[slpsys]

Yeah, no. Of the dozens of Googlers I've met, their take is that this is just not the case. As others have pointed out, it is _not_ a lottery as to false positives, but it certainly can be for false negatives; Yegge himself points it out with "interview anti-loops."

But you know what? From a certain perspective, that's fine. We're currently going through a hiring phase at the startup I work for, and I'd much rather turn away people who might be ok than lock someone in who slid by. From his StackOverflow profile, cletus is a top-notch developer (or at the very least passionate and knowledgeable), it just sounds like he encountered his anti-loop. The biggest problem I see (and encountered this myself with them) is that there's no real feedback, even if your raw score was only just below the mark, where it might behoove everyone if you came back and interviewed with a little more experience and/or preparation.

[enneff]

"Yeah, no. Of the dozens of Googlers I've met, their take is that this is just not the case."

I am a Googler. I mentioned explicitly that false negatives happen, and stated why they are preferable. Why, then, do you preface your comment with a disagreement?

[csallen]

Because you also said this:

>> If the feedback from five different interviewers led to a 'no hire' decision, the chances are good that it was the right decision.