[wyldfire]

I agree, to some extent. It's not terribly difficult to make a package manager. But it's a strong positive signal: it's hard for someone who is really bad at software to design a popular system like that. Also, it's unlikely for someone who is a really bad employee to take the initiative to even execute a task like that.

Regardless, I don't think qualifications like this should bypass the interview. The author almost sounded a little entitled when describing the rejection. That said, I don't think his achievements got sufficient weight while evaluating him as a candidate.

See my comment [1] regarding what these interviews are selecting for -- it might be a bad process, but it might come closer to the intended goals than other processes do.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18382384

[SoylentYellow]

Why shouldn't major accomplishments bypass the "random algo from a hat" that Software Engineering interviews have devolved into? If someone is a core contributor to a large, highly successful open source project, you have concrete proof of practical experience that you can discuss with the candidate. I'd put 100x more weight on that versus his ability to invert a binary tree on the spot.