This post by Will Larson (author of the engineering management book, An Elegant Puzzle, which was published by Stripe Press) mentions some tools for system modeling with feedback loops: https://lethain.com/systems-thinking/.
Good article (or so I've heard, Leverage Points is still on my reading list) but worth noting that Robin Sloan is talking about a different sort of stock and flow. His usage is more akin to long-form evergreen media versus in-the-moment short-form content (e.g., tweets) and striking a balance between the two.
I don't mind this (provided the request is decently specified and scoped), because I find interviews stressful and often pointless and work sample tests are (or should be) higher signal, but if I'm going to do a work sample test, I don't want to then have several phone or onsite interviews as a followup.
Ideally, when I'm given such a test I should be able to predict my success at completing it well enough to know whether it is worth my time. There could, of course, be unforeseen problems, but I should be able to judge the likelihood that spending the time to complete the exercise will get me the job. This means that cultural expectations are expressed up front. Do you expect the job applicant to adhere to your company code style guide or expect unit tests? I'd assume the latter is a frequent expectation but it doesn't hurt to mention; practices vary greatly from company to company so a reminder could be useful. Or maybe you write a lot of functional JavaScript on your team, and want to know if a candidate is familiar with that style. If you reject a candidate because they didn't match your preferred style but didn't ask for that, you're likely wasting my time and yours.
Recent graduate, so looking for entry-level software engineering positions. I would be extremely interested working in one of the following spaces: education, journalism/publishing, civic tech, or geoinformatics.
I've been on LINFO before and wondered the same thing. But actually, it appears to have last been updated in 2007 (see http://www.linfo.org/additions.html). No matter, the site was still quite useful.