I do freelancing. Three times in the last few months I’ve had to sit in front of coderpad to attack a problem I’m not familiar with and come up with a solution—with one or two folks watching, the clock ticking, my family’s livelihood on the line, next to ~two hundred grand in a suitcase. I write well tested code every day but can’t perform under these conditions.

It’s basically the scene from Swordfish, and just as ridiculous.

Two of the three groups seemed to realize it’s a poor test, didn’t have high expectations but went through with it anyway. One seemed to think I was incompetent because I didn’t have his trick memorized about keyword args making closures possible in a loop in Python.

I don’t write clever code on purpose, and certainly not enough to have it memorized to use under the gun.

The 'shortage' is a myth and I blame time-wasting hiring practices such as these. Am thankful a smart guy like Luu is highlighting the bullshit.