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Side-stepping the Secretary Problem, unwittingly

Having played both parts in the kabuki play that is employee-employer matchmaking, I feel the way we play it is a zero-sum game. I wish it were not so. When this post started life in 2024, as a wall of text chat message, it was brutal out there, on both sides of the software industry interview table. The ZIRP had ended. As of 2026, post-ZIRP reality has properly set in and remains bad ("AI" is a Fig Leaf (Enterprise Edition) for structural damage they self-inflicted, and if you look at Hyperscaler GPU depreciation schedules, they are making it order-of-magnitude worse). Set to that backdrop, here is a hopefully hopeful hiring anecdote where I think we avoided the so-called "Secretary Problem", framed within Optimal Stopping Theory. It can be done. Non-zero-sum hiring ought to be default-mode for any industry, AI or no AI.

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