A random rant about tech job interviews

People often lament the state of programmer job interviews. Here are my comments on some of the most oft complained about points:

Being asked to solve simple problems is an insult to the dignity of software engineers.

Do you not have to solve simple problems at work? Do all problems that touch the mind of a 'senior' become irreducibly complex? In that case, I suggest nobody ever hires a 'senior'.

Culture fit is an arbitrary carte blanche for employers to reject people they don't like that would otherwise be technically capable.

Working as a team requires you to be able to tolerate each other. $20/hour is too much to spend on people to fight each other over stupid things.

I froze up because I was nervous and I couldn't solve the problem that I otherwise would have been able to.

Cool. Don't freeze up next time. Alternatively, build a device that employers can use to differentiate between freeze-ups due to incompetence and nervousness then try to sell it to employers.

I was screened by HR who didn't know what she was talking about

You will have to talk to people who don't know what they are talking about at your job. You need to be able to change your frequency depending on your audience.

They want me to install some dodgy software on my machine while they watch me do remote programming.

Spin up a virtual box then. You do know how to do that, right?

Some girl I went to school with who doesn't know what she is doing got the job because of diversity quota and the matriarchy!!!!!!

Cool. Now what will YOU do for YOU?

Why do I need to reverse a binary tree when nobody has ever had to do that ever in their coding lives?

It's a proxy for your competence. It's the same reason why they ask people how to differentiate some weird sinxcosx function in schools when you would never have to do that ever in your entire lives. The system is not perfect but IQ tests are banned so this is what they've got.