I have a theory on this. Let me make an analogy to advice I gave to a naive female friend (personal theory, I'm not a psychologist). Consider psychopaths. They

I have a theory on this. Let me make an analogy to advice I gave to a naive female friend (personal theory, I'm not a psychologist). Consider psychopaths. They are not many (in percent of the male population), but if you go out and meet guys socially, you will meet a much larger fraction of them. That is because they use people and have to get new social environments quite often... I think it is the same when you interview programmers; the bad ones tend to apply for jobs much more. The interview process has a built in selection bias, so people doing interviews go crazy because most people they see are ass hats. And about white boards -- there are lots of subjects where I have good experience, but not recent enough to do a white board test. OTOH, one of the smartest people I studied with aced all the math courses but could never learn to program. [Edit: What I was trying to say here, an interviewer couldn't see a difference between us two by asking about e.g. a language I haven't used in a few years.] Disclaimer: I don't know how good I am, but I only look for work at most every few years... :-)