<i>The filters that companies and recruiters use mostly trend in a meaningful direction. There are a higher percentage of good programmers among MIT grads than SUNY Potsdam grads.</i><p>Imagine how mistaken that would sound if you substitute &quot;startup founders&quot; for &quot;programmers.&quot;<p>The reason you feel company filters are anything except random noise is personal bias.  It&#x27;s disheartening that your article <i>notices</i> that company preferences are essentially random noise, and then you don&#x27;t really internalize that fact or take it to its logical conclusion:<p>Interviews where programmers do anything <i>except</i> work-hire tests tuned to the signal that the companies want are doomed to fail.<p>And it&#x27;s almost impossible to do a work-hire test in an interview.  A real work-hire test.  The type of test where you <i>actually do some work</i> and then show that yours is effective.<p>We&#x27;re so backwards that people probably read this and think I&#x27;m saying whiteboard work or something stupid like that.  No.  Real, actual work.  The problem you&#x27;re working on can be fake, but the problem needs to be literally the same type of thing that the company does on a day-to-day basis.<p>Want a 100% success rate?  Do that, and then don&#x27;t pay attention to anything but the results.  Including whether the candidate has an MIT degree, or any degree at all.  If you actually set up a work-hire test, a real one, and then stop asking about all the other stuff that doesn&#x27;t matter, then you will get a 100% rate.  Again, you have to tune the test to what the company is looking for, but that&#x27;s not hard.  &quot;Here is an iOS app. Find and fix these bugs, then add a new feature.&quot;