The nice thing would be having a basic level of trust that the person you're interviewing is an actual person. If all job interviews need to start off with a CAPTCHA we'll be in a bad place.
I imagine these shell-game interview tricks work really well at large companies where the HR screen is considered to be perfect and thus managers rejecting numerous candidates at the interview layer will be penalized in some manner. "Look, Polly on the Cloud-X-AI team accepted 80% of applicants that reached the interview phase - why is your team accepting just 20%? Is this a culture fit issue that we'll need to intervene on?"
I mean, I had a company asking me to send pictures of my passport and my residence permit by email in the first interview for a remote role. They acted very surprised when I flat out said "No, you can have them when you approach me with an offer. Then you can decide if my papers in order, not before"
Ended up not continuing the interview, as giving out very sensitive information like candies to companies on the first interviews is not a good idea at all.
I'm old, and have seen plenty of rejection, even though I'm "the real deal." But that kind of behavior has been used as an excuse for ignoring me. The icing on the cake, was when I was told that "I probably faked" my portfolio.
At that point, I realized that I am radioactive, and might as well just give up.
Yeah, I've got that t-shirt. One guy flat out told me "I think your resume is a fraud". I'd had enough, and flatly said "I really don't give a flying fuck what you believe." It was worth it watching his partner beside him choking while drinking his water.
I followed up with a letter to the CEO with description of the event and proof of my credentials. No idea what happened to the interviewer, nor do I care.
I have been in the software industry, mostly writing code, for longer than some of the people interviewing me have been alive. It took me about a year of hunting to find my current job. I rejected a couple of offers. I walked away from a couple companies with too many red flags. And I got rejected over and over and over again.
It's just the way things are. Shrug it off. Don't take it personally. Move on.
It makes me think that the r/cscareerquestions tack of forgetting everything else and focusing on just leetcode may actually have merit.
For what it's worth, I think Chris Marshall looks like a great developer and a professional I aspire to emulate. However, a lot of companies do make decisions based on metrics, keyword searches, and standardized tests like leetcode (aka stuff that misses out on the human element), so it makes sense to try and balance both if one hasn't done so already.
Unfortunately, you're correct that they are not that common.
In fact, my last job was at a place where the salesman told me to not fix a bug I found until a customer ran into that bug so that "they'll remember why they need us." I was appalled.
I'm glad there are more programmers like me out there though. Thank you. :)
a magazine cover from the 90s really stands out in my mind (I was a professional C++ coder at the time). It was about some latest-thing code team management and the cover illustration was hand-drawn, of seven gray-beard guys, looking somewhat sagacious with an aura of wisdom and insight, all gathered in a semi-circle around a single whiteboard (like an easle) solving some serious, high skill problem. Anyone with training in classical (european) arts would recognize the council of sages, and the drawing was good. There was no questioning that these (perl programmers?) were at the top of the game on that magazine cover. then came The Google ! haunting image
