> Their resume is so good. They worked at top companies. Nobody wants to insult them with some simple test of programming basics during interview, so they rather ask them what was it like working in the Big Companies. After some chit-chat, they get the job. The company thinks they're lucky to have hired someone that smart.

So, bad processes and cultish worship of certain companies.

> Inertia, lack of communication inside the company, etc. Those people are usually also very friendly and soon learn who reports to whom and how to hide the fact that they aren't contributing anything useful.

So, more bad processes.

I know my responses are bordering on flippant, but having come up from the real engineering world I don't see how these things happen for any reason other than companies in this industry are not run nearly as well as their management thinks.

Maybe they hired some managers who can't manage, but interview well and have a lot of experience managing at top companies?

Dual response to you and raverbashing, since you both express the same concept:

Having non-technical management interview and assess technical hires is a serious process error. If you are hiring someone, regardless of what it is for, and you task someone with evaluating that candidate in an area the interviewer knows little to nothing about you have screwed up royally and need to fix your process. I haven't seen that happen in a real engineering company, at least not for technical roles.

I don't get this. Even when I interview people I am going to report to, I grill them on technical questions.

Managers are usually the less technically inclined at certain companies. They don't know what to ask and they don't care