crdb

SEEKING FREELANCER | GLOBAL REMOTE | Haskell, PostgreSQL

We are two founders bootstrapping our startup with consulting, and occasionally have opportunities for extra work we do not have capacity for.

The work splits in 3 categories:

- CRUD apps (e.g. an internal portal to search and edit information in the database) usually done in Haskell using Servant (which was started by us at a previous company);

- data modelling (effectively cleaning up large, complex databases, for both production and data warehousing) always in PostgreSQL;

- data “science” (inference, prediction, ML/AI, etc. - very rare) usually in R, occasionally custom in Haskell.

Relational model philosophy essential, years of relevant experience preferred, systems and other dev ops type experience a bonus (we use NixOS). Hourly rate $100-300 depending on client and your experience.

Send your best code to flag yourself to us and we’ll be in touch next opportunity.

As an example: Joel Myers of Accuweather and his brother donated $11,000 to Rick Santorum (a senator) shortly before he introduced the National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005, whose "effect would be to eliminate public dissemination of National Weather Service data and forecasts except in case of severe weather alerts. [...] The bill had very few supporters outside the commercial weather industry" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service_Dutie...).

When this scene was shot in 2003, also with Scarlett Johansson, Sofia Coppola managed fine: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/79/f8/5f/79f8...

I'm going to take an unpopular stance here but I must disagree, at least to the extent that whilst details were done relatively well (although no better than, say, Total Recall's recent remake) the photography was not.

Here's a simple example: the chase scene to the water [1] vs [2]. In the first, you have a whopping 3 layers of background, the white water, the dark slum, the city in the back (and perhaps an extra layer of city) giving the scene immensity and depth. Even the proportion in which these layers cut the screen (each increasing in height and implied size with distance) help give further depth. The main character is clearly contrasted (including earlier [3]) and thus easily followed, with the eye naturally falling upon the action.

The drawing is neat and the spirit carries over to the sound: the fight is punctuated by long periods of silence both of the ear and of movement ("Music is the space between the notes." - Debussy - to say nothing of the enormous importance of empty space in both Chinese and Japanese art e.g. [5]).

I'll let you take a look at the movie version and see if you can find an understanding of these elements.

Here's an unrelated example of what I mean by the spirit being done well: [4]. Listen to both the steamroller-like momentum, and the way in which the lower voice emerge from the texture about halfway. It is actually incredibly difficult to play like this reliably despite the relative technical ease of the work, Gilels almost makes it sound like he took one, maybe two breaths only (a subtle change of texture splits the work).

[1] http://www.mangauk.com/gallery/albums/album-19/lg/gits_124.p...

[2] http://sm.ign.com/t/ign_nordic/video/g/ghost-in-t/ghost-in-t...

[3] http://images.static-bluray.com/reviews/10635_4.jpg - literally framed!

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu06WnXlPCY

[5] http://www.theartwolf.com/landscapes/hasegawa-tohaku-pine-tr...

More examples: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yHfLyMAHrQE/maxresdefault.jpg

http://thecabot.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/the-godfather...

https://a.ltrbxd.com/resized/sm/upload/bn/hi/lo/wd/yojimbo-1...

http://moviemezzanine.com/wp-content/uploads/spirited-2.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/DQuW037.jpg

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/K0c2HJ4AO6o/maxresdefault.jpg

I immediately thought of Peter Wright's bio [1]:

> The Registry employed enormous numbers of girls to maintain efficient delivery of files within the building, as well as the massive task of sorting, checking, and filing the incoming material. In Kell's day the Registry Queens, as they were known, were recruited either from the aristocracy or from the families of MI5 officers. Kell had a simple belief that this was the best vetting of all. [...]

> By the early 1970s the staffing of the Registry had become a major problem for MI5. There were more than three hundred girls employed and with the surge of file collection at that time the pressure for more recruits was never-ending. Openly advertising was considered impossible. Yet it was becoming very difficult to recruit this number of girls, let alone vet them properly. In at least one case, the Communist Party managed to infiltrate a girl into the Registry, but she was soon discovered and quietly sacked. This problem, rather than dissatisfaction with the increasingly antiquated filing system itself, finally pushed MI5, belatedly, into accepting a computerized [sic] Registry.

As the quote hints, large landholdings and a family with long standing ties to the country (i.e. old money) are great ways to ensure loyalty, both emotional and financial, and loyalty is much more precious than ability in intelligence work.

