Yeah, this is the impression I got when he talked about spending so much time training for the problems, especially the bit where he said it was all about hoping you’ve already seen and memorized the problems while pretending it’s the first time you’ve seen them. That’s the whole point of obscure problems like that: to show how you can handle a new problem.

I’ve interviewed for technical positions and I don’t even really care if you get the right answer as much as I care about how you approach the problem.

Shit like this will just make it harder to figure out who the real programmers are and separate them from the people who are only there because they know tech skills means money but didn’t actually develop any tech skills because they were too busy gaming the system. I don’t want to hire someone who spent hours memorizing things they think I want regurgitated on command. I want to hire someone who can understand the overall picture of what’s going on and what needs to be done because it’s interesting to them.