Europe is rewriting the rules for the boxes, bottles and wrappers that carry almost everything people buy. The Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation, known as PPWR, was proposed by the European Commission in 2022 to replace the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive that dates to 1994. It entered into force in 2025, and its requirements phase in over the next 15 years.
The goals are straightforward: prevent and reduce packaging waste, make packaging easier to recycle and keep materials circulating. Because the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation is a regulation rather than a directive, it applies directly and uniformly in every EU member state. The push grew out of rising concern in the 2010s about single-use plastics, packaging waste and missed recycling targets.
A Letter Grade for Every Package
The centerpiece is a Design for Recycling (DfR) grading system. Recyclability will be assessed per unit, by weight, and the detailed DfR rules are due to be set through delegated acts by 2028. Grade A means at least 95% recyclable, grade B at least 80% and grade C at least 70%. Anything below 70% counts as technically non-recyclable and can’t be placed on the EU market from 2030.
Shoppers will see changes sooner. Starting in 2028, standardized, mandatory waste-sorting labels are required on all waste bins and on consumer packaging, so the label on a carton matches the label on the bin it belongs in.
The Timeline From 2030 to 2040
By 2030, all packaging on the EU market must be recyclable by design, and most plastic packaging must meet initial minimum recycled-content targets. Single-use plastic packaging also faces new restrictions that year, including for multipacks, fresh produce and foodservice items. By 2035, all packaging must be recyclable at scale. In 2038 the recyclability criteria get stricter, and in 2040 most plastic packaging must meet higher recycled-content targets.
Why Paperboard Makers Like the Rules
Fiber-based packaging starts from a strong position. Paperboard, made from a blend of virgin wood and recycled fibers, can be recycled five to 10 times. Its loop is simple: mills process raw and recovered fiber into board, converters turn it into packaging, brands and retailers fill and sell it, and consumers put it back into the recycling stream.
Collection rates already reflect that. About 87% of paperboard packaging in Europe is recycled, compared with 42% of plastic, according to Eurostat figures cited by Graphic Packaging International, which makes paperboard packaging for brands worldwide. For companies selling into the EU, the gap between those two numbers is a preview of which materials will have the easier path to compliance.
Companies spend heavily on visual branding, digital marketing, store design and customer service, but they often give far less thought to what people hear when they walk into a store, restaurant, hotel or office. Background music can shape how customers see a space. Picking songs is only part of the job, though: a business also needs reliable audio technology, consistent playback, sensible volume levels and a music license that covers commercial use.
For companies with multiple locations, sound is turning into one more piece of customer experience management, planned and checked alongside lighting, layout and digital signage.
What Sound Does for a Space
A quiet hotel lobby with soft instrumental music gives a different impression from a fitness studio playing high-energy tracks. Neither one is right everywhere; the fit depends on the setting, the audience and what customers came to do.
Research on consumer environments suggests background music can affect perceived atmosphere, shopping pace and purchasing behavior, but the effects vary with the setting, the music and what customers expect. So a business shouldn’t assume a particular playlist will lift sales on its own. It makes more sense to treat sound as part of the overall experience and ask whether it supports customer comfort and the brand.
Business audio used to mean a local music player wired to speakers, with staff choosing songs, setting the volume and running playback by hand. Commercial audio platforms now give companies more control, especially across several locations. Depending on the system, a business can use:
Cloud playlist management to update music at every location without touching individual devices.
Automated scheduling to run different music in the morning, afternoon and evening.
Zone control to set separate playlists and volume for reception, dining and other areas.
Remote device monitoring to spot disconnected players or playback problems before customers notice.
Central brand rules that keep music policy consistent while still allowing local adjustments.
A hotel group, for example, could manage its brand’s audio identity from one platform and let each property tune volume and scheduling to its own space. Music stops being an informal staff chore and becomes something the business can actually manage.
Matching Music to What Customers Are Doing
The music should suit the customers, not just the employees’ taste. A restaurant may want lower volume so guests can talk, a gym may want energetic tracks during group workouts, and a premium retailer may keep one consistent style that fits its products. Tempo, volume, genre and familiarity all affect how people hear a space, though not the same way for every audience.
