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1764 points fatihky | 5 comments | | HN request time: 0.886s | source
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lordnacho ◴[] No.12701486[source]
I'm amazed he knew things in such detail. I mean who would know just how long a MAC address is? Or what the actual SYN/ACK etc tcp flags are? You just need to know what they're used for, and if you need the specifics, you'll find out with a single search. He seemed to know that as well though. Kernighan for bit twiddling algos, that kind of thing.

It's a bit strange to have someone non-technical interviewing a techie. You end up with stupid discussions like the one about Quicksort. If you point out qs is one of several things with the same big-O, you'll probably also get it "wrong". But the real problem is that a guy who is just reading off a sheet can't give any form of nuanced feedback. Was the guy blagging the sort algo question? Did he know if in detail? Does he know what the current state of research on that area is? There's no way to know that if your guy is just a recruiter, but I'm sure even a relatively junior coder would be able to tell if someone was just doing technical word salad.

I wonder what would happen if ordinary people recruited for medical doctor jobs? Would you be comfortable rejecting a guy who'd been in medical school for 10 years based on his not knowing what the "funny bone" is? Wouldn't you tell your boss that you felt a bit out of that league? It's amazing you can get someone to do this without them going red in the face.

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1. noufalibrahim ◴[] No.12702005[source]
My father is a civil engineer and late in his career, he interviewed for a senior position at a construction company. He figured out that the interviewer didn't know what he was talking about early on the interview and confronted him with that. The interview came to a end, he was put in touch with a senior engineer at the company. He didn't take the job for other reasons. I don't think this kind of rubbish would fly in any other industry.
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2. eternalban ◴[] No.12704378[source]
A civil engineer is a professional engineer. I would assume your father is a certified PE [1].

This rubbish flies in our industry since we are not professional engineers.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principles_and_Practice_of_Eng...

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3. dilemma ◴[] No.12705083[source]
Nonsense. It's because your industry is relatively new and hasn't established the same institutions.
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4. eternalban ◴[] No.12705841{3}[source]
A professional engineer is not someone who professes to be an engineer. S/he is a "professional" per certification by "established" "institutions" within an "industry".

> Nonsense.

s/\./:

5. noufalibrahim ◴[] No.12720453[source]
This is interesting. Is this similar to things like the bar council for lawyers? I don't know if there is something similar to this in India where I'm from.