The Cambridge Five were a very public (and rare, if costly) failure of this system, and Yuri Modin (their handler) claims [2] that the tension between the middle class, Scottish-accented John Cairncross and his upper class colleagues was part of what pushed him over.

The British merchant banks' eventual deaths at the hands of meritocratic American ones is strong evidence that this is not a good system in areas where ability is more valuable than trust.

[1] Peter Wright, Spycatcher - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spycatcher-Candid-Autobiography-Int...

[2] Yuri Modin, My Five Cambridge Friends - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Five-Cambridge-Friends-Cairncross-C... - Modin died a hero in Moscow after a prestigious career including heading the KGB's Active Measures department, so it could be mostly disinformation, but his observations on human character are still great.

An entire article on Japan, racoons, anime, and even a note on the native tanuki, yet not one mention of the excellent Ghibli anime, Pom Poko.

For some reason, this charming Miyazaki (edit - Takahata, not Miyazaki! thanks for the catch) work has not been widely marketed in the West, which is a shame as it is as enjoyable and fun as the more famous ones like Spirited Away or Porco Rosso.

It's a useful rule of thumb in terms of "where you'll stop accelerating with the wind on a normal boat", not absolute hard limit. You can play with length to start planing earlier which is the source of many a fun design (e.g. [1]). Some boats don't have a hull [2].

There's many other variables (weight, beam, etc.), here's a fun one: we once rented a 25 footer mostly because it was incredibly cheap (something like 150 EUR for a week). It was surprisingly slow for its size, even in fairly involved wind where we needed engine help to tack it had trouble breaking past 5-6 knots, to the amusement of not-much-larger yachts that overtook us like a German traveling salesman on the Autobahn. I took a dive under to see what was up with the hull and was faced with a scene not too different from the rocky bottom of the sea: barnacles, algae, some of them trailing foot long appendices...

The OP "yacht" is very strange to me as it looks like the guy put a keel and a sail on a buoy. The sailing dynamics appear to involve pitching forward instead of heeling (leaning sideways). I'm amazed he can do as much as 2.4 knots.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CbJS_ZHs6g (Formula windsurfing)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7ie5C1-b3w (Mirabaud LX: foiler, without hull)

Hull speed (maximum speed for a non-planing aka "displacement" hull) is proportional to the square root of the length of the hull. The article says he has a "hull speed of just 2.5 knots". Most (well, all) crossings are done on much longer boats.

This thread is turning into a set of recommendations related to Bach. So here's mine.

Zhu Xiao Mei is a Chinese pianist who teaches in Paris. She grew up during the Great Leap Forward and spent 5 years in a reeducation camp, never giving up her spirit and illegally importing her parents' "bourgeois" piano at great risk to her and their life, via friends doing her favours, storing and playing it in a freezer. Teachers stored the Western scores that had been banned by Madam Mao in a room on the 3rd floor which they never dared visit again.

Out of the camp, she emigrated to the US at the merest sign of the border opening, having heard Western playing and realised the gulf that stood between her understanding of what great music was and what was actually possible. She did small jobs like cleaning houses to survive until she ended up in Paris where she was noticed and her career could take off. [1]

She discovered Bach's Goldberg Variations almost by accident. The person in whose house she was staying could not stand hearing piano being practiced, except for that piece, so that's what she practiced for hours every day, gradually learning it inside out, and it became her favourite piece. Her performance on an Asia tour shocked a friend by its sensitivity and wisdom and he recommended it to me. Maybe you need something a little different from Gould.

I recommend reading the book before listening to her playing the Variations [2], there is an entire world in that performance and the knowledge makes it more personal.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Piano-Labor-Goldberg-Variation...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0F5VRgKK1g

Sure, I was just going in the spirit of the comment. I have a few friends from degrees ranging from philosophy and music to physics who did a few months somewhere in the City and then were working relatively well paid corporate jobs ("relatively" because London just eats everything until you make enormous amounts of money). I'm sure they were useful in some degree to the legal departments they entered after "graduating" from that course...

Is there a better way to create a bullet list on HN? I googled and found this. Still time to edit.

Ah, but I'm not saying that Ivy/Oxbridge grads make better employees all else being equal (in particular salary). I'm specifically saying that on a financial/job hunting basis, it makes more sense to pick a prestigious university and "useless" degree than a "useful" degree at a non-prestigious university, in aggregate.

