> I think it's ridiculous and dumb that otherwise smart people take months out of their busy lives to train these bullshit skills they'll never use outside these "interviews".
Just wait until you hear about people wasting 16 years learning mostly useless things they will never need again in their life... I'm not sure why spending a few months more is such a big deal, you only need to learn these things once if you do it properly. If you don't do it properly then you deserve to waste your time, not sure why you'd take that route though. I guess it shows you don't know how to learn things properly, that is also a filter.
If you mean school, the first 10 years of grade school are basically glorified daycare. The remaining 2 (hopefully) teach you how to think and prepare you for college. That's why in countries which actually do care about their high-IQ kids (US is not one of them) they remove kids who aren't pulling their weight and send them to vocational schools.
College (at least for me) was darn near useless - 95% of the skills I use daily were self-taught. I could just take calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations and call it a day. Most people don't even need that much.
I _really_ wish college wasn't a requirement in our field. There is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that for a sufficiently motivated, moderately smart person looking to learn how to code, college is a horrible waste of time and money, unless they're looking to learn something highly specialized, and/or are looking for an advanced degree. They'd be much better off pair programming with someone experienced, as an apprentice, and they'd be making money and acquiring real experience while learning. The same is true for quite a few other professions as well.
Just wait until you hear about people wasting 16 years learning mostly useless things they will never need again in their life... I'm not sure why spending a few months more is such a big deal, you only need to learn these things once if you do it properly. If you don't do it properly then you deserve to waste your time, not sure why you'd take that route though. I guess it shows you don't know how to learn things properly, that is also a filter.