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Now that you said it, I remember my first job interview as well. 1999, Linux administrator in an ISP. - Can you setup a ppp connection on Linux via terminal (I

Now that you said it, I remember my first job interview as well. 1999, Linux administrator in an ISP. - Can you setup a ppp connection on Linux via terminal (I did it, using minicom) - My future manager and partner (I ended up becoming a partner in the ISP, and technical director, some years later), gave me a sendmail book, and asked me to restrict the relay on sendmail using the book. I did it. I was hired, and spent the next years of my life, setting routes on cisco routers and managing some linux and freebsds in a small ISP. It was a great school.

b112 5y ago
So here's the difference now. Back in the 90s, absolutely no one went into computing for the money, or the job prospects. Only people deeply interested in computing did. They gravitated toward it, it was fun, they had an aptitude for it. These days, people enter the field for cash, or because they are mildly interested and it is the best option, out of other mildly interesting things. There is a vast difference between these two classes of candidates. Note, I am not saying that there are no younger employees that fit #1, but merely that they are far outnumbered by those barely able to perform the job. Everyone was self taught in the day, when I started there was no internet to help me, and places like stack overflow came much, much later. If something didn't work, I had to figure it out, no one could help. I had to look at sources, read entire books, learn how to debug, learn debugging tools, etc, etc. Meanwhile, most modern candidates want cash cash cash, and if you ask them use your tool chain, they're pissed. On top of that, I have seen endless candidates come out of College with zero ability for analytical thinking. It's only rote work for them. Without frameworks, sql abstraction, and 100 other crutches, a rote worker cannot do this work. This, I think, is why modern interview processes are so absurd. There's good money now, so naturally everyone wants the job. This leads to the follow up, which is that rote workers are now looking to hire other rote workers. And thus, a rote workers do, they ape other company's processes. They try to hire like google, even thought they are tiny in size, or, even though the type of work is different.
- pelasaco 5y ago
  Exactly. In 1999, I just wanted to experiment. My first salary was like 500 bucks. The IT/software development world was boring. I remember telling my father, territory manager at IBM, that I would never be like him and he telling me that I should invest my time on Windows NT and Visual Basic because Linux would never get anywhere.. we were both totally wrong.
  - cbsks 5y ago
    Interestingly, in 1999 my father worked at Microsoft on the Windows NT kernel but at home he had a Linux server and taught me to install Debian from floppy disks.
- Clubber 5y ago
  The irony to me is it seems the current interview process stands to filter out the people who are genuinely interested in tech and learning and caters to people who google "tech interview questions for X." FWIW I would never sit for any interview that was multi-tier over several hours. I'm fortunate in that I have a pretty good network and everyone in my network would hire me if they had a spot open. I haven't cold-interviewed since probably 2012 and that was on a whim for iPhone dev work (I had released 3 fairly successful but not life changing apps already). I ended the process when they wanted me to write code over Thanksgiving because I hadn't already written enough code to their satisfaction. That company is now out of business.
  - crate_barre 5y ago
    I do remember a take home project given to me over Christmas, with a serious expectation that I not take more than 48 hours. Oh, and my favorite one, a ‘pop-quiz’ take home test. They wouldn’t tell me what time they were sending it, and just suddenly sent it. I mean they told me what day, but they wouldn’t say what time. So I had to sit around and just wait for hours and ‘bam’ there was the email with a time limit given. Can’t make this shit up. There’s truly something uniquely douchey about tech hiring that I can’t exactly put my finger on. It’s either some tacky attempt by startups, or in a similar vein, a tacky attempt by larger orgs. Douchey is the only word that comes to mind.
  - dtoms 5y ago
    i have a good network too and they all now work at FAANG like companies, and want to hire me, to do domain specific work. But have no power to do direct hiring. So it varies really.

b112 5y ago

So here's the difference now. Back in the 90s, absolutely no one went into computing for the money, or the job prospects. Only people deeply interested in computing did. They gravitated toward it, it was fun, they had an aptitude for it. These days, people enter the field for cash, or because they are mildly interested and it is the best option, out of other mildly interesting things. There is a vast difference between these two classes of candidates. Note, I am not saying that there are no younger employees that fit #1, but merely that they are far outnumbered by those barely able to perform the job. Everyone was self taught in the day, when I started there was no internet to help me, and places like stack overflow came much, much later. If something didn't work, I had to figure it out, no one could help. I had to look at sources, read entire books, learn how to debug, learn debugging tools, etc, etc. Meanwhile, most modern candidates want cash cash cash, and if you ask them use your tool chain, they're pissed. On top of that, I have seen endless candidates come out of College with zero ability for analytical thinking. It's only rote work for them. Without frameworks, sql abstraction, and 100 other crutches, a rote worker cannot do this work. This, I think, is why modern interview processes are so absurd. There's good money now, so naturally everyone wants the job. This leads to the follow up, which is that rote workers are now looking to hire other rote workers. And thus, a rote workers do, they ape other company's processes. They try to hire like google, even thought they are tiny in size, or, even though the type of work is different.

pelasaco 5y ago
Exactly. In 1999, I just wanted to experiment. My first salary was like 500 bucks. The IT/software development world was boring. I remember telling my father, territory manager at IBM, that I would never be like him and he telling me that I should invest my time on Windows NT and Visual Basic because Linux would never get anywhere.. we were both totally wrong.
- cbsks 5y ago
  Interestingly, in 1999 my father worked at Microsoft on the Windows NT kernel but at home he had a Linux server and taught me to install Debian from floppy disks.
Clubber 5y ago
The irony to me is it seems the current interview process stands to filter out the people who are genuinely interested in tech and learning and caters to people who google "tech interview questions for X." FWIW I would never sit for any interview that was multi-tier over several hours. I'm fortunate in that I have a pretty good network and everyone in my network would hire me if they had a spot open. I haven't cold-interviewed since probably 2012 and that was on a whim for iPhone dev work (I had released 3 fairly successful but not life changing apps already). I ended the process when they wanted me to write code over Thanksgiving because I hadn't already written enough code to their satisfaction. That company is now out of business.
- crate_barre 5y ago
  I do remember a take home project given to me over Christmas, with a serious expectation that I not take more than 48 hours. Oh, and my favorite one, a ‘pop-quiz’ take home test. They wouldn’t tell me what time they were sending it, and just suddenly sent it. I mean they told me what day, but they wouldn’t say what time. So I had to sit around and just wait for hours and ‘bam’ there was the email with a time limit given. Can’t make this shit up. There’s truly something uniquely douchey about tech hiring that I can’t exactly put my finger on. It’s either some tacky attempt by startups, or in a similar vein, a tacky attempt by larger orgs. Douchey is the only word that comes to mind.
- dtoms 5y ago
  i have a good network too and they all now work at FAANG like companies, and want to hire me, to do domain specific work. But have no power to do direct hiring. So it varies really.