Re:Ask HN: How can I prepare for a coding interview in a week?
by meggar on Tuesday August 14, 2018 @06:26AM
(#17756669)
Actually bands hire the musician who has the look, sound and personality that fits whatever they're going for. Most of them don't know any theory beyond blues and folk chords. They might test them by jamming with them, but the decision has nothing to do with musical skills. So it's actually very similar to hiring in tech.
But look at it this way: if you want to hire a musician to a band, and you do large scale hiring, you probably want to put some minimum requirments like being able to play, and maybe handling rudimentary musical theory and being able to read sheet music. CS 101 stuff is exactly this - you understand the fundamental concepts and are capable of conversing in them.
Musicians who have formal degrees are understood to handle the basic theory and everything that matters is how well they can play.
There is no degree in CS that would guarantee you understand the fundamentals or you know how to combine the basic concepts into practice. I presume this is one of the rationales for whiteboarding.
Of course, there are all sorts of weird and wacky bands that have other hiring policies but the big five are not weird nor wacky.
Apparently how well the hiring went does not predict anything abouy on-job performance, but probably some whiteboarding will not let those people in who would be totally incapable of operating with basic CS theory. Sure, this leaves lot of potential talent out, but often hiring a bad apple is lot more expensive than discarding an ok candidate.