Customer feedback, noise complaints, average visit length and satisfaction scores give a business something concrete to judge by. Sales and dwell-time data can add context, but a change in those numbers can’t be pinned on music alone when staffing, promotions, store layout and foot traffic move the same results. The aim isn’t to manipulate buying decisions; it’s a space that feels right and stays consistent.
Licensing Is a Requirement
Playing music privately and playing it for customers are different things legally. A personal streaming subscription generally doesn’t give a business the right to play music publicly, and commercial use can involve public performance rights and other permissions that depend on the country, the venue and how the music is played.
That’s where commercial music services come in. Businesses looking at music for business options can weigh providers such as SoundMachine against their needs for licensed playback, playlist management and commercial audio operations. A licensing review should answer a few questions:
Does the service cover the countries and locations where the business operates?
Are public performance rights included, or do separate licenses have to be obtained?
Does the license cover every planned location and type of use?
Are live performances, advertising or other uses beyond background playback restricted?
A commercial service can simplify licensing, but no business should assume a subscription covers every legal requirement. Reading the provider’s terms and the local copyright rules before rollout heads off compliance surprises.
Fitting Audio Into the Rest of the Tech Stack
Sound management is more useful when it works with the other systems that run a location. Many businesses already use digital signage for promotions, smart lighting for atmosphere and analytics platforms to track customer activity, and audio scheduling can sit alongside them without complex automation. A retailer might launch a seasonal playlist with new in-store displays, while a hotel could change music by time of day and hold the same volume policy in every common area.
Larger businesses need their IT teams involved. Network reliability, access permissions, device security and fallback playback for internet outages all come into play, especially when managing technology across multiple retail locations with central oversight and secure access. Central control is convenient, but a system that goes silent during a network outage causes its own problems, so check offline playback and the level of technical support before choosing a provider.
Measuring Whether It Works
Whether a manager likes the playlist isn’t a measure. Set a baseline before changing anything, then compare results after a new audio program starts, looking at:
Customer satisfaction: Are customers comfortable with the atmosphere and volume?
Employee feedback: Does the audio support work without distracting staff?
Operational consistency: Are approved playlists playing correctly at every location?
Customer behavior: Have visit length or purchasing patterns changed meaningfully?
Technical reliability: How often do playback interruptions or equipment problems happen?
A small pilot at comparable locations usually tells a business more than switching every site at once. Compare similar operating periods where possible, and account for seasonal swings, promotions and differences in traffic.
The pilot may show that a music program improves how a space feels without any measurable sales lift. That can still be worth it if customer experience was the goal.
Where to Start
An elaborate sonic branding campaign isn’t necessary. Start by auditing current playback, speaker placement, volume, licensing and customer feedback, then set guidelines for music selection and check whether the existing equipment can play consistently.
A small business may need nothing more than a properly licensed service and a reliable speaker system. A multi-location company may get more from cloud management, automated schedules and central reporting. In both cases, spend to match the operational need, not the length of a vendor’s feature list.
Jon Seager, Canonical VP of Engineering, took to Ubuntu Discourse to discuss the company’s Ubuntu Core Desktop, saying the company plans to accelerate development.
Ubuntu Core Desktop is one of the more interesting concepts in the Linux community, a Snap-based Linux distro that could provide users with far more flexibility than current options. Core Desktop is based on Ubuntu Core, which is widely used in IoT, robotics, and other embedded platforms. A developer preview of Core Desktop was initially announced in 2023, but the project went dormant shortly after.
To understand why Core Desktop is an interesting concept, one must first understand the Linux distro landscape.
Stable vs Rolling
Generally speaking, Linux distros fall into two camps: stable release and rolling release.
Stable Release
Stable release distros are often alternately called point-release distros. These distros have distinct version numbers, such as Debian 11, Debian 12, Debian 13, Ubuntu 24.04, Ubuntu 26.04, and so on. When a new version is released, the major components of that distro — as well as the software available in the distro’s software repository — are all frozen at that version. With the exception of security fixes, major bug fixes, and specific apps like web browsers, the major components and available software stay at that version number for the life of that specific release.
For example, Debian 13 comes with LibreOffice 25.2.3 and LibreOffice will remain at version 25.2.3 for the life of Debian 13, only receiving security fixes and major bug fixes. While it is possible to manually install newer versions of software, those newer versions may depend on libraries that the older system base doesn’t have. If the user manually upgrades those, then other applications may not work with the newer libraries.
