Item — HN Reader

The answer to your question is in a previous HN link: http://raganwald.posterous.com/i-dont-hire-unlucky-people

Say you have 50 people, all of whom are capable of doing the job. You have to whittle that number down somehow. Might as well find a problem only 1 in 50 could answer.

2 comments

Of course this was given as an example of how NOT to select engineers.

Problem being that in programming you don't have 50 candidates to choose from. At the moment things seem to greatly favor the candidates rather than employers.

As a programmer I really like this, but as somebody who hires programmers it makes things difficult!