Very aggressive screening at the outset, with all the submissions in an easy to read list.

At my last job, we would ignore every single submission that didn't have a cover letter. If the cover letter has even the slightest red flag; for example if it doesn't mention anything specific about the company, then onto the next one. The next step would be an equally aggressive phone screen.

It's ruthless and you might miss out on some great candidates, but the time wasted by interviewing the wrong people is a killer.

A lot of people have stopped writing cover letters because they don't seem to have any impact.

Yeah. I don't write those.

> At my last job, we would ignore every single submission that didn't have a cover letter.

It's funny because I automatically drop a job prospect if they mention cover letter. If they request it right in the job ad and the job description is interesting, I send my updated CV and my contacts, but leave out anything resembling a cover letter.

If you care about getting to know me, set up a meeting. I already sent you a doc with what I did and where I did it. I'm not going to waste significant amounts of time on a document that I'm not even sure anyone will read. If your rationale is that it saves up your time, well it wastes mine, and mine is more valuable.

And finally, anyone can write anything about anything in a cover letter. It boggles the mind why anyone would think this sort of document has a critical role in figuring out anyone is a decent hire.

All very fair points, I suppose it just comes down to whatever the particular company is looking for. At the time it was important to find people that showed enthusiasm and would fit well with the rest of the engineers. Taking the time to show that enthusiasm in a personalised way was a good start.

It's interesting though that there are such large differences in approaches out there.

> anyone can write anything about anything in a cover letter.

I could say the same thing about a CV.

Very cool idea!

Caught it out with "What is a lie that is always true?"

> A lie that is always true is when people say "I'm fine" when something is really wrong. Even if there is a problem, a lot of people will say "I'm fine" instead of talking about what's really wrong. So even when people say "I'm fine" in situations like these, it's still a lie - but it's one that's always true.

I'll say that on the whole it seems to be getting better with time. Most people have already mentioned Rust / Go as examples of this.

I do agree it is an issue. Doing away with node_modules completely on the last rails 7 app I worked on was the most cathartic experience of my life.

Yeah, no government likes it when you mess with their currency.

Right.

It also would seem likely that at least one protector of said currency (the agent in the story) didn't know his domain (currency sheets are legit).

Unless he just wanted to harrass Woz, or maybe because they suspected him of other mischief and wanted to see if he misstepped.

You can buy currency sheets.

You cannot buy perforated currency booklets.

It's reasonable to be suspicious about the latter, especially as I suspect Woz didn't start the interview with "I bought the currency sheets then had them turned into this" - and anyways, by that time the agent had a checklist to run through, likely including the passport numbers etc. as mentioned in the article.

Even knowing that the bills are being sold in sheets, you wouldn't want to be the agent who let someone go who was doing everything exactly as Woz did except for getting the currency sheets from the guy printing the North Korean superbills...