The Humanities Marketplace as a Circle of Hell

  Okay, fam, I know how 
  to use Excel. I can 
  answer a multi-line 
  phone. I can greet 
  customers. Please. 
  Just put me to work.

This is the software development technical interview cycle in a nutshell, except replace "Excel" with almost any technology you want. SQL, NoSQL, C, Lisp, whatever.

In most cases, the technical interviewer demands that you paint the Mona Lisa in ten minutes, only to offer a stern frown and furrowed brow when ten minutes gets perhaps a stick figure or a smiley face.

The truth, however, has two competing versions.

From the interviewer's perspective, they've asked for something perfectly reasonable. They've been looking at the same challenge problem for weeks or months, they have the answer, they've watched ten people fail in ten different ways, and the ones that had the answer still couldn't perfectly refine the problem's follow-up questions. Surely Cindarella exists, and we will know it's her, when the glass slipper fits.

From the candidate's perspective, cartwheels and backflips are well understood to be possible for some people to perform, but even being asked to use a hula hoop is slightly degrading. Nevermind that none of us will actually ever perform backflips or hula hoops in production. It's mostly jumping jacks and push ups, so why the all elite high performance tests?

The truth though is that first impressions and introductions are a class of human activity, and as a singleton event in the history of interaction between two parties, they happen once and only once, and unfold according to their own rules. First dates, roommates, a new doctor, buying a puppy. All of these things have a certain pattern of realization, exposition and gut instinct to follow through on.

The ritual is actually an arbitrary dousing rod disconnected from the subliminal conceptual formulation of whether the two parties actually like each other on a superficial level, regardless of talent, skill or capability.

Thank you for writing this, I enjoyed reading it very much.

You seem like a thoughtful, sensitive person, I believe I have a somewhat similar personality so I can relate.

Silly question but have you tried an employment agency? Considered immigration? Fairly certain you’d live a very decent life teaching English to foreign students in Australia.

Well, if she would name the bookstore, I'd be happy not to visit it next time I'm in Corvallis.

More seriously, yes, I see the appeal of staying in the university world, or anyway in a university town. Unfortunately, the appeal of the life means that there are always plenty of people willing to take entry-level jobs there for poor wages. As for the bookstore, I'm sorry about the wages--and sorrier about the customers--but the difference between a high school senior and a published Ph.D. is probably not substantial when the job is shelving books, running the register, answering questions.