911 Engineers Rate Two Decades of Technical Interviews, and the Tested Topics Are Not the Problem

arXiv 2609.14046·low signalXBlueskyLinkedInCopy link

This paper reconstructs how the software-engineering community remembers technical hiring across four eras from 2005 to 2026, with retrospective ratings from 911 respondents showing steadily expanding interview work and burden. Analysis of public preparation questions finds most tested knowledge has a plausible use in an ordinary project, so the failure is not topic relevance: relevant topics form an invalid process when accumulated beyond the vacancy, presented under artificial constraints, or interpreted without a common job-derived standard. The proposed Ticket-Based Pragmatic Assessment Framework derives a bounded assessment from declared responsibilities and near-term tickets, preserves normal tools, defines three evidence gates, and stops when the decision is supported.