Sadly some programmers today still laugh at that idea.

Exactly this. I remember there were 5-6 problems they had: Gamblor, Prime Bits, SuperPatterns, a Unicode problem, and perhaps another graph related one. I managed to finish maybe four of them in my spare time at college, and wasn't too excited about working for Facebook. At the time I thought it was just a poor substitute for MySpace, which I didn't have much respect for anyway, and that it was technologically uninteresting. So, I never sent them in.

I wonder how fb engineers hired (c) 2005 are doing.

Makes you wonder about what prospective employers people are laughing about today.

I remember in 2007 I was at the Zynga party in Portreo Hill. thrown with some other startups. I think at the time it was only 17 people, and they were looking for engineers.

My friends and I were like, nah, another silly gaming company. Now their cap is almost equal to EA.

The beauty of the valley that every 5 years the landscape changes and roles reverse.

Be nice to other people, your fellow engineers, your employees if you are a manager, as they might be your boss in few years.

Something that I am learning myself, live and learn.