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Calling such people "misanthrope" is a bit harsh, I think.

Someone who is intelligent, competent, and has a difficult time finding acceptance (or even a modicum of comfort-with-others) in new environments could very easily get falsely labeled a misanthrope. If they're capable and know up from down, calling them self-important is a wee bit counter-productive - and I dare say, quite possibly why they'd be viewed as misanthropic.

A better characteristic descriptor would probably be "socially clueless". I know a lot of guys who come across harsh - myself included. They are usually some of the most open people I've known; they're also very amiable - but havent' a clue how to relate to others unlike themselves.

When you said that he asked, "Do you understand recursion?" I was hoping that you'd say, "Then after that, he asked, 'Do you understand recursion?' And I said yes. And then he asked . . . (wait for it) . . . 'Do you understand recursion?'"

I'm sorry. It just felt like a setup for a joke about recursion.

A coworker's boss once hired a "programmer" while my buddy was on vacation (avoiding the technical interview in the process.) The guy's first task was a simple program, but it always core dumped. He made no progress trying to get it fixed, so my friend held a code review. Each and every function looked like this:

void foo()
{
...
some irrelevant but incomprehensibly bad code;
...
main();
}

Yes. He called main() at the bottom of each function. When asked about it, the "programmer" said 'that's so it'll return back to main.'

I think the biggest mistake we made was not firing that stupid manager on the spot. But I suppose if we fired managers based solely on incompetent decisions, ... well... you know.

Don't be. Although one can often tell in the first five minutes of an interview if you want the geek or not (I'm being generous with the time here) that sort of perfunctory questioning and the glib dismissal you received most likely means they already someone else had in mind for the job, and are just following procedure at this point - often you're competing with an internal promotion or other reasons not related to technical competence.

Where you might need to improve is in believing your first impressions about a firm interviewing you. Hunches count, and your ability to drive the interview the way you want is a good indication of what level of person they're really after. I wasn't there, but my off-the-cuff opinion is that you were either bloody well jobbed, or the juxtaposition of the "Reader" group in the name and your choice of words (e.g. an "accept once" in your resume) was a deal killer. But they shouldn't have brought you in if that were the case.

Disclosure: I've interviewed about five hundred candidates for technical jobs. I've hired one hundred, of which two turned out to be poor choices. It's a serious, expensive business to bring the right people on board.

It is a job requirement. If we got on well with other people, how would we spend enough time alone with computers to become experts?

"If I was a real cracker, I'd want to be topped with a real cheese, maybe a strong stilton."

And I thought "hacker" actually meant someone who (literally) hacked on things. With a hatchet or similar. Or maybe language just changes, and we need to all get over it.

Cracker is a derogatory slang term for people originating in rural areas of the southern part of the US.

If you want to hire a cracker, just look for the baseball cap and check for a pickup truck with a gun rack-- or a John Deere tractor-- parked outside.

That's a hard way to make a decent product. If Billy's app doesn't talk to Sue's service because the two never speak to one another or sit down to do a review, it doesn't matter how brilliant either of them is. Their shit still doesn't work.

I don't agree. If this were true, then the foosball table in our kitchen wouldn't be busy all the time.

I think it's a subtler truth here. Many technical folks are more comfortable on working technical problems than people problems. Tech problems have at least one right answer that is unambiguous. People problems may not.

I think the way to keep tech people happy is to give them good problems to work on, serve as a diplomatic layer to insulate them from the annoying people surrounding them in the world, and facilitate making the rules clear on the floor to minimize conflict among the team. And provide free pop.