sim posted:

I would agree that luck has a lot to do with it, because hiring is extremely flawed across all industries, but especially in tech. To start, there's the (often subconscious) biases in place that ends up filtering candidates down to only people that look like the existing employees, even if just on paper. This includes inherent bias either for or against self-taught engineers, depending on the background of the hiring manager.

After filtering, no one in tech knows how to correctly evaluate a candidates competency. There have been entire books written on Cracking the Coding Interview because the process at every tech company is so obtuse. There are numerous stories of small companies rejecting/firing people who couldn't complete a basic task later getting hired at Google because they memorized the book.

As a candidate you'll get tested on your ability to memorize algorithms you'll never use outside of Computer Science classes. Or asked to totally unrelated riddles like how many ping pong balls can you fit on an airplane? Or be forced to write code on a whiteboard in front of an audience; like asking a carpenter to build a chair with his bare hands. Or be asked to spend hours of your own time completing a homework project (sadly probably the best way to evaluate competency).