Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Interviews might not be able to tell you if someone is excellent but some terrible people will absolutely reveal their cards. You appear to be equivocating on the definition of "terrible". The type of programming interviews that people dread, and are the subject of the linked article, are technical coding quizzes. These audition-style interviews do little or nothing to identify people who are "toxic". And grinding…
> You appear to be equivocating on the definition of "terrible" Such a thing defies singular definition. Every company, person, and project will use different metrics. We might agree that someone truly awful is terrible, but more people exist on the margins. So how could I cleanly define it when clearly there isn't a single definition that matters? I agree they don't find some kinds of toxic people, but I would argue…
The submitted article is about bug squash interviews vs. leetcode interviews, in other words, technical audition-style coding tests. That's what I've been discussing all along too, and the relevant definition of "competence" is technical programming ability. You appear to be want to go off on a tangent about "toxicity", but it's unclear what bearing that has on the topic of the overarching conversation. Certainly no technical coding test is going to weed out toxicity.
> I would argue that a system that does is magic.
I agree.
Also, magic does not exist.
> Because I don't know you and do not YET trust that "obviously incompetent" isn't a synonym for "politely disagreed one time", "didn't suck up enough", or "black".
Well, you don't have to worry, because I've never hired anyone and won't be hiring anyone in the foreseeable future.
> And having a longer harder vetting process during might let a company see a red flag and avoid someone who might make such decisions and allow some time and process to review firing because the rate of terrible hires is likely lessened so firing rapidly is perceived to be less important.
It's weird that you've seemingly shifted suddenly from the topic of hiring engineers to hiring managers. Again, this is completely irrelevant to the topic of the submitted article, which is bug squash interviews. You want to argue that more "vetting" will help, but you haven't actually explained your method of vetting, other than "magic". In any case, if you're worried about racial discrimination in the firing process, which of course is a legitimate worry, then why wouldn't you worry about racial discimination in the hiring process too? After all, you don't have to fire someone who you never hire in the first place, right? Why do you think that black people wouldn't simply be "vetted" out before they get hired (especially since you yourself appear to want to increase the amount of vetting, and thus the opportunities to weed out whomever the hiring manager doesn't like)? It's truly bizarre to believe that you could institute a magical hiring process that could somehow nullify a racist hiring manager. On the other hand, if your magical hiring process could weed out racist managers before they get hired, then you wouldn't have to worry about the firing process.