Item — HN Reader

That really depends then on what one is hiring for. An entry level position? Mid level? Senior? or Rock Star?

Those who are opinionated and snobby, even if they are the best preforming, may not be the best fit in many environments. A not insignificant portion of a senior developer's time can be spent mentoring people - and the snobby person may not be the best choice for that.

If the goal is to hire a team of one - great. If the goal is to hire into a team of half a dozen in what would be termed an enterprise development - the refusal to take a programming test may and work with the process rather than rebel against it may act as a strong indication that the person isn't going to be a good fit.

If you're hiring for 'enterprise development' you're already outside the interest zone of actually talented developers, so that works out I guess. If you're doing 'enterprise' just pick up a bunch of guys with Agile and Cisco certificates, indian outsourcing will also do just fine.

This might be the single most arrogant comment I've ever read on HN. At least those enterprise developers perform actual engineering instead of copy pasting the newest JS framework tutorials and pushing pixels around like all the boot camp hipsters without proper CS education nowadays.