When you are on the other side, other variables come into play. For example, elite grads might be generally overvalued and for the same money you can get a much better community college drop out (who is on the tail end of his own talent distribution), because the market undervalues his skills. This is something that comes up a lot in the Valley and the last team I've personally hired was about half no-degree and half not-famous-degree, so you can guess my position (we hired based on technical capability and more or less ignored CVs).

Whether or not I agree with you on Goldman and McKinsey's intrinsic value adding capability, I have observed that people doing a stint at either are basically guaranteed nice employment for life, fast track to the best management jobs, get a premium on hiring, and so on. Which is what the OP was concerned with.

> not told to "just go to the best college no matter what"

> majoring in Underwater Basket Weaving was not a great idea from a financial point of view

I've met many people in places like McKinsey or Goldman Sachs (i.e. "elite" high paying jobs) with degrees from Oxford or Cambridge in Philosophy, English, Arch & Ant or Theology (in "decreasing usefulness"). Many more than, say, graduates in accounting or business administration from Manchester University, although a few might make it. Hell, I know a Harvard philosophy major who co-authored a very useful Haskell library.

My conclusions from anecdotal evidence:

- these universities, regardless of degree, encourage very hard, focused work, and teach and encourage critical thinking; both critical thinking and hard focused work are useful in all jobs;

- people overestimate the "technical" portion of most jobs, and how easily it can be taught (a law conversion course takes a mere few months in the UK, and banks routinely train thousands of fresh unqualified graduates every year);

- people overestimate the marketability of skills taught in most "useful" degrees especially outside its area of specialisation (e.g. is a medical major more qualified a strategy consultant than a philosophy major?);

- you gain access to a vast alumni network and its reputation (which includes world leaders, the CEO of the companies you apply to, etc.);

- the selective nature of admissions sends the market a signal about your "intrinsic" quality.

(edited to be more readable on mobile)

Obviously, if you want to become a specialist and you are sure of it, it is a better idea to study that field in the best place you gain admission to. But that has not been true of the vast majority of my former classmates.

In fact I watched a strange inversion whereby those who were certain they wanted to be engineers are now at McKinsey or banks and those who were certain they wanted to make tons of money in business are now working in "hard" engineering jobs (structural engineering, fluid dynamics for car companies, etc.).

A C-level (at least an honest, non-sociopathic, non-clueless one) will stress about the mortgage, kids college, affordable healthcare and all the other things of his or her thousands of employees, since actions at that level impact all of the above. With great power comes great responsibility...

I've just watched the head of a company I know hire 4 employees out of his own pocket in a shell company to do nothing, after the company where they were all employed went bankrupt. He couldn't afford more than that. He hired them a few months later in his new job. This kind of leadership doesn't make it to Business Insider or Tech Crunch.

I'll give you Eisner, but Kroc's first franchise was the 9th McDonald's overall and he is the sole reason for its international dominance, so he's not a founder only in the technical definition of founder. Technically, Warren Buffett is not the founder of Berkshire Hathaway, the old textile business.

As for Welch, GE Capital was a good chunk of GE's revenue and profits... right up to 2008 [1] where it might have sunk the company; it is now being sold off by Immelt [2]. So much for the industrial group giving the financial side "stability"...

[1] http://archive.fortune.com/2008/10/09/news/companies/colvin_...

On its business: " though the average citizen probably thinks of GE as a great industrial company, its industry classification in the Fortune 500 is diversified financials. It is by far the largest company in that industry group. The next biggest - and here we begin to glimpse GE's troubles - are Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500) and Freddie Mac (FRE, Fortune 500).

The reality is that for years, about half of GE's prodigious profits have come from General Electric Capital."

On 2008: "But now the stock trades for less than half its price 12 months ago. More than $200 billion of value has vaporized."

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Capital#Restructuring_plan

[3] On who built GE Capital: http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive... [1997]

"At another level, a small crowd of professional GE watchers know that CEO Jack Welch owes a surprising amount of his success to a profit dynamo called GE Capital Services. What only a handful of people understand--given GE Capital's reclusive nature--is how important this secret weapon has become to GE's continued prosperity, and what a model it is for managers trying to grow in any business."

Yes, Marina Square. I usually enter at City Hall and emerge at Suntec (there used to be a great Vietnamese crab and tomato soup on the 2nd floor of one of the towers, in the days of Carrefour), and so much stuff is called Marina around there... it just ended up being "Suntec" in my mind. That being said remembering which escalator to take out of the Fountain of Wealth was confusing until I remembered it was next to Entrecote.

