How odd our field really is. Many of these questions are basic stats. Others seem like the kind of statistics process control I learned in my undergraduate engineering curriculum. Some are more modern, and would be learned by going through something like the scikit-learn documentation, or taking a coursera, though I suppose this might be in a more current formal curriculum.

The odd part is, do senior actuaries get quizzed on integration by parts when they interview? Do law firms put new hires through their 1L civil procedure exam?

And while those are fields with a standardized entrance exam (actuarial exams, bar exam, etc), I know lots of people in non-credentialed fields that still are knowledge based. They may get asked about a database or their experience with it, but they don't go through anything like this kind of technical exam style interview. It really is an exam, it's just administered capriciously, often by people who have unknown or dodgy credentials, without any review by experts or assurances that it won't be used to discriminate (the modern day equivalent of a "literacy" test, I suppose), and is graded under conditions of great secrecy (people often sign a non-disclosure prior to interviewing, google asks people to do this).

I personally think a company is well within its rights to do subject experienced people to an eternal cycle of undergraduate midterms if that's what it chooses to do. I think that this practice deters a lot of people from going into these fields as well, which is also their right as free and full members of the society they live in, free to choose a career path in response to their own interests and how they align with what employers want and what they're offering.

But... well, here we go. The companies that do this are almost always talking about a shortage of workers, one that the government needs to solve (or at least mitigate) by creating a special visa that allows employers to decide who is allowed to work in the united states and the conditions under which they are allowed to remain. Conditions that, surprise surprise, often involve working in a field that subjects people to an endless repeats of their undergraduate midterms. When people with choice won't choose a particular job, isn't that the market's answer? Just to be clear, I positive about immigration, provided the people who immigrate are, well, free. But why on earth would we create a special corporate controlled worker visa so that companies can continue to engage in practices that drive away people who can choose, in large numbers?

This is the pits, people. Don't these lists bug you just a little? I mean, I'm not trying to put down the list itself, I suppose it's probably a pretty good list for people who are going to subject themselves to this kind of interview exam, either because they like the field or because it's the only way to get through the US's byzantine immigration system without relatives.

But is it really a surprise that people with choice (i.e., the "free" citizens of Rome who are not bound by law to work only in certain fields as a condition of remaining within Rome) are rationally choosing to do things where they don't have to put up with this bullshit?