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Re:Why we don't hire programmers based on puzzles and tricks by phaus on Friday February 22, 2013 @03:08PM (#5266443)
My thought is that it's a real phenomenon that occurs in a certain subset of people during a job interview, therefore, its obviously relevant
Re:Why we don't hire programmers based on puzzles and tricks by Arelius on Friday February 22, 2013 @03:38PM (#5266619)
I feel the problem is that, few of us actually being neuro-scientists; While saying something like "people don't perform well under stress" is something that is close enough to common knowledge, instead saying "adrenal glands will effectively reduce the output prefrontal cortex" leaves the reader with a whole bunch of unanswered questions:

* Does a stressful interview necessarily actually increase adrenaline? * Is there actually a link between incresed adrenaline and reduced prefrontal cortex output? * What role does the prefrontal cortex play in answering interview questions?

And while these may all have good answers, it just throws up a whole bunch of mental '[citation needed]' annotations all over the whole argument, that can just be skipped entirely if we aren't talking about neuro-science. And if we insist on talking about the bio-chemestry, we should probably go into the details.

Re:Why we don't hire programmers based on puzzles and tricks by davidkatz on Friday February 22, 2013 @04:22PM (#5266924)
Lots of real phenomena occur during an interview. For example, you could go one level deeper and describe the molecular mechanisms between adrenaline and whatever 'receives' adrenaline. That would sound something like:

"What happens in job interview is that adrenaline binds to a variety of adrenergic receptors, which triggers a number of metabolic changes" [1]

It'd be just as real, also clearly connected, but also quite clearly not what the conversation is about.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinephrine