> But then I went to the in-person interviews. Being a self taught software developer who has been programming since I was 12, I had no idea how to reverse a bi

> But then I went to the in-person interviews. Being a self taught software developer who has been programming since I was 12, I had no idea how to reverse a binary tree. Or whatever I was supposed to do with some of the probability related word problems I got. Or certain questions about complicated SQL queries (I use an ORM, rarely do I need to write a query by hand). I had been working as a consultant and/or starting companies for almost 10 years and found the b2b sales process is literally nothing like the hiring process for SV companies. In one we talked about project goals and solutions, in the other we talked about hypothetical word problems that I have no doubt are popular in CS programs. Some of the views you will find below are conflicting. No need to call me a hypocrite, I am familiar with my dissonance on this matter. I'm a self-taught engineer and I work in the SV and SV-adjacent scenes. People who are self-taught genuinely have a hard time at the beginning and middle stages of their careers, to the extent that it can break you. If you try to explain this to any CE or CS graduate it's like they lift their magical empathy goggles and provide a full stream of excuses for the current paradigm that excludes both good and bad talent. Where I'm about to be a hypocrite is now. My unpopular opinion is that gatekeeping is just fine, but it's all in the details. If you are gatekeeping based on knowledge that is commonly acquired in college, then you are gatekeeping for education and by proxy gatekeeping for status. If your interview process involves binary search but you don't do binary search by hand during your day to day, you are gatekeeping for education and by proxy status. That said, I'm a curious person and I know how to implement some recursive binary search because fiddling with sorted numbers can be fun when I'm inebriated and bored. It also shows some uncommon competency, so it is a great gatekeeping tool for curiosity and quality. The question I began asking myself is how I balance the equation. If a non-college/CS/CE educated person struggles with more fundamental math, then the trick is to introduce tasks which also disqualify them in higher numbers. For this, I found systems design to be an incredible tool, and one that non-college/CS/CE people tend to excel at. I'm sure there's more. At the end of the day, my team has a high bar for quality needs, but balancing the equation was important so that people like me would still get through the pipeline.