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Comment by romanhn | Hacker News Reader

With a big company like Google you can't just randomly hire someone without putting them through the rigorous interview process that can be months long (been there, done that), accomplishments or not (see the Homebrew dude).

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They have thousands of contractors and consultants that don't go through this process. That's not a valid reason.

So if John Carmack, Guido, Rich Hickey, Donald Knuth wanted a job, they would first have to leet code like everyone else?

The reason the failure to invert a binary tree story was notable was because the dude invented Homebrew. He was supposed to enter though the back door, but someone screwed up and made him go through the regular mechanism.

At the extreme edges of course there are exceptions. I think we can agree that this is not the case here?

Sorry bud, I strongly disagree. This feels like an exception'd be warranted.

To be clear, I am not passing judgment on Oz - I think his accomplishments are impressive, all the more so given his day-to-day challenges. And I'm not at all a fan of the Leetcode interviewing culture either. My point was that Oz is not Carmack, Knuth, etc, so wouldn't fall into the exception bucket that Google cares about (unlike you or me). There are usually well-meaning reasons behind these processes, regardless how well they turn out.

For this piece of tech, he is Carmack. He is Knuth. He deserves respect for the work he’s done in this problem space, it actually is gaming changing the way it works.

Why disrespect what’s been achieved here?

>There are usually well-meaning reasons behind these processes, regardless how well they turn out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority

are you saying google is not an expert in software development? sorry, this fallacy doesn't apply here

I think his point is that not everything is well thought out or planned. A lot of the time people are just winging it and hoping for the best. Just because some giant corporation does something doesn't mean they planned, thought about or even intended to do a thing and arguing that they must've had teams behind every decision is silly. Sometimes, shit happens.

>John Carmack, Guido, Rich Hickey, Donald Knuth wanted a job, they would first have to leet code like everyone else

I think it's funny that you listed people who develop game engines, programming languages, and write algorithm and data structures textbooks.

Literally the people who could do the LeetCode algorithms and data structures problems in their sleep because it's actually relevant for their job.

of course not, you have to acquire their LLC to let them skip the interview process. so building stuff does count, but only if done commercially

FYI, it is incredibly common to subject acquihired employees to the same interviews, and extend offers only to those that pass. This is especially true at FAANG.

Gotta answer dem 1337 code questions.

In a previous life on a job site, the term was called measuring dicks but I digress.

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