While I'm pro meritocracy(and think that, contrary to an increasingly popular opinion, anyone of any background is capable of showing merit in this field), technical interviews can be done very poorly and swing so far the other way that they dehumanize the candidate.
Years ago, I had an interview for Yellow Pages. I know, who the hell still uses Yellow Pages? Well, this was back in 2014, though I'm still wondering this now. Anyway, the entire interview process was very depersonalizing. Nobody asked me about my background, why I was interested in working for them, or anything like that.
They had me go into a room and sit down at a computer with someone who was presumably an engineer. I had to solve several code problems in JavaScript and Ruby, each one having to be solved in under a minute. If you didn't finish one, it would just erase what you worked on and moved on to the next problem.
After those shenanigans, they brought me into a board room with 6 other people, and I they asked me to solve several brain teasers, including the "burning rope" problem. These people were stone cold! No humor about them. Fortunately, I memorized most of these brain teasers from the internet and previous interviews, so this part wasn't so much difficult as I had to act like I hadn't heard those questions before.
I didn't get hired, and it was for the best because I'm not a robot, and I don't like brain teasers.
YellowPages.com looks a lot better than it did in 2014, but let's be honest, it's a glorified ripoff of Yelp with shitty search results. In fact, it looks nearly identical to Yelp. I wouldn't have been proud to work on that.
Yelp actually ripped off the Yellow Pages. The name comes from YEL-low-P-ages. The Yellow Pages was a paper-based business telephone directory that started decades earlier.
Oh, for sure, but comparing the state of Yellowpages.com now to its state in 2014, it's clear that someone decided to make the design and UX uncannily similar to that of Yelp. Of course Yellow Pages the concept was around before Yelp.
However, YellowPages.com ripped off the concept of yellow pages just as much as Yelp.
I'm saying that the YellowPages.com is a ripoff of the Yelp design and experience. If you changed just the logo and the color, it would look identical to Yelp, or at least how it looked before the recent redesign. Of course business listings and ratings are nothing new.
Years ago, I had an interview for Yellow Pages. I know, who the hell still uses Yellow Pages? Well, this was back in 2014, though I'm still wondering this now. Anyway, the entire interview process was very depersonalizing. Nobody asked me about my background, why I was interested in working for them, or anything like that.
They had me go into a room and sit down at a computer with someone who was presumably an engineer. I had to solve several code problems in JavaScript and Ruby, each one having to be solved in under a minute. If you didn't finish one, it would just erase what you worked on and moved on to the next problem.
After those shenanigans, they brought me into a board room with 6 other people, and I they asked me to solve several brain teasers, including the "burning rope" problem. These people were stone cold! No humor about them. Fortunately, I memorized most of these brain teasers from the internet and previous interviews, so this part wasn't so much difficult as I had to act like I hadn't heard those questions before.
I didn't get hired, and it was for the best because I'm not a robot, and I don't like brain teasers.
YellowPages.com looks a lot better than it did in 2014, but let's be honest, it's a glorified ripoff of Yelp with shitty search results. In fact, it looks nearly identical to Yelp. I wouldn't have been proud to work on that.