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Selecting Against Experience - Do Employers Know?
IBitOBear asks: "A couple days ago I did 'the interview loop' at that leading online retailer. Over the course of six hours I was repeatedly introduced to a guy in his early twenties, who would then ask me to write out code on a white-board for a problem that you might find in the study guide for a 200-level computer science class. I have 20 years of experience in programming and systems design. And in several cases the interviewers were vague, semantically incorrect, or self-contradictory. Interviewer blunders included not understanding that non-normal forms in databases -can be- more correct or efficient when the domain of a data is extremely limited; or choosing a leader among N candidates -is- a byzantine agreement problem. In short, the loop would have been perfect to weed out some guy getting his first job fresh out of school, but it definitely exerted selection pressure towards excluding experienced candidates. So employers, what are you doing to make sure that you are not culling out candidates with the low-ball? Job seekers, what do you do when you find yourself trapped in a sophomore study group?"
From the article...
I'd say that puts it around $0. You don't buy a business that isn't making money. It's stupid. Also, don't even talk to me about Murdoch and MySpace. We are talking about the guy that created the problem of placing arbitrary value on the balance sheet as Goodwill to justify his acquisitions. It's a shell game that Murdoch and a few others like Mark Cuban might find a way to time and win - but that a lot of other companies trying to follow in their footsteps that are going to lose big on. I'd even wager that Murdoch is going to get bitten playing this game.