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by mdcds 1264 days ago
People and jobs are non-fungible: no two candidates are identical, no two jobs are the same.

Bid/ask spreads make sense to me only in situations when fungible units of A are traded for fungible units of B.

3 comments

I don’t want to defend the idea as an actual product too much because I’m mainly interested in it as an experiment. It would be revealing to have a “God’s eye” view of the labor market even if it has an asterisk.

If people and jobs were fungible you’d be able to skip the interview process too. I definitely agree that it’s imperfect though. Maybe with some filtering it would be possible to narrow down candidates qualified enough for an interview.

if that is true then why does everyone need to do bullshit coding interviews instead of being hired for their projects and experience, degrees and track record?
Because employers _want_ people to be fungible. The quest to quantify and systematize hiring is a Quixotic effort at solving real challenges, but it persists because nobody has come up with an actual solution.
people have a long time ago, it’s called a university degree

also in the US employment is at will. not happy? fire the person.

perfect response to what at first sounds like a good idea.