The bowling alley itself was easy to find, but trying to get back out, I always ended up in the overground footpaths to the Ritz. Where it gets really special is when the F1 is on, at which point none of the ground level options apply and you need to reroute vertically. This is how I discovered some of the hidden rooftops: there is a line of Thai and Japanese restaurants out of the second floor of one of the Suntec towers, on the roof with trees and a pond.

It is, though, much easier to navigate than similar 3D areas in Tokyo or Osaka; in particular despite having been there over 30 times I still get lost in Tokyo Station, once emerging a full mile east of the track. I am sure the maps make sense if you are Japanese...

I used to hike/run MacRitchie every weekend or other weekend, the full 16km. The trick is to bring a spare T-shirt in a plastic freezer bag (press before sealing to remove all the air). When you get back to the Mushroom Cafe, remove your soaked T-shirt and put on the dry one. I think it ranks with the first coffee of the morning in life's greatest small pleasures.

You would be amazed at the number of billionaires ambulating Singapore malls in Uniqlo T-shirts (bought on sale, naturally)... and how non-transparent and varied rent can be even in the same building: a flatshare I stayed in used to pay $4.5k/month whilst the American expat next door paid $9.5k/month for the exact same apartment!

That being said Lucky Plaza food is pretty bad, I only included it because of the underground walkway that theoretically "joins" it to the Orchard complex. Since it is technically my neighbourhood, I usually prefer going to ION's B4 food court or Wisma. But Lucky Plaza does have Iris, AFAIK the only true bespoke tailor in a building riddled with the "overnight Batam job for $200" types, so an ION resident could be coming over to check on his Loro Piana cashmere dinner jacket's progress.

I think Suntec is the one that shocked me the most when I first arrived, I got lost around the (now defunct) bowling place enough times to systematically use Google Maps until I learnt the corridors, because they don't meet at right angles. It's kind of amazing to have to think in 3D when you are used to navigating 2D streets...

You sort of have a small version in the Orchard Road stretch. You could conceivably live above ION Orchard, go to work in your Takashimaya office, eat at an ultra cheap Lucky Plaza eatery or blow $300 at Les Amis at Shaw Centre, shop and exercise in any of the buildings in between, and never be exposed to the outside whilst living quite a comfortable life. Same at Vivocity, Raffles Place, Suntec/Promenade/Esplanade...

I respectfully disagree and think the 2000 version has aged very badly (artistically speaking, it also holds lower value for me).

For example, watch the harvester-eaten-by-worm scene [1] [2]. Which of the two has stood the test of time? I could watch the 1984 version over and over again. Everything about the 2000 version - even the timing of each shot - is uninspired and dated, almost like a Westwood Command and Conquer in-game video. Watch how much more engaging the storytelling is in 1984 in this essentially dialogue-free chapter.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P50b-19_j8c&t=18s

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxDjnSnbNhw&t=1m30s

> I've read elsewhere on the Internet that Dune the novel actually is an inspiration for the Star Wars universe

A greater inspiration is the comic series Valerian and Laureline [1]. Lucas pumped not just the characters and spaceships (yes, the Millenium Falcon comes from there) but also the atmosphere of Far West casual fun adventure and creativity bordering on the fantasy.

I look forward to reading articles about how Valerian copied Star Wars when the movie comes out [2].

Note the years the series was written and do not read the last few if you are not used to the way authors of that era dared to wrap up their stories.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Val%C3%A9rian_and_Laureline

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerian_and_the_City_of_a_Tho...

I am happy and sad. Arrival and Sicario are precisely the kind of complex, thoughtful directing that SF needs after years of Marvel movies.

On the other hand, why reboot Dune yet again? Nobody has given Asimov's Foundation a try!

Alternative hypothesis: something set 21,000 years (edited - well spotted!) into the future is going to be as impossible to imagine for us as today's world was for Jules Vernes. As such gothic madness might be a more realistic interpretation.

A lot of the criticism misses the mark. I can try and find alternative explanations. The "outdated" computers? The Butlerian Jihad caused that future world not to build anything more complicated than a light switch. The unique worlds, monochromatic and with their odd uniqueness? Visible signalling of these being different cultures that survived by virtue of their unique characteristics. Unlike the "bugs vs Marines" of a lot of space opera, the Tleilaxu, Guild, Bene Gesserit and Harkonnen are all fundamentally different, their differences giving them a survival edge, influence and power. Black desert suits? Maybe the filters need solar energy to run. Erotic Bene Gesserit intonation? Have you read the later books?

