Whenever I've interviewed people I've always made sure to them feel comfortable, so any anxiety does not get in their way.
Then, we talk and I look for all the qualities they /do/ have.
Sadly, lots of interviewers get a kick out of finding out what the interviewee does not know, so they can feel superior.
Coding challenges should be:
-1. take-home
-2. concise
-3. relevant to the job
-4. take no more than 4 hours
One example of such a decent test that I came across involved having to read a file, parsing it and turning its contents into some basic HTML. During the interview we talked about things like "what if the file were really big", e.g. let the candidate reflect on the limitations of their implementation.
This was enough to suss out where somebody is, professionally.
And nobody had to have a bad day.
Haha yes, at that point, nailing the interview will just come down to how well you are able to gauge what the person at the other side of the table wants to hear. "Hmm, is this a tabs or a spaces guy?"
Clojure just seems "too weird" to too many people, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Its syntax looks like a 6ft hurdle to newcomers, especially if they have lots of experience in C-synthax-languages.
But anyone who just /tries/ to jump it finds out the hurdle really isn't that high at all.
This dynamic will probably never change. Clojure will remain an acquired taste, which is fine, I guess. Those 'in the know' will happily continue to develop effectively with it.
All the tech aside (because I suppose they'll kind of get it done sooner or later), what I really want to know on this subject is: who's legally responsible in the case of an accident?
Your argument sounds a lot like an argument that excludes the middle. It is perfectly reasonable to work for a government or a company while at the same time demanding that decision-takers within that organization do not completely disregard morals, or the general well-being of society.
This sort of thing is not a matter of binary choices.
AirBnb have their own issues, and plenty of bad press about cities popular with tourists crumbling under the load AirBnB are causing on their communities.