAANGS) can really only add features to existing systems. They can’t build green field.
> Then we need a better test, but the gamification and badgering isn’t effective imo.
The educational field has been trying to do create tests that cannot be gamed for over a century. The problem is that "gamification" is just a form a studying. In general, folks want tests to have the following properties.
1. Consistency of measurement across test-takers for a defined set of skills
2. Relatively short time-bounds (few hours).
In job hiring, the approach that tries to sacrifice (2) is contract-to-hire, just let the person do the work for a month! Turns out that people with in-demand skills aren't super interested in this.
Companies with more than a handful of engineers don't want to sacrifice (1) both out of fear of lowering the hiring bar too and because it may open them to discrimination lawsuits.
Once you have both of these constraints the number of "test permutations" (along with their relevant evaluative criteria) become limited enough that people can study them and thus gamification begins.
Cool then go design a better process that picks out the best engineers on the planet without asking them any engineering questions. Clearly you are smarter and have accomplished more than anyone at any company you have interviewed with, so it should be a cakewalk for you. Heck you can make billions by finally cracking the tech interview problem.
To be honest, you seem like the one with an issue. You're rejecting the general norm which is at this point painful, and everyone agrees, but it's the best thing we have. Your excuse to rejecting it is your own ego shooting outwards -- "99% of people haven't done what i have." That's cool and all, and I'm sure you're a very smart person, but just by the fact that you wrote this, I can tell you might be very painful to work with and would already be a huge red flag. Kill your ego and your experience in the world will be much better
Frankly, you don’t anything about what it’s like to work with me.
But to answer more genuinely, it’s a fact that most developers have never and will never work at web scale. Also, if you have ever worked at a FAANG, you would know that a majority of the topics that are involved in these hazing loops aren’t directly used in the dad work of most developers.
Rather than focusing on me, focus on the point I was making about the deficiencies in the hiring loops of tech companies.
Then we need a better test, but the gamification and badgering isn’t effective imo.
> And once in a while some genius superstar 10x programmer comes along who is too good for these silly interviews... well that's fine we don't need that arrogance either.
It’s not arrogance to not want to be judged by someone who literally hasn’t done and probably could never do what you’ve accomplished.
The unspoken secret is that most software engineers in the industry (even at FAANGS) can really only add features to existing systems. They can’t build green field.