[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".