Isn't the point of technical interviews to determine one's knowledge of useless trivia? That is to say, that is what is typically measured, and it's seemingly t

Isn't the point of technical interviews to determine one's knowledge of useless trivia? That is to say, that is what is typically measured, and it's seemingly the rare workplace that even attempts to measure whether their hiring processes correlate with work performance. Hiring for developer positions is a cargo cult practice -- which is not necessarily a blanket condemnation, but as a non-traditional candidate it's certainly done me no favors. Generally, this is a hard problem with no simple solution: evaluating programmers requires almost as much domain knowledge as programming does. I'm pretty sure that you're not entirely wrong about what you say re: nerd signaling. However, while I share your frustration about the current state of the programming interview, I personally don't see much point in trying to buck the trend. If you really can't see your way to learning the trivia, then probably it's best to focus on your other strengths and show them what you do know. If they really only value the appearance of wisdom then you probably don't want to be working there anyway.