Quite a nice editorial. I guess I agree with most of it - although I agree even more with the comment Gus posted on Monday.

The flagpole idea is interesting. From that I should be able to deduce, for example, that the USMC is in decline, which would so much surprise me that I don't believe the flagpole bit. And then fish tanks. On Gower Street and Lisle Street in London a fish tank tends to be a sign of a thriving business (albeit perhaps not one which employs a DBA). 😛 Just another two well known indicators of decline that are actually nothing of the sort. 😉

On the whole, I am more interested in how the people seem to be in interviews; any firm which has such a formal interview process that there is no way to assess the personalities of their people handling the interviews is a definite no for me. I prefer it if the interviewers are interested in approaches to doing things, rather than technical stuff that can be picked up from a reference book - maybe that's because I believe in learning new things, not in repeating old things (with one exception: learning new things is an old thing which I have often repeated). In fact I want to work with people who are willing to learn new things, take on problems that they have no idea how to solve until they've done some work, as well as having great technical competence an expertise.