And here it is. I do plenty of interviews, and so I do have some sympathy for the idea that some overwhelming majority of applicants simply cannot perform even

And here it is. I do plenty of interviews, and so I do have some sympathy for the idea that some overwhelming majority of applicants simply cannot perform even the most basic coding tasks but are somehow trying to sneak in anyway, but at the same time I can't escape the suspicion that a lot of the stories are actually from badly-designed or badly-calibrated interviews gone off the rails. I absolutely believe that the article we're discussing here gives a fair view of a Google phone screen, since I've been through it too and even got asked some of the same questions. The only reason I "passed" was that I recalibrated way, way down to meet the expectations and the technical understanding of the recruiter I was talking to (who did very clearly seem to be reading off a prepared script). This was surprising since Google had reached out to me to ask me to apply, which one would think indicates a confidence in basic technical skills, but if I hadn't caught that and adjusted how I was interpreting and answering the random trivia they threw at me, I likely wouldn't have passed the screen and would have been labeled just another impostor trying to sneak into a job I'm unqualified for. So when I hear someone else talking about all the "unqualified" applicants they get, I can't help wondering how many really were qualified applicant talking to unqualified interviewer using unqualified interview process. (disclosure: I don't work for Google, don't ever intend to work for Google, and in fact hung up on a later screening call out of frustration with the way they ran their process, which at least finally got their recruiters to stop spamming me)