This was the only depiction of Baron Harkonnen which I thought truly captured his sadistic genius. And the blocky shields are so much cooler than the form fitting transparent bubbles of later Hollywood SF (e.g. Star Wars), also explaining the difficulty involved in going slow for so long when trying to penetrate them (because the space between shield and human is so great). Or what about the worms, which despite (or perhaps because of) the sorry state of 1984 CGI somehow were just as immense as I had imagined them reading the words. There was this alien feel to all the vehicles, especially the ornithopters and the harvester carrier, which has only been recently replicated in the seemingly nonsensical vertical ovals of Arrival or the glaring contrast between earth and ship in District 9. This was definitely the artistic generation responsible for Brutalist architecture, which is not always fun to live in, but has a thousand times more soul than the International Style condos copy/pasted across all of the world's megacities today.

Lynch's movie was glorious precisely because it freed itself from the constraint of present day science and became a standalone creation from the inspiration of the source material. The other interpretations did not create that sense of awe. I found the miniseries particularly boring, a kind of BBC period drama feel instead of being transported into a completely new, intense world. What makes Dune great as a book and as a 1984 movie is precisely that it frees itself from "realism" and suspends disbelief in just the right way for telling a great story. Might as well complain about X-wings flying like F-14s and making sound in vacuum...

> it's too easy for any local city to have a dominant "Uber for our city" which isn't Uber

I disagree. By virtue of being in the city, and only in the city, it would be too small to withstand pressure from local interests for long, and would end up like the local taxi monopolies. This will be especially true in countries "with lower GDP per capita".

Uber's international nature with its HQ in a country where corruption is relatively low, clearly enormous political and financial connections, track record in neighbouring countries or cities with clear and visible benefits to the customers (aka electorate), and willingness to fight (which is public knowledge, thus becoming signalling) allow it to scare off such pressure. Uber has more to fear from Apple than from Paris' UberX clones.

It makes it more painful, but shareholders can sue management and the board if their interests are not represented (see the numerous lawsuits against Yahoo). Or in other words "when there's a will there's a way".

The real reason they won't replace him is that he built a unicorn from nothing for them, making them very rich and cool in the process (imagine being able to say "I was an early stage investor in Uber"), and by all accounts he has not changed, with Uber being run as a large, efficient company that delivers globally with McDonald's level reliability.

Investors also know that what people say and do are very different things. In aggregate, customers will publicly complain and say they will take Lyft, but privately will vote with their wallet (after all who sees what you book), in the same way that publicly they decry energy wastage whilst they take holidays on other continents and drive SUVs to their giant McMansion. I literally cannot think of a company that "won" by promoting its ethical competitiveness, beyond conquering the few percent of the market who can afford to care and care enough to pay a premium. I wonder how many of the #DeleteUber reinstalled it quietly a few weeks later. The public has a very short memory - as a Frenchman I remember being called cheese-eating surrender monkey by the same Brits who today protest against "American imperialism".

Governments won't do anything since Uber has tons of positive externalities such as reduction in drunk driving, creation of many part time unskilled jobs and generally electorate happiness in having a reliable and affordable taxi service. They think in terms of net welfare and a few Californians having some issues at work is the least of their worries.

> the knife throwing scene in the Starship Troopers adaptation

That was on purpose. Verhoeven allegedly didn't read the book (which I doubt) and set out to create a parody of it. The movie is ridiculous because it is supposed to be ridiculous, mocking the US military as dumb hicks (enlisted AND leadership), its culture and its purpose as "fascist" and pointless, in 1997, at the tail end of a relatively peaceful period with no major conflicts for the US.

I suspect the scene [2] is a reference to the book chapter where a soldier is executed for mutiny, which Heinlein uses to demonstrate why a wartime military has strict discipline and which Verhoeven openly mocks (indeed Zim's speech about why infantry is needed in the nuclear age [1] in the book answers the same question as the movie scene).

I have not watched the new Ghost in the Shell but I doubt the director set out to ridicule the original, so the spirit of your remark still stands.

