...and that isn't a problem? because folks decades of experience is irrelevant to their ability to memorize whatever it's required to be a widget in a widget factory? just because the process works for FAANG doesn't mean its good or right for other companies.

Not sure I understand your comment. I never had a problem with my interviewing technique. Nobody ever complained to me about it. I feel I was pretty consistent with how others interviewed.

My point was not to say that my technique was good - I have no data on whether it was good or not. My point was that you shouldn't assume that garbage resumes will be caught by the technical interviewers, because there is a good chance they aren't reading them either. I also meant to imply that it is probably a good idea to stuff your resume with buzzwords, probably a bit more subtly than this example, but if you have to choose between optimizing for the algorithm and optimizing for the human, I'd bet on the algorithm because I doubt the human is even going to read it.

I'm just pointing out that there is a vast difference between FAANG and the rest of the world. Especially in terms of interviewing. It's somewhat sad they discount experience when doing interviewing and only use it as a screening measure, but it does work for them, no denying. But many folks copy this approach, and it does not always work at small to medium sized companies. If you did 200 interviews at a 20 person startup and never read the resume, that would indeed be a problem.

I don't know what benefit "experience" has. I've worked with plenty of people who had long careers, worked at big name companies, and went to fancy schools, and turned out to be some variety of dumb or useless. If your experience benefits you in someway I should be able to detect that in our interview - you'll give good answers to questions because you're experienced enough to know good answers, that kind of thing.

If you seem smart in the interview because of your years of experience, your natural genius, or some combination of the two, what's the difference? What I care about is that you are a smart person, not how you came by your ability. If you learned to program video games at age 8 and now have fourty years of experience or if you finished a boot camp yesterday - who cares? If you can discuss and write the programs I ask about that seems like a good signal and if not, not. I feel like I can just skip finding out about your history and not lose anything.

This is also my experience. Resume is just a filter to starting the next round of a rather rigorous interview process. If I'm doing a technical interview, I just want to see how you think through the questions. If it's non-technical, your background will appear in your stories.

And how do people get to be at the stage of being interviewed by you? They submit a resume and it gets assessed by someone… Just because that person isn’t you doesn’t meant that resumes aren’t key.