[neverminder]

I have noticed that too often the interviewers look for people like themselves, which I find really naive - chances of you finding your own copy are slim to none.

A recent anecdote from my own experience. I've interviewed with this company. Everything seemed to go well, I had a talk with hiring manager, then with one of the guys from technical team where we discussed real world problems, etc. Everything goes well. As soon as I start thinking this could be the one, they say something along the lines of "let's see if this other guy from our team has some questions". So they bring the other guy who seems a little annoyed being dragged away from what he was doing (we're in an open office with glass walls, so I could see him at his desk). This guy turns out to be the "bad cop". He immediately goes down to more CS/academic level with his questions and eventually asks some question along the lines of "what does compiler do in a situation X when there is Y". Well, I am forced to answer that I have no idea (it's not exactly the kind of problem you normally encounter in real life), so the "bad cop" just nods his head in a forgiving manner and I know immediately it's a bust and that he's gonna veto me out. Sounds familiar?

[jondubois]

Yes, that could happen if the person interviewing you has really deep knowledge of a very narrow area and somehow they've grown to think that this niche embodies all of software engineering.

I find that older, more experienced engineers tend to know not to ask these kinds of deep domain-specific questions (unless the are directly relevant to the position being applied for).

The unfair part about this type of interview process is that the interviewer assumes that what the candidate knows is only a subset of what they know - But they completely ignore the knowledge that lies outside of the intersection (which could also be useful).