Linux Foundation survey shows companies desperate to hire open-source talent

Today a lot of companies are moving towards Open Source. Linux Foundation and the CNCF themselves having some of the biggest open source projects like the Linux Kernel, Kubernetes and as we consume these technologies, a lot of companies build open source tools and developers having experience in contributing to such open source tools and technologies provide a lot of value. The software development space is moving towards Open Source!

I open sourced my first project months after Sourceforge was born. I've been doing open source continuously since then. I've lead 3 open source projects.

Most companies have bought into the old "Frat Boy" meme, albeit in a different form these days. The idea is to only pick "the best and the brightest" judged by the criteria chosen by the "best and the brightest" (Dunning-Kruger effect : -) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect)

Back in the day, MS decided you needed to be able to figure out a puzzle, e.g. how many ping pong balls fit in a truck, how many piano tuners are there in Detroit, etc. Eventually books arrived with all the "good" puzzles and people stopped using that as a gate keeper.

These days you'll find that your post-phone interview is conducted by 20-somethings who just graduated. The questions are all related to their data structures course. How fast can you reverse a linked list? What's the O(n) of this search? I'd be curious to see if they can perform Knuth's line break algorithm or Forgy's OPS5 algorithm.

Of course your resume is never read.

And, of course, those data structure experts have no clue how to prove programs correct, create an expert system, write a JTAG device driver, etc. The "gate keeping interview" is the new IQ test, conducted by people who think they are the "best and the brightest".

It used to be that the manager who needed a person would interview the person, examine their resume and references, and see if the person had the required skills for the job. Now it seems you don't meet a project manager until you are hired.

The primary blame is on Google/Microsoft/etc. Their HR (sorry, People department) is badly broken. I can't find the reference but I believe Google's head of "Persons" said the same thing.