It's not so much the process itself but the overall fact that your ability to get hired ultimately hinges on things that are trivial and shallow. In general I b

It's not so much the process itself but the overall fact that your ability to get hired ultimately hinges on things that are trivial and shallow. In general I believe that skill and talent get rewarded, but everyone has a story about a job they landed out of sheer luck - they knew some obscure tool or framework that forced a hiring decision in their favor. Very few hiring managers are genuinely talented at spotting talent. Most rely on some level of cargo-cult knowledge, tribal shibboleths, and technical hazing rituals. Or they just hire lazily and optimistically, and then you have to work with those people because now you're one of them.