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Comment by Quarrelsome | Hacker News Reader

I once attended an interview for a contract in the south of the UK with a company that I had applied to before a couple years back but sadly had a mandatory "must have degree" caveat. Strangely enough they'd dropped it the second time round.

I step into the interview room and this tired looking 55-60 year old gent asks me the first question.

> What does the "private" keyword do.

Said in such a tired fashion that I skipped the question mark to effectively transmit its delivery. So I answer, as you do and this gent breathes the biggest sigh of relief I've ever heard. I ask him what's up and he replies:

> You're the sixth candidate I've asked that to today and the only one to get it right.

We have issues with finding real talent in the UK (my company STILL has an entire team of 4-6 developers to fill) and Brexit really isn't helping.

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I'm a contractor, but I prefer to work remotely from my comfortable house in Cardiff.

The tech industry is changing, and there is no need to waste office space on developers if it isn't required, especially if it's a team of contractors anyway.

what you really need is easier visas for overseas engineers, the EU has a shortage themselves. Right now only few huge companies provide them.

yeah but Eastern Europeans that we got through the EU were culturally equivalent, the ones further east are much more of a crapshoot and the now the EU ones are less likely to want to come since we exited the EU because it doesn't guarantee them the rights they now expect. Any visa fix is not as good as what we already have.

This can't possibly be true... can it?

I exaggerated the number a little. I think I was the third or fourth. At that company I met a contractor who thought architecture meant just turning everything into a Singleton. I was asked to write some tests for his code (fml).

> Its in the Gang of Four!

Was his defence.

One chap at my last place had a crusade against the global variables littered throughout the code base. By gods did he fight the good fight. After what must've been a good 2 years of active bitching and pruning, a new product was developed by a sub team without him - to be considered the pinnacle of tech that the team could produce.

Look at this - just a single global variable!!! Amazing! The progress!

Just that one global Dictionary<string,object> which contained everything the various classes would ever want, all easily grabbed with nothing more than a string and a quick cast into whatever the actual type was.

Magic

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but that is way worse than just having several globals.

So. Much. Worse.

(sarcasm on the internet failure)

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