Fyi... that 199/200 quote came from J Spolsky that he got from D E Shaw.[1] That's a hedge fund and like other computational finance firms, they would look for strong programmers who had very good math skills (statistics, probabilities, etc).[2]

Therefore, the typical web programmer who knows the difference between HTML tags and CSS selectors, or knows text slicing with Python/PERL, will not pass the rigorous interviews. Using that criteria, it's very realistic that less than 0.5% of applicants would be hired.

Another way to put it: those trading firms are looking for math nerds who happen to know how to program more than programmers who happen to know some math. Including them in the general discussion about "what's wrong with hiring" will skew the discussion. Most everybody else is just looking for CRUD/web/iOS/etc programmers.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._E._Shaw_%26_Co.

[2]http://www.streetofwalls.com/finance-training-courses/quanti...