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Comment by kristopolous | Hacker News Reader

They ask questions that kids are taught at 18/19. It's almost shocking; this is how you're selecting?

People that are in their 40s aren't confused by the question but are more confused by why it's the question as being able to answer it is so disconnected from any metric of competency or quality.

It'd be like saying "so you have an engineering degree, oh a masters from 20 years ago. Cool, remember Lagrange multipliers and Hamiltonians? I'm sure you do. Here's a problem. You have 10 minutes"

That's why we keep seeing the failures of the past repeat. Tech selects for people too young to know it and too arrogant to study it.

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I feel like by the time you’re in your 40s, you should be able to leverage your network to bypass the technical interview. What are you doing at 40 going through the same hiring funnel as 18 year olds with no discernible reputation or experience? Maybe if you’re doing a career switch, sure, but if you’ve got 15-20 years under your belt then that’s a different story.

You are proposing substituting a nepotistic process as a substitute for a discriminatory process? Personally, I do not think that would yield any improvement.

No, I’m just saying at some point your reputation should precede you, otherwise what have you been doing for 20 years?

Being an introvert? Becoming a better engineer? Learning new skills? Doing things that actually matter for my job?

Speaking as an introvert, introverts need networks too. Build a network - skip to the front of the line. Or better yet, get a job specifically made for you. Otherwise get into the funnel like everyone else.

Not only do some companies strictly have the policy regardless but also some people (like me) want a consistent challenge as in going from say security research to hardware to web dev.

I don't advocate for a free ride nor am I saying the tests are hard (they really aren't), just that they have a very weak correlation with building strong teams of the right people

Networking is a non technical skill. Hard to say how well it correlates.

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