February 22, 2026
When HR meets Hunger Games
Green Lumber Fallacy in Software Engineering
Dev world melts down over “useless” puzzle interviews while veterans swear algorithms changed their lives
TLDR: A viral piece attacks tech hiring for using brain-teaser coding puzzles that don’t match real-world work, comparing it to cutting Shaq for bad free throws. In the comments, some engineers say the tests are pointless trivia, while others admit learning this “trivia” secretly made them far better developers.
Software engineers are once again fighting in the comments, this time over the “green lumber fallacy” – the idea that tech companies test the wrong skills when hiring. The article drags big firms like Google and other giants for obsessing over brain‑teaser style coding puzzles, while real‑world coding is often more like wiring Lego blocks in the cloud and naming things clearly. Think: being rejected from the NBA because your free throws are bad, even though you’re already Shaq.
The crowd shows up with knives and nostalgia. One user jokes that this was all “back in the good old days before ChatGPT aced all such interview questions,” basically saying robots can now pass the tests better than humans. Another shrugs that the article is nothing new, calling it the same rant with zero real solutions. But then a surprise plot twist: a veteran engineer steps in and confesses they once used this exact argument just to avoid learning algorithms, then admits that after finally grinding through them, their coding skills improved “very tangibly.”
So the comments turn into a courtroom drama: Team “These interviews are dumb trivia” versus Team “Stop whining and learn the fundamentals.” In between, people mock memorizing algorithms you’ll just look up on Wikipedia anyway, turning what started as a serious critique into a roast of the whole hiring circus.
Key Points
- •The article uses Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s “Green lumber fallacy” to describe confusing irrelevant knowledge with essential knowledge in a domain.
- •It argues that many software engineering interviews commit this fallacy by equating strength in data structures and algorithms with ability to build software.
- •Max Howell, creator of the popular macOS package manager Homebrew, is cited as being rejected by Google for failing to invert a binary tree in an interview despite his proven software record.
- •The article claims MAANG companies’ reliance on algorithmic and system design questions primarily tests competitive programming skills rather than real-world software development skills.
- •It concludes that solving DSA-style problems and building software are different skills, and interview processes should be aligned more closely with the actual work involved in the job.