[robbrit]

You're right, a lot of these metrics aren't as useful for startups and small companies as they are for bigcos.

> Having an "objective" process is near impossible

You're completely right here, however there are plenty of biases that can be avoided by attempting some level of objectivity.

> I doubt this process is risk averse

The risk-aversion is about avoiding hiring people that can't write code. You're right that it doesn't filter for character, which you will discover very quickly when working at larger companies! However a lot of the processes such as code review and design reviews help mitigate some of the bad character quirks that impact software. These processes are often not present at smaller companies, so the impact of character flaws is much larger there.

> Relevancy seems like a joke in your list

I'd say it's one of the most important ones on the list, especially for startups. When I was hiring for startups, I would get loads of people who could talk the talk but couldn't write a line of code. "Relevancy" means that your interview confirms that the candidate can actually code rather than just talk about it.

[siphor]

Interesting on the relevancy stand point. As an iOS developer, I had to learn a whole new set of skills for the interviews... I can count on one hand the number of times I needed to use techniques needed for the algorithm questions. I feel like the skills around making large scale apps is more about being able to reason about large scale projects and keeping everything clean and tidy.

I haven’t really met anyone yet who could talk the talk but couldn’t write code... I’ve definitely met people who have tried... maybe I have a good BS detector, or maybe I’ve been lucky? All people I’ve hired without doing the BST/linked list/DP problems, Ended up working out great. They probably can’t do those problems still, but they can code a damn good app. Guess it goes back to not caring about false negatives