While the “stable” in a stable release distro refers to the package base not changing — an important requirement for many in the enterprise space — stability, in the sense of reliability, is often an important side effect.
Rolling Release
In contrast, a rolling release distro has no major version numbers or point releases, and no upgrade from one major version to another. Instead, rolling release distros push out new updates to software as it becomes available, rather than waiting 6 months, a year, or longer to push out a new distro version and new accompanying software.
The benefit of a rolling release is that the user always has the latest and greatest software, but often at the expense of some reliability. Rolling release users may have to do a bit more troubleshooting if an errant update breaks their system or their workflow.
Containerized Applications
One major way that Linux distros are trying to solve the issue of stable vs rolling is with containerized apps. The three main options are Flatpak, Snap, and AppImage. The benefit of these app formats is that they bundle their own libraries and dependencies, rather than relying on the system. So a user who wants a stable system can safely have the latest applications via Flatpak, Snap, or AppImage without worrying about introducing incompatibilities. Some so-called “immutable” distros use this approach, making it difficult to modify the underlying system while relying on containerized apps for the userspace.
Of the three, Snap was created by Canonical and is still largely used almost exclusively by Ubuntu-based distros. Outside of Ubuntu, Flatpak is far more popular, with AppImage also having its diehard following. In the case of Snaps and Flatpaks, these applications are also sandboxed, meaning they are isolated from the system, providing a measure of security that traditional apps from a distro’s repository don’t provide.
Snaps were originally very unpopular because of abysmal performance, as well as Canonical retaining control of the Snap Store. In recent years, however, Snaps have closed the performance gap, often rivaling or even surpassing Flatpaks. Similarly, although many users claim Snaps are not open source, that claim is inaccurate. The format itself is open source, with only the Snap Store being closed source and controlled by Canonical.
Another major advantage of Snaps over Flatpaks is the range of applications that can be built as a Snap. Flatpaks are largely limited to desktop apps that have a GUI. In contrast, Snaps can include both desktop and terminal-based apps. Even the Linux kernel can be bundled as a Snap.
Canonical has also improved the simplicity and security of Snaps, in some ways beyond Flatpaks. While Flatpak offers ways to modify an app’s permission to restrict or free up its capabilities, doing so often requires installing a separate app and the user has to know what permissions to enable/disable. In contrast, Canonical has adopted a simple prompt system inspired by iOS and Android, where an app asks on first run if it can have certain permissions, such as access to the microphone or camera.
Ubuntu Core Desktop
Ubuntu Core and Core Desktop are designed to leverage the flexibility of Snaps to solve the issue of stable vs rolling release distros.
With each individual component of the system — kernel, drivers, window manager, desktop environment, and apps — all bundled as self-contained Snaps, a user can run the latest and greatest without worrying about introducing incompatibilities or instabilities.
I’ve written previously about “immutable” Linux distributions, what they’re trying to achieve and where the promises are often broken. Ubuntu Core moves to everything as a snap – including the bootloader, the kernel, the desktop environment, userspace daemons and all of your apps. For users, this means a desktop that’s harder to break, easier to recover and more adaptable to different devices and workflows. It also gives users greater control over the data their applications can access.
Seager also acknowledges that the 2023 preview failed to meet its goals:
Our 2023 preview fell short of this vision. While it helped us better understand the problems we’d face, it bundled much of the desktop into a single alternative base snap. Separating those components is one of our top priorities as we restart the project.
The blog post goes on to highlight the benefits to three specific use cases: casual users mainly interested in web browsing, developers, and gamers, although the benefits certainly go far beyond those three groups.
The company’s new approach will have challenges:
There will be many challenges along the way! Most of these stem from the fact that Ubuntu Core requires that all applications/services be packaged as strictly confined snaps. This immediately presents two challenges: making applications compatible with strict confinement, and ensuring sufficient availability of applications on the platform.
Seager goes on to describe the benefits of Canonical’s new approach:
The biggest shortcoming of the 2023 developer preview was its architecture. The system used a modified base snap – swapping core22 for an alternative base snap that contained much of the desktop environment.
This alternate core snap was monolithic: it contained GDM, the GNOME desktop and even Firefox itself in early versions. This approach breaks many of the promises and goals of Ubuntu Core Desktop. It did enable the team to release what looked like a working PoC quickly, and this is what we’ve been working on for the past few weeks.
