During our interview, we ask candidates to design a history system. The key is to realize that our database is only 8Gb, and storing a year of updates is only 160Gb, so $2pm in AWS. Once there, a simple DB table suits, no need to set up Amazon S3.
So we ask them for the multiplication. First we give them the data, and if they don’t do the calculation, we nudge them, then we ask them, then we write the multipliers for them, then we take the calculator out and write the result for them.
Those are Masters degrees. They can’t even do calculations, let alone getting it right, because 500MB x 200 days a year = a few petabytes apparently. And after that, they’re exhausted, it’s impossible to ask them the rest of the questions like “So is it worth worrying about a Rube Goldberg machine when you’re in for $2 of AWS costs?”.