I'm not sure this is true - the base case seems to be the Eurozone, the countries of which intervened in their economies enough to forestall a depression, but not to the extent that the US did. Eurozone inflation is just a notch above 5%, unemployment rate right about 7%. In the US it's 7% and 4% respectively. In effect, the US traded a ~2% rise in yearly inflation for a ~3% reduction in unemployment. Reasonable people can disagree on whether that was a good trade, but to say that we could have just "skipped" all the COVID disruptions and maintained low inflation, low unemployment and typical GDP growth strikes me as fantasy land. There wasn't any magical economic policy prescription that would make everything "normal".
Is there a reason you think US money printing, which increases the supply of the world's main currency, is not the cause of at least some non-US inflation?
The suppression of interest rates in the US means it is cheaper to borrow loans in USD right? Those loans are available to foreigners as well. The asset price bubble is international at this point, and with it, the wealth effect leading to sustained levels of demand which would be absent if adequate pricing signals were still allowed to be effective.
If such trade worked then the whole world would have already been practicing it for many decades. Yet what we know from the last 100 years of such attempts is that there is the sweet spot of 2-3% inflation, and deviation from it into either direction is punished.
This kinda describes something I've always internally thought of as the "talkers-to-typers ratio" at companies I've worked at. Back in the early IT/dotcom days, the "appointee class" were primarily on their phones or in meetings, talking. The technocrats were at their computers, typing. I don't think that's as bright a red line these days, obviously, but I've still kept that name in my head and check in on the ratio every now and then when I'm taking a company's pulse or looking to join a new company.
Tell me about an opinion you hold on some piece of technology (framework, language, design pattern, etc.), one you have a fair amount of conviction about and hold pretty strongly. Now tell me how you arrived at that opinion and conviction.
Depending on what opinion they pull out, I might tweak that and suggest: "What's the argument against that opinion?"
From what I've seen, a lot of people can rattle off reasons they've heard for why a particular thing is done, but have not deeply considered the opposite side of that opinion and what its benefits may be. Ymmv.
Yeah, that's a good followup. It's akin to having a strong counterargument in an academic paper. What I'm going for with the question is an understanding of how the candidate acquires knowledge. Are they generating it themselves via some process like the scientific method? Are they mostly doing that but maybe taking shortcuts here and there by credulously taking on the opinions of trusted sources? Are they throwing all of that overboard and just embracing opinions/received wisdom that are popular or correlate with higher compensation?
The problem I've run into is that it's a pretty easy question to game, if you know the purpose behind asking it; nobody is going to come out and say, e.g., "I think ORMs are dumb because that's what other folks seem to say, and I see those people having high-status/well-compensated jobs, and I'd like some of that too, plz." So maybe it's not a great "weeder" question. /shrug
This smacks as unreliable to me because I have a "Devils advocate" sort of mindset REGARDLESS of my actual level of expertise. I find the issue with this sort of mindset is that it makes you better at tearing down other peoples opinions than it does at coming up with a brilliant opinion of your own. This is problematic when you're trying to do something innovative in a crowded saturated field.
I have the same attitude, and it's good to try to counteract it a bit, but I have found that this attitude can be a great asset when paired with other people who are a bit more on the optimistic side; as long as both parties are willing to listen to each other.
One of my favorite interview questions is "What is your favorite programming language and what would you change about it if you could?" Any answer along the lines of "I wouldn't really change anything." shows a lack of either experience or willingness to think about your tools.
Because every tool has limitations, and even if you think your tool can't/shouldn't necessarily be changed you still need to be aware of its gotchas to use it effectively.