We want to build a modular desktop architecture that defines clear interfaces between components. Components such as the display manager, desktop environment, multimedia servers, networking and other core capabilities should adhere to well-defined interfaces and remain implementation agnostic.
The result will be a desktop whose constituent parts can evolve independently, without forcing the rebuild of the entire operating system image every time something changes – one of the key differentiators from other immutable operating system implementations.
Conclusion
If Canonical is able to give Core Desktop the attention it deserves, the distro could fundamentally change Ubuntu forever, and possibly the entire Linux space. While Snaps have been one of the more controversial technologies among Linux users, they could finally find their place, and wider acceptance, in Core Desktop.
Intel’s data center business just had its strongest growth in 15 years, and the company still told investors it can’t build enough server chips. Its fourth-quarter forecast landed well under analyst estimates, and the stock was down 25% in premarket trading Friday, CNBC data showed.
Intel guided to revenue of $15 billion to $16 billion and adjusted earnings of 25 cents a share for the quarter. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $17.1 billion and 43 cents, per CNBC. The third quarter itself beat: revenue rose 21% to $16.5 billion and adjusted EPS was 52 cents, the company said in its earnings release Thursday.
Memory prices are squeezing PC buyers
Revenue in the Client Computing and Physical AI Group, Intel’s PC unit, fell 5% from a year earlier to $8.1 billion, while Data Center and AI revenue jumped 78% to $7.3 billion. On the earnings call, CEO Lip-Bu Tan said Intel’s customers began signaling a PC slowdown in recent weeks because of memory prices and availability, with higher system prices “placing additional pressure on already limited IT budgets.”
CFO David Zinsner said Intel expects PC units across the industry to decline about 12% in 2026, with second-half units down more than 20%, and it is planning for a drop of roughly 10% in 2027. He expects client revenue to fall more than 20% from the third quarter as customers cut inventory. “We see the PC slowdown continuing at least through the first half of next year,” Zinsner said in the release.
What the Fab 28 accident costs
The outlook also absorbs an explosion earlier this month at Intel’s Fab 28 in Kiryat Gat, Israel, which killed two workers and seriously injured a third, CNBC reported. Tan called it an “unfortunate and tragic accident” that led to an extended shutdown. Those remarks were Intel’s first statements on the explosion, Calcalist’s Ctech noted.
Zinsner told analysts the fab had been shut for about two weeks and that Intel expects to restart production by the end of this week while it sorts out which wafers in the line can still be used. The guidance includes roughly $300 million of lost revenue and 200 basis points of gross margin, almost all of it tied to 10-nanometer server products, and he expects a similar revenue hit in the first quarter. He called the figures “somewhat of an early assessment.” Asking a question on the call, Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon put the 38% gross margin guide at about 40% excluding the incident.
Server customers will wait longer
Companies buying servers got a direct warning on supply. Zinsner said demand for Intel’s data center products “continues to meaningfully exceed available supply,” and that Intel expects the industry “to remain supply constrained throughout 2027 and into 2028.” Tan listed Intel 3 yields and a shortage of advanced organic substrates for its EMIB packaging as limits on output, alongside Israel. Intel now expects industry server CPU units to grow more than 30% in both 2026 and 2027.
The report capped a hard week for big tech results. Alphabet shares closed 13% lower Thursday after its own quarter, and Amazon was down 7% before the open Friday following its report, CNBC said. Earlier this week Intel announced plans to acquire quantum software company Classiq.
Spending is set to climb from here. Gross capital expenditures remain on track for $20 billion this year and should be “up strongly” in 2027, which Zinsner called “an investment year” for Intel. “So I don’t think that this will be a year in which we see positive cash flow,” he said.
Apple has announced its latest MacBook Pro, the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display, bringing a touchscreen to the Mac for the first time in its history.
Apple fans have clamored for touch features to be added to the Mac for years, driven in no small part by the success of such devices on the Windows side, as well as the success of the iPad. Both have illustrated the benefits of being able to interact with a computing device through touch. In fact, it often feels so natural that many iPad users find themselves instinctively reaching for the screen of their MacBooks.
Apple has finally delivered with its MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display. The laptop is available in both 14- and 16-inch models and is powered by the M5 Pro and M5 Max chips. Machines can support up to 128GB of RAM and up to 16TB of storage. As the name suggests, both come with the PROLED XDR display, which Apple calls the “world’s best laptop display.”
