Stop making people code in tech interviews.
I don't make people code in tech interviews. Whether it's via screenshare or on a whiteboard, I don't do it. Being a teacher completely upended my perspective on this.
Test anxiety is real, y'all. I had really smart students literally cry their way through exams, even while getting perfect scores. Some people really, really just don't do well with a timer running, or with someone looking over their shoulder. I, myself, have completely blown coding interviews because my head wasn't in the right place.
Please stop traumatizing candidates in interviews.
My alternative
You know what I do instead?
Recommended by LinkedIn
"Open a browser and find some code you've made, or a library you've used, or just anything you're familiar with. Any code, anywhere. Show me something interesting about that code, or tricky, or surprising, or elegant. Something memorable."
From there, ask simple follow-ups which tease a story out of the dev. Maybe they like the API design. Maybe some function has surprising side effects. Maybe there's some ergonomic factor they love/hate. