[inimino]

> The big scam is "We hire the best and the brightest".

And adding noise to the hiring process increases the effect of "we are the best".

If you flipped a coin, it would be more honest and less expensive than putting people through a "difficult" whiteboard test. But you wouldn't get the "we only hire geniuses" effect.

As these "difficult" tests are usually based on a corner of the CS field that the interviewer enjoys, it is essentially random, while appearing to be totally meritocratic.

You end up with a process that filters out 90% of qualified candidates, but nobody that was hired by that process wants to change it.

[rramdin]

"Automatically reject 10% of applicants. We don't hire unlucky people."

[borplk]

Spot on.