[plinkplonk]

"That's just not true, particularly at the larger companies out there. Amazon, for instance, has a rigorous process that you can't (more or less) circumvent. "

"more or less" is key. If someone at the level of PG or RTM (or Linus or Hejlsberg, say) were to apply to Amazon (or Google or Yahoo), I am sure they aren't going to be asked to code "subsequence of a string" on the phone! They'd no doubt get a good interview but i highly doubt thatthis kind of "ask trivial questions" interview would occur. The purpose of such phone interviews is to eliminate clueless people who have the knack of writing good resumes , the "all hat and no cattle" types.

I was specifically responding to this sentence "PG, RTM, and TLB would probably fail your test". I doubt that somehow!

[vax_11]

> I was specifically responding to this sentence "PG, RTM, and TLB would probably fail your test". I doubt that somehow!

But you'd be wrong.