Because too many bad interviews are all about ensuring that the candidate knows the exact same 1% of CS/SWE knowledge as the interviewer.
Don't worry, karma dictates when the interviewer goes looking they'll get rejected for not knowing some similarly esoteric graph theory equation or the internal workings of a NIC card.
Too much of our interviewing is reading the interviewer's mind or already knowing the answer to a trick question.
The field is way too vast for anyone to even know a majority, and realistically it's extremely difficult to assess if someone is an expert in a different 1%.
Sometimes I feel like we need a system for just paying folks to see if they can do the job. Or an actually trusted credentialing system where folks can show what they've earned with badges and such.
A better interview question about this subject doesn't assume they have it memorized, but if they can find the answer in a short time with the internet or get paralyzed and give up. It's a very important skill to be able to recognize you are missing information and researching it on the Internet.
For example, one of my most talented engineers didn't really know that much about CS/SWE. However, he had some very talented buddies on a big discord server who could help him figure out anything. I kid you not, this kid with no degree and no experience other than making a small hobby video game would regularly tackle the most challenging projects we had. He'd just ask his buddies when he got stuck and they'd point him to the right blog posts and books. It was like he had a real life TRRPG Contacts stat. He was that hungry and smart enough to listen to his buddies, and then actually clever enough to learn on the job to figure it out. He got done more in a week than the next three engineers of his cohort combined (and this was before LLMs).
So maybe what we should test isn't data stored in the brain but ability to solve a problem given internet access.
Don't worry, karma dictates when the interviewer goes looking they'll get rejected for not knowing some similarly esoteric graph theory equation or the internal workings of a NIC card.
Too much of our interviewing is reading the interviewer's mind or already knowing the answer to a trick question.
The field is way too vast for anyone to even know a majority, and realistically it's extremely difficult to assess if someone is an expert in a different 1%.
Sometimes I feel like we need a system for just paying folks to see if they can do the job. Or an actually trusted credentialing system where folks can show what they've earned with badges and such.
A better interview question about this subject doesn't assume they have it memorized, but if they can find the answer in a short time with the internet or get paralyzed and give up. It's a very important skill to be able to recognize you are missing information and researching it on the Internet.
For example, one of my most talented engineers didn't really know that much about CS/SWE. However, he had some very talented buddies on a big discord server who could help him figure out anything. I kid you not, this kid with no degree and no experience other than making a small hobby video game would regularly tackle the most challenging projects we had. He'd just ask his buddies when he got stuck and they'd point him to the right blog posts and books. It was like he had a real life TRRPG Contacts stat. He was that hungry and smart enough to listen to his buddies, and then actually clever enough to learn on the job to figure it out. He got done more in a week than the next three engineers of his cohort combined (and this was before LLMs).
So maybe what we should test isn't data stored in the brain but ability to solve a problem given internet access.