Technical Interviews Are Dead – What Comes Next?, The Cosmetics You Buy Online Are Fake (and Unsafe), If You Can’t Get a Job Right Now It’s Your Fault, and +++ [link blog]

Is it summer yet?

The Last Technical Interview [Steve Yegge] – Super Developer Steve Yegge has always written interesting takes on software development and his current AI project Gas Town is fascinating. Here he recounts his history with engineer interview processes, often well-intended but always full of mistakes. “The reality is that talent evaluation, a corner of our industry that hasn’t changed much in five-ish decades, is embarrassingly busted. It just doesn’t work that well in practice.” Memorably:

One day, the recruiters gave us a special round of packets to review. In these special packets, we were able to read the interviewer notes and candidate responses. All personal details were stripped out, and we were told it was a “calibration exercise.” We had to do our regular voting job with these special packets, and see how it went. I think we may have assumed they were from another site, since cross-site calibration was common.

Our group did our job, and voted not to hire about 2/3 of the packets. This was about par for the course.

But surprise surprise, this time, those were our own packets from when we had all interviewed at Google. The recruiters had tricked us into reviewing our own interview packets, and we had voted not to hire most of our own group.

For that brief moment, we all had a glimpse into how utterly broken our process was. The people-team had rubbed our noses in it.

So what’s changing now?

“I believe that within a few years we will mostly stop conducting technical interviews”

Will let you read the rest to find out what replaces them…

How The Sports Stadium Went Luxe [John Seabrook/The New Yorker] – Take a journey on how sports stadiums became expensive for all fans and basically serving the uber-rich.

But wealthy fans can be lured to stadiums if they’re offered “elevated” experiences that they can’t get from a screen. And, these days, there are nearly twenty-four million millionaires in the U.S. Roughly equivalent to the population of Florida, they constitute their own mass market. There are nine hundred and two billionaires—a number that has doubled in the past twelve years. (Thirty-six million people in the country live in poverty.)

The is the Next Wave of Political Fundraising [Makena Kelly/Wired] – Discords, Creators, and tens of thousands of dollars (even hundreds of thousands) raised quickly for causes and candidates. Some of it is organic, but others are astroturfed by the campaigns, lobbyists, and powerful. Get money out of politics.

If You Can’t Get a Job Today, It’s Your Fault [Auren Hoffman/Summation] – So I agree with a lot of this as ‘harsh reality you need to hear’ [ducks]. The advice I give which is most similar basically comes down to “the best way to get a job is to start doing it and then convince someone to pay you for it.” That is, let’s say you want an entry level developer relations job at a startup. There’s a difference between applying for it with just a resume vs figuring out how to, for example, start running free workshops on how to use their product, beginning to attract developers, and then showing the company what you’re doing.

I Hired a Lab to Counterfeit-Test a Dozen Suspicious Beauty Products I Bought Online. Every Single One Had a Problem [Rose Maura Lorre/Wirecutter] – TLDR, NEVER BUY A PRODUCT ONLINE FROM ANYONE BUT A LICENSED RETAILER OR THE COMPANY ITSELF. I knew this was an issue with cosmetics, supplements, etc but wow….

How Barnes & Noble Became Private Equity’s Most Radical Retail Experiment [Adam Chandler/Bloomberg] – At one time big boxes like B&N were a threat to independents. Now while I still try to support my local bookshop, I find B&N to be a great IRL alternative as well. Keeping these spaces alive is more important to me than who owns them (when Amazon is the alternative). Also support your public library!

Enjoy your weekend!

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