In the US, Amtrak shares rails controlled by the freight operators. Amtrak trains can be delayed indefinitely, as the freight trains always get priority, even when they are off schedule. These delays are unpredictable in timing and length.
I used to do the Seattle/Portland route regularly and 1 - 2 hours extra/unplanned travel time wasn't uncommon. Average speed was well less than 50mph.
In a very literal sense, that's exactly what's broken about the interview process in the software industry. The philosophy is to avoid false positives at all costs, so a high rate of false negatives is seen as OK. The prevailing advice is, just try your luck again in six months.
> A second-order digital filter requires what, about 4 stores, recalls, and multiplies per sample?
This is true today using something like the Chamberlin form for a state variable filter. I don't think that level of optimization had been discovered yet in the DX7 timeframe.
Also, for adequate quality you want to oversample at least 2x, preferably at least 4x.
And 16 bits usually won't be enough headroom in a digital filter for good audio quality. Too much truncation.
[0]: https://electionscience.org/