Your post resonates with my own thoughts on the subject of software interviewing. I've talked about this subject at length with a few colleagues several times over the last few months. I know a senior guy who holds several patents that didn't get an offer because he "failed" an interview because he couldn't answer some obscure question about embedded programming. When I got out of school with a graduate degree and a strong background in software, I still had to answer bullshit questions like "what will the output of this function be" etc. I basically didn't get an offer because I couldn't figure out what a format string in a printf statement would do. Normally, I would figure it out via "man printf". These days, I'm the one doing the interviewing and I'd much rather ask conceptual questions and talk about what a candidate has done in the past than to ask questions that are easily solvable using Google. I use Google, Wikipedia and StackOverflow all the time to find answers to questions about C++, Perl and Python. Is it fair to expect a candidate to have all that information at their fingertips?

That's why I put them in quotes; but buzzwords help when speaking to manager types... ;)

Reminds me of the quote "In Chaos Lies Opportunity"... Sounds like a perfect opportunity to become a "value added" employee by "leveraging" your past experience and introducing "proven best practices" to your current company.