If Carpenters Were Hired Like Programmers

Reading this is enraging because it reminds me of an interview I had.. they kept asking me repeatedly over and over if I ever had specific experience with this very specific individual setup and circumstance that was particular to them only.

Later I complained to the Director about this interview experience and he was good enough to meet with me to talk about it. He explained that they had no choice, that the VP had already decided they wanted to hire a specific person, so the only way they could have hired me or anyone else above the wishes of the VP would be to not only prove that I had domain-specific knowledge, but also exceed it. I.e. Have already been working inside the team.

I did get hired to that team a few years later and the repetitive question wasn't relevant anymore.

Positions posted are not always available positions.

I'll never forget the time I was in an interview and I was asked about paging data in a sql query and I laughed and said I'd have to google the syntax and the interviewer gave me this horrified stare like I had just said I wanted to eat his children.

This seems like only 1 aspect of what's broken now.

Interviewer:

First, congratulations, out of the 13000 applications we received, our AI selected yours for further consideration.

Now please take this test on the chemistry of lignin, and it's reactions. If you don't hear back with your results, it's because we decided not to persue a relationship at this time...

After the test, we will ask you to build a mock tudor house from rosewood. It should take no longer than a few days.

Again, if you don't hear back...

Then you will have an email interview with a junior from our Department of Talent, where we'll grill you on any blemishes in your record.

Following that, assuming you hear back from us, there will be a psuedo-scientific psychology and personality test.

By this point, some weeks or even months later, we may well have already hired internally, or just dropped the hiring requirement (even if it actually existed), but assuming we still need someone, you will then have a brief video call with whoever happens to be free in the department, to discuss wood and possibly carpentry, and houses and such ...

There will be 3 such interviews, and, assuming you hear back, you will then move to the next round, where we will ask you to build a ship's hull, and carve a medieval gargoyle ...

...

Thank you for your application to the role of 'nailgun operator'. Here at L'Arborious, we are passionate about hiring the top 0.01% of talent!

The irony here is carpenters aren't generic. You don't hire "a carpenter", you hire a cabinetmaker, a framer, a fine woodworker, a cooper. It would be ridiculous to hire a framer for cooperage.

Most people doing tech hiring are idiots. But most people getting hired are also idiots. So I think it all shakes out about even. If the results actually mattered, we would have some kind of industry wide standards, people would need to understand the tools they use or computer science, etc. That's not really the case anymore. You can hire any monkey who's gone through a boot camp and they'll fake like they know what they're doing pretty well. The work will be shit, but you can sell shitty work as long as it looks good to the customer.

Reminds me of this YouTube sketch: https://youtu.be/BKorP55Aqvg?si=NxCQht1PqO0hfPfH