Thanks for the note. I agree that incentives are difficult. However, I believe the incentives are better in this industry than almost any other one. Programmer

Thanks for the note. I agree that incentives are difficult. However, I believe the incentives are better in this industry than almost any other one. Programmers switch jobs frequently, and the startup world especially is still a small place. Word gets around about your company culture, the way you hire, the way you fire, what you pay, etc. Programmers have hiring power. Especially senior ones with a lot of demonstrated experience. That doesn't mean you deserve to /be hired/, that's not what I was trying to say. It does mean you will /get hired somewhere/, so if you are not under immediate financial pressure you can afford to both be more selective and push back against crappy hiring practices more than other professionals/industries. -- Re: the emails, I can't prove causation, I only know that the moment someone decided to point towards a /person/ that it went from comments /here/, to bizarre anonymous emails attacking me for being an overly-sensitive whiner that probably can't code and that's why I didn't get hired. Which is fine, we all know the internet is a shitty place these days, but it just seems like such a /strange/ reaction to me. Agree or disagree with the idea that employers should offer prospective employees money for take-homes, or more feedback, or even whether you should tell a jerk to go shove it. But what is the emotional urge to somehow align current hiring practices in the tech industry with some kind-of, let's be honest, masculinity and toughness and if someone critiques them, they must be #1) a bad programmer, #2) a wimp, and #3) dumb. I truly don't understand, but honestly, I don't want to put that much effort into it. These days it's easier to block than to empathize, on all sides, and that's a little sad.