>I would love if life were a pure meritocracy filled with lollipops, puppy dogs and mediocre metaphors... but it isn't. There isn't a great way to determine the

>I would love if life were a pure meritocracy filled with lollipops, puppy dogs and mediocre metaphors... but it isn't. There isn't a great way to determine the difference between honest, skill or anything else -- but if one person is willing to put on a suit and the other wants to opine about his irrelevant ethics... well we know who usually gets the job. I don't remember the last time I saw an experienced SysAdmin or Programmer interview in a suit and get the job. No, wait, I do. It was shortly after the .com crash. the applicant was mostly a visual basic programmer. Really old guy who was missing his index finger. He got the job, too, and was pretty good (he was doing something for our accounting systems, if I remember right) As I recall, I recommended the guy (It wasn't my decision, but being one of the other programmers, I got to make a recommendation) because he brought actual code to the interview, which is something else that is at least moderately unusual (not as unusual as the suit, but certainly not common.) A nice shirt? sure. A tie? well, maybe. but a full on suit, from what I've seen, is pretty rare for technical positions, even during the interview. Now, i've probably only participated in maybe 50 interviews for 'real companies' so my sample size isn't huge. it's possible that I just haven't seen the suits.