“The new MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display is a monumental step forward for the Mac,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer. “PROLED XDR is the world’s best laptop display. It pairs state-of-the-art tandem OLED technology with advanced algorithms in our display engine to deliver the kind of visual fidelity pros have been dreaming of. And with the magic of Touch coming to MacBook Pro, combined with the game-changing performance of M5 Pro and M5 Max, we’ve created a whole new way for pros to interact with their content, taking their workflows to a completely new level. The new MacBook Pro is the result of the deep integration between Apple silicon, hardware, and software, and there’s simply nothing else like it.”
Touchscreen
Apple touts the benefits of Touch on a Mac, for everyday users and professionals alike:
MacBook Pro features Touch for the first time, bringing pros a whole new way to interact with their content. Crafted specifically for the Mac, every touch interaction feels incredibly responsive and refined. Everyday tasks are simple and intuitive, allowing users to scroll through a webpage with a natural swipe; pinch to zoom in on a photo; drag and drop slides from one presentation to another; and double-tap a window to fill the screen, or flick to tile it into place. And the touch sensor is built directly into the display panel — not layered on top of it — reducing latency so users feel like they’re touching the content itself.
Touch also introduces entirely new ways of working for pro users. Graphic designers can now use the entire display as their canvas, no longer constrained by the area of the trackpad when drawing; musicians can play software instruments right onscreen; and app developers can test how Touch performs in their iOS and iPadOS apps directly on the MacBook Pro display. And these new ways to interact with MacBook Pro work in tandem with the keyboard shortcuts and trackpad gestures pros know and love. In addition, a newly designed hinge provides greater stability while using Touch, and advanced video stabilization automatically smooths the camera feed in real time while using Touch on a video call.
The company says its own apps are optimized for Touch already, but even many third-party apps will automatically work because of how macOS translates touches into clicks that the system can recognize.
Dynamic Island
Interestingly, Dynamic Island also makes the jump from iPhone to the Mac:
The Dynamic Island comes to the Mac, serving as the new home for Spotlight, Live Activities, and Siri AI, where users can quickly search for anything on their MacBook Pro, access real-time updates, or take advantage of Siri AI. Just like on iPhone, the Dynamic Island provides a quick, intuitive way to see and interact with important information. Users can ask a question, pick up a phone call, or control music — all within easy reach. With Live Activities, users can now get timely updates at a glance, and can accept an AirDrop request or pause a song with a tap of their finger.
Branding
Overall, the new MacBook Pro is sure to be a hit. Unfortunately, it seems like Apple missed the boat when it comes to naming. “MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display” is exactly the kind of long technical name that Steve Jobs axed when he returned to Apple, in favor of simpler names like “iMac,” “iBook,” “PowerBook,” and “Power Mac.” “MacBook Pro Touch” or “MacBook Pro Touchscreen” rolls off the tongue far easier than “MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display.”
Hopefully this is not a turn toward more complicated branding from a company that has always excelled in that area.
DoorDash is buying Instacart for $65 a share, an equity value of about $17 billion, in a deal that would bring the largest U.S. food delivery app together with the grocery service that partners with nearly 100,000 stores. The price is a 26% premium to Instacart’s close on Oct. 22, the last trading day before reports of the talks surfaced.
The two companies announced the definitive agreement Thursday morning, alongside third-quarter results from both. At least 75% of the payment will be cash. Instacart holders can choose $65 in cash, 0.3372 DoorDash shares, or a mix of $48.75 in cash and 0.0843 shares, with stock capped at 25% of the total, per DoorDash’s filing with the SEC. Instacart’s board approved the deal unanimously, and holders of about 19% of its shares have agreed to vote for it.
WebProNews reported last week that Instacart had held early sale talks with Uber and DoorDash.
A long wait for regulators
Closing is more than a year away. DoorDash expects the deal to wrap up at the end of 2027 or in the first half of 2028, pending an Instacart shareholder vote, the Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust waiting period and approvals in Canada and Israel. DoorDash will pay with cash on hand and new debt, backed by a 364-day senior unsecured bridge loan commitment from JPMorgan Chase Bank, and it is aiming for a capital structure that keeps its investment-grade ratings.
