I want a job, but don't want to do those stupid tech interviews

Decent grades in uni or school and/or appropriate references from your last workplace. Or do you think a handful of interviews can give a more thorough evaluation that 8 years of secondary school + 3-4 years of technical college/uni + however many years in the workforce?

I would understand that in Europe, where it can be difficult to fire people, but in the U.S.? (In my country, we have like 3 months notice period, but also 3 months test period, during which employment can be terminated at will from both parties.)

And in fact, I got my first job - at larger American company - exactly like that (including the coffee, which my interviewer - an older director of the development center I was hired to - almost didn't finish). Well, it actually was a bit more complicated, there were two stages. But I think it's just balls.

If you say getting rid of bad employee is difficult, isn't replacing that with a difficult process, through which everybody has to go, actually less efficient? Isn't it kinda like forcing everybody who buys a DVD watch those commercials about piracy?

When I first went to work at Apple in the late 80s, they didn't use that kind of process (I don't know what they do now). They asked to see my previous work, to have the names of people I'd worked with, and to have me describe what I knew and how I might approach certain kinds of problems. That seemed reasonable to me then and still seems reasonable to me now.

I worked for several groups in Apple over the years, and I often had to go through similar interview processes even when moving within the company, but I never had to jump through the sorts of hoops that are all the rage nowadays.

The first time I encountered this currently-popular process was at Microsoft in the early 90s. The young Microsoft guys (and they were indeed all young guys) who implemented it took evident delight in roasting the candidate. There's no doubt that I failed that process, but I got a generous offer anyway, presumably because voices higher up wanted me at Microsoft. (I turned them down. Their interviewers turned me off; I didn't want to work with those guys.)

My impression of their process is not an isolated one. I knew several other people who reported the same thing. One of them was a guy who was rejected by that process, but who later went on to create and lead a Microsoft research project that has since become very well known. During his hazing he solved one of the posed problems elegantly, but was knocked by the interviewer because he didn't know the name of the data structure he had used. I remember thinking at the time, "the guy invents an efficient data structure on the spot to solve your problem and what concerns you is that he doesn't know its name?"

These hazing-ritual-style interviews don't measure what they purport to measure. You are asked brainteasers allegedly to explore whether you have the kind of mind that excels at problem-solving, but that's not what those questions measure. What they measure is how well you can ignore the distraction of a potentially hostile audience while trying to think logically. Whiteboard questions are justified in the same way--"we want to see how you think." Bad luck, then, because what you will actually see is how thick-skinned the candidate is--how much composure they retain while in the spotlight.

Neither of those qualities has anything whatsoever to do with any of the work I've done in thirty years as a programmer. Brainteaser questions and whiteboard exercises make sense if you're hiring someone to solve brainteasers in a few seconds in front of an audience; not so much for any other job.

Steve Jobs arranged a long one-on-one with me to try to persuade me to go to work for NeXT in 1994 (he succeeded). I had to go through their formal interview process after that, and one of their engineers tried to turn it into one of these hazing rituals, but his boss told him to cut it out.

Nowadays, though, they're all the rage. I finally started telling people I just wouldn't do it. If someone wants me to go to work for them now, my first question is about their interview process. If it contains elements I object to I tell them to forget it. Just mark me down with the worst possible score on those elements of the process. If you still want to talk to me after that, fine. Otherwise, you want someone else.

If you want to know what a programmer is capable of, look at existing work and talk to references. If you want to know how they think, engage them in intelligent conversation or, again, talk to people they've worked with. If you want to know specifically how a programmer will handle issues your company is grappling with, offer a short contract to solve some pe...

Anyway, here's a list of interview resources for programmers that I maintain (oriented towards companies like G/Fb): https://github.com/andreis/interview

As an employer i think there is nothing better than to be able to verify beforehand if a candidate will be able to do what you actually plan to pay him for. I would just change that "few hours" with few weeks and favor interaction with other employees (that will then be able to assess the candidate).

In fact, mostly it is assumed that the candidate should prepare for the interview (i.e. #2).

Instead of this, maybe you should concentrate to come up with better interviews which tells you that the candidate is a good fit AS-IS for the given position?

But what really alarmed me was the following sentence:

> Don't complain about a system when you can game that system to your advantage!

This is not only morally dubious, it can be downright dangerous. A broken system is unstable, and can quickly turn against you. If you see a fire in your neighbours yard you should do something about it, even if he is a total asshole.

Might want to look up that author again ;)