This is true. They are closer to ”the rare, most intellectually difficult parts of the job.” A hockey player typically spends 70% of each game sitting on the bench; yet this isn’t what is emphasized in tryouts.
> Hire for strengths, not to avoid weaknesses.
I guess you didn’t read the part of my comment where I wrote:
1. ”Failing to hire a strong candidate carries a much lower cost than hiring someone who can’t do the job.”
This is the default position of large tech companies who do coding interviews, and especially those like Google and Microsoft who interview with very difficult discrete math problems.
If we assume 1, the hiring practices of Google/Microsoft make perfect sense. They are not trying to hire all the extremely talented candidates. They are trying to ensure that all the hires are extremely talented. Put differently, they are optimising for precision rather than recall.
It seems like you disagree with 1. And if you’re right, then you have a huge opportunity, because this suggests you can disrupt any vertical where the incumbent does the LeetCode thing.
But my default position is scepticism, because if it was possible it would probably already be happening.