DoorDash handled about two-thirds of U.S. food delivery volume as of 2024, NBC News reported, citing Bloomberg data, while Instacart has been fighting grocery delivery pressure from Amazon and Walmart.
DoorDash’s case: scale for the warehouse
DoorDash was blunt about its own grocery business in the shareholder letter it released with earnings. “We’ve made meaningful progress over the past five years at DoorDash, significantly improving logistics quality for grocery delivery, but as we’ve said many times, the product still isn’t there,” the company wrote. “Consumers are still asked to pay a premium for imperfect delivery.”
Its fix runs through inventory it manages itself. DoorDash’s DashMart sites hit 99%+ fulfillment accuracy and deliver more than 10 minutes faster on average, because the warehouse is set up for delivery rather than in-store shopping, the letter says. But warehousing is a fixed-cost business, and Instacart’s order volume would help spread that cost. The company sees a multi-year path to $500 million or more in annual synergies, net of investments. It plans to reinvest more than all of those savings in the first year after closing and expects positive net synergies from year two.
Instacart also sells software to grocers. It works with more than 2,200 retail banners, and its Enterprise platform and Instacart Ads cover e-commerce, fulfillment, in-store technology, AI offerings and advertising. The deal announcement says DoorDash expects to keep the Instacart brand, app and enterprise technology products after closing. Instacart customers could shop at more than 50,000 additional stores, and members of DashPass and Instacart+ would pay one fee instead of two, which DoorDash estimates would save them $100 million a year.
“Grocery is one of the hardest things to get right online. Someone has to pick a ripe avocado, find a substitute you’d choose yourself, and get the ice cream to you before it melts,” DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu said.
“Over the last 14 years, Instacart has transformed online grocery by helping retailers of all sizes compete and grow, and joining forces with DoorDash allows us to do even more,” Instacart CEO Chris Rogers added.
Both sides arrive with growing numbers
DoorDash’s third-quarter revenue rose 34% to $4.6 billion on 993 million orders, and net income nearly doubled to $466 million. Some of that growth came from Deliveroo, the U.K. delivery company DoorDash bought last year; without it, revenue rose 23%. Instacart’s results showed gross transaction value up 15% to $10.53 billion on 91.4 million orders, with advertising and other revenue up 23% to $331 million.
Instacart has canceled the earnings call it had set for Nov. 5, suspended its financial guidance and withdrawn its long-term targets while the deal is pending.
Anthropic hiring manager Felix Rieseberg has made a bold statement, saying he “laid the traditional coding interview to rest.”
Coding interviews have been a long-standing and popular way to test a programmer or software engineer’s general skill level. Beyond basic skills, it gives the hiring manager a window into how the developer thinks. Do they write concise, efficient code? Do they write verbose code that is more visually appealing? Do they document their code clearly? While certainly not foolproof, the coding interview gave a hiring manager at least some glimpse into what kind of programmer a candidate might be.
According to Rieseberg, however, the rise of AI-assisted coding has made the coding interview obsolete.
There’s no more point in giving you a little React challenge than there is in quizzing people about assembly; Claude is now better at both. Our most impactful builders are successful regardless of how good they are at these tests.
The coding interview was, despite its ubiquity, never popular. I suspect that established engineers will still have strong reactions to its disappearance — if only for what it says about the evolution of our roles. Plenty of ink has been spilled to describe how AI is a challenge for junior developers, especially those trying to land a job. Now that I’ve seen junior people work with AI for a bit, I have a more hopeful take: Impact is less bounded by how many years of accumulated knowledge in frameworks and libraries you’ve gathered.
Interestingly, Rieseberg says AI has helped newer software engineers surpass more experienced ones.
I’m seeing engineers who are comparatively new fly past people who are probably better coders and have been around much longer. Hunger beats tenure.
Rieseberg believes that the coding interview is dead and not coming back.
I don’t think the coding interview is going to come back. It’s easy to get sentimental given how many copies of “Algorithms and Data Structures” were bought in hopes of unlocking good jobs and a better future — or how the death of the coding interview is another milestone in software engineering reaching a new level of abstraction.
At the same time, as a longtime hater of promotions by tenure, I can’t help but be optimistic. I’ve already seen my fair share of popular apps and products made this way.
Rieseberg’s entire blog post is a fascinating read and underscores the issues that software developers and tech companies are facing.
