[kafkaesq]

Some useful advice, but something about the overall tone seems a bit off:

You are a manager and it’s time to hire a new developer to join your impressive team of A+ players.

That's where things started to go of course. You're not an "A+ player", and most of your team aren't "A+ players" either. You're just human beings doing the best you can and (hopefully) trying to improve a bit each day -- like anybody else.

No one wants to work with losers. But any (serious) talk of of "We're all A+ players here!" or "I know how to spot A+ players!" is just motivational kool-aid, and ultimately a distraction from the real work you have to do -- including the task of finding the best people you can hire, and who are willing to throw their lot with your cause.

Especially when it's quite often the people hired for their seeming "A+" qualities (which they are able to exude in spades) who turn out to be the most toxic, morale-killing members of your (once) impressive team.

[jasode]

>, but something about the overall tone seems a bit off: [...] You're not an "A+ player", and most of your team aren't "A+ players" either.

I believe you misinterpreted the author's backhanded "compliment" about teams' _self-proclaimed_ "impressive A+ players". His tone is sarcasm if you combine it with the repeated fixation on "Fibonacci" puzzles in the rest of the essay:

- quote: , what possible insight does questions like “solve a Fibonacci sequence” + whiteboard + no internet give you to know about a person fit for a development role?

- Go Beyond Fibonacci Pen/Paper Tests to Assess Candidates

- If you get Fibonacci’ed in your next job interview, perhaps you should look elsewhere? If you are the one doing the Fibonacci’ing, you are doing it wrong.

(In other words, if your team bombards candidates with Fibonacci, you of course will think your company consists of A+ players!)

His "tone" might have tripped the obvious sarcasm detector more readily if he wrote it to say: "it's time to hire a new developer to join your impressive Project Euler hackathon champions. blah blah blah"

[kafkaesq]

Ah - so he's a bit ahead of me (with his sarcasm), then. It's just that I see the "A+" label (and its various synonyms: "phenomenal", "astonishing", "rockstar", "badass", "10x-er", etc.) touted in all seriousness, far too often -- that I guess I've become conditioned to being always a bit negatively triggered by them.

[soVeryTired]

But he also says "After all, the primary purpose of doing technical interviews is to ensure A+ players are identified and are persuaded to join your team. If your process is preventing this, then you are doing it wrong."

That doesn't sound like sarcasm to me...

[jasode]

It may not be in that particular sentence since he's directing that "A+" label towards the candidates. (He's being genuinely charitable towards the job seekers.) However, when he's directing the "A+" label towards the interviewing team, it comes across as a backhanded swipe.

Perhaps calling it "sarcasm" is too strong since his sarcasm is very subtle. If you integrate his entire essay about "Technical Interview Rift", he essentially wants to lecture the "too cool for school" dev teams that pride themselves on Fibonacci puzzles, etc. However, he can't go into full-frontal sarcasm mode like Stephen Colbert / John Stewart because he doesn't want to make the very audience he's trying to reach tune out from his message.

Therefore, he has to dance around his intended message in such a way as to not insult his target. There's probably a better word to describe what he's trying to accomplish but I couldn't think of it so I called his passive-aggressive tone: "sarcasm".

[jghn]

When I see job postings or recruiter messages talking about how they only hire The Best I immediately tune out. At best they'll be extremely misguided and delusional. At worst they'll be massive Dbags

[mathattack]

A+ is also relative to the environment. Performance doesn't always extend across companies. Solo programmers who are an A+ in informal environments struggle in environments that require more inter-programmer coordination. And some A+ specialists sometimes struggle when expected to be generalists, and vice versa. Some big company superstars thrive in small companies, but not all. And some startup superstars would fall apart with the structure of Microsoft and Google.

[jackmott]

oh you said toxic.