This reminds of psychological study about superstition. They studied fishing habits of South American Indian tribes; the tribes that fished in lakes, had consistent and reasonable rules about when&#x2F;where to go fishing. However, the tribes that fished in the ocean, where you cannot predict the catch, had rather random and superstitious rules about when&#x2F;where to go. This is due to our brains seeing patterns in randomness.<p>Also, it&#x27;s perhaps understandable why companies don&#x27;t want to reveal their preference. If you do it, you open yourself to being gamed. I think it&#x27;s also better to have unreasonable requirements (looking to give genius programmers some boring product work) than be sorry. Again this happens in absence of actual test (other than wait and see) of who is a good candidate. Females do the same thing when mating.