I appreciate all the technical discussion of this question in the article and here in the comments, but I think the question is just a symptom.
The root issue here is the other interviewer and the apparent interview process.
>'In the post-interview pow-wow, all of the engineers who’d interviewed him gave him the thumbs up, except my interview partner except my interview partner, who refused to hire him...'
Yes, yes, optimizing for false negatives over false positives is all the rage, but this just sounds broken - wasting the efforts of a full panel only to accept an arbitrary single-question veto.
>'..on the grounds that he completely flubbed this question, and "any engineer worth his salt should be able to answer it."'
Good engineers don't necessarily make good interviewers. Outright excluding someone based on any single question is just horribly self-satisfied behavior.
If you look at the structure of their pow-wow rather than its labeled purpose, you see that its real purpose is not to find a competent engineer but just to build a consensus. E.g. so nobody complains they wouldn't have hired the candidate.
It's the same principle which puts multiple men on a firing squad.
Even though they look like they're designed by committee, camels are an example of form following function. They're very well suited for their environment, and although they're stubborn, make good work animals.
A mustang on the other hand, is a feral horse. They're harder to domesticate because they've known freedom, and they've adapted to living in the wild by being smaller and more timid than horses selectively bred for doing work. If you really do need a horse, there are few cases where you need that horse to be a mustang.
If someone is hiring you because they think you're a mustang, you better hope they're caught up in the romanticism of cowboy stories instead of them being desperate for cheap labor or meat.
Of course that why history is full literally full of elite heavy camel units who turned the tide in so many battles and why Alexander's companions rode camels and of course the charge of the heavy camel brigade in the Crimea.
Yes assuming the is the USA I am surprised that HR do not insist that all interviewers have done some basic training just to cover the company's ass legaly
Certainly at British Telecom all people who sat on interview boards had to have done a two or three day residential course.
The root issue here is the other interviewer and the apparent interview process.
>'In the post-interview pow-wow, all of the engineers who’d interviewed him gave him the thumbs up, except my interview partner except my interview partner, who refused to hire him...'
Yes, yes, optimizing for false negatives over false positives is all the rage, but this just sounds broken - wasting the efforts of a full panel only to accept an arbitrary single-question veto.
>'..on the grounds that he completely flubbed this question, and "any engineer worth his salt should be able to answer it."'
Good engineers don't necessarily make good interviewers. Outright excluding someone based on any single question is just horribly self-satisfied behavior.