What very few employees understand, even some interviewers don&#x27;t consciously understand, is that people are hired based on race, gender, TV shows, hobbies, school pedigree, all that stuff.  The &quot;prove P=NP on the whiteboard in 30 minutes... go!&quot; routine exists to not_hire people.<p>So the fix is in and the bosses nephew is going to hired or your frat bro you watched south park episodes with.  HR makes you interview multiple people to make it look fair.  Obviously its going to be a hostile interview experience.  Maybe if you&#x27;re a clone of Knuth and totally wow the interviewer, the bosses nephew will get kicked to the curb, or if you&#x27;re cooler than the interviewer&#x27;s frat bro, well, thats a strong maybe.  But basically if you walk into an interview and they ask you about algos that a dog whistle you&#x27;re not getting hired.  Either the fix is already in, or you&#x27;re a minority, either way you&#x27;re not getting hired once the questions about red-black trees get unleashed.  The interview is already over at that point unless its a 1 in 1000 meteorite strike, it does happen, just almost never.<p>There are way too many skilled programmers for way too few positions or else the system would collapse if just one employer defected.  That hasn&#x27;t happened, therefore there are too many applicants for too few positions.<p>The reason you hear nonsense about &quot;not enough skilled programmers&quot; is because they didn&#x27;t mention they have to be white or male or members of the interviewer&#x27;s fraternity or fans of the same TV show.  There&#x27;s no shortage at all of excellent programmers who happen to be minorities or unrelated to members of management.