[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Starship_Troopers#Chapter_5

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNhYJgDdCu4

> readymade set of sacraments and oaths one can apply to any business to achieve magical effects

On the contrary, MBAs are designed not to be a "management formula" but teach by experience in two ways: first, exposure to thousands of real life case studies (often, in the better programs, with the CEO who lived it participating in the class discussion), and a class formed of carefully balanced profiles to have a mix of experiences contributing to the class discussion.

Domain experts will of course judge what they know: the accounting classes are weak, the investment classes are outdated, etc. but I'd argue there is no better way to speed-teach a generalist exposure, because the real world is complicated and management is about juggling inadequate resources and conflicting objectives for which there are often no rules. Whatever "rules" are taught (such as accounting standards, or using EBITDA instead of revenue for company valuation) are the product of generations of trial and error and tend to exist for a reason; it's good to question the rule and look up the reason, part of building a better mental model of how the world works.

Look at Enron: today, the black and white story is that they were fraudsters, but if you dig into the history of the company, first there were tons of genuinely interesting and moral people employed there because they believed in the vision and second there was a pattern of "the end justifies the means" from the true believers in management. So when you see a ton of smart people hired by true believers taking ethical shortcuts because "the end justifies the means"...

The generalist part is important. You might think you do not need to know about accounting or legal issues now, but as a manager they will come up. Just being aware of what can go wrong (reducing unknown unknowns) can go a long way in mitigating temptation. I think this is missed by many people who are on a certain career track: for example, I often hear that the CFA is better than an MBA if you want to stay in finance, and this may well be true (disclaimer: bailed out after failing level 2) but the CFA won't teach you, for example, how to deal with a toxic C-level hire, nor will you hear first hand a former infantry officer describe instances of creative leadership under intense pressure. Anecdotally, this kind of experience comes in a handy in private equity whilst being less useful in global macro trading.

Philip Delves Boughton's book [1] in particular captures this quite well.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ahead-Curve-Harvard-Business-School/d...

Alternative hypothesis: these salaries are helping startups.

It is fantastic that someone not born into wealth and connections can pay off their debt in record time, then save enough to cover financial security and take a few risks, such as quitting the well paying job to bootstrap a company before your twenties are over. And if the venture goes pear shaped, there are plenty of high paying jobs to catch up with the rat race.

I've heard of $170k starting salaries in the Valley last year, admittedly for the best students from MIT or Stanford. But on that money, or even half of it, you do not need to hot bunk to put a serious amount away, and give yourself the time to develop the product or convince a decent technical person to join you. And you won't be (as much) at the mercy of investors or clients.

Yes and no. Usually you can play what you like and project a certain impression (e.g. last movement of Sea Eagle [1] if wanting to show brilliance, a Mozart concerto [2] if wanting to play it safe). This is similar to showing your open source work or the solution of a take home assignment.

They will then ask you to sight read or play through famous repertoire (e.g. Tchaikovsky 5th Symphony 2nd movement horn solo [3]).

This is true whiteboarding in the sense that in theory, you might not have seen it before, but a professional (or a well prepared student) will know most of the things that can be asked, just as inverting a binary tree is one of many probable whiteboard problems an engineer who knows the game will pick up in Gayle McDowell's book or whatever.

And that's part of the game, one that older engineers don't need to play anymore, which is why they have problems at the US border, whereas older musicians must continue proving themselves as their work has a physical component that unfortunately must be demonstrated throughout their professional life.

Edit: this captures the spirit of the thing quite well, spot the parallels with an engineering interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdAnogOKR0I

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu2kIVSP5yw&t=8m

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XELNRsN3Jx8

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEbO80q66ak&t=1m12s

Not quite engineering, but related:

Professional orchestras have auditions, where you will perform a piece from the solo repertoire in front of the head of the section you are auditioning for, and a few other key staff (e.g. [1]). Some auditions will include orchestral parts, and you can buy books of famous solos for most instruments.

This repertoire has little in common with the kind of playing you will be paid for, other than as a pure display of technical ability (just like whiteboarding). For example, it is relatively poor as a gauge of the ability to play with others (accompanists follow you, not the other way around), or of your fitting in with the rest of your section.

Even on a technical level, performing a showy piece well in the few minutes of the audition does not mean you have the stamina to sustain this playing through four hours of Wagner.

[1] "The jury consists of 25 members of the orchestra: two of four concertmasters, the principals, the VPO chairman and managing director, five musicians of the relevant orchestra section, two staff council members from the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, and a representative of the Vienna State Opera’s management." - http://web.archive.org/web/20141203022823/http://slippedisc....