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by bentlegen 3565 days ago
> If you have ever done a software engineering interview, you would know that this is completely absurd. There is no way to negotiate or charm someone into passing a software engineering interview.

I'm sure the author is sufficiently qualified to pass such an interview (or 8), but I find this statement pretty bizarre. "Charm" might not be the right word, but under-qualified candidates pass software engineering interviews all the time.

2 comments

That is so true !

I have come to believe that getting a job is either luck or accident.

Qualification is just the other half of the whole story. And by qualification I mean not just the scale/standard by which I would be measured during the interview but also formal educational endorsements.

Am I qualified to get a job ? Maybe. Am I lucky ? I'll find out. Same holds for any job seeker out there as well. Will I do anything meaningful at work or release more bugs than anybody else out there... Time will tell.

This is a particularly interesting anecdote about someone faking his way into Google, and then later starting a company almost as famous.

https://www.wired.com/2013/04/fakeit/

Ugh. This is a good example of how self-promoters operate. Biz Stone makes it sound like it's "him & Ev". But since this came out there have been more revelations about the early days of Twitter. Biz Stone lobbied Ev to get his title inflated to co-founder but the equity stake tells all: 3% (versus Jack Dorsey's 20% and Ev's 70%). "Stone's co-founder title didn't get him a ton of equity, but it did afford him the ability to say he was co-founder of Twitter. That became priceless later on..."[1]

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/how-biz-stone-became-a-twitte...

Imposture syndrome is very much the other side of the same coin, unfortunately.
Can't tell if typo or coincidentally-interesting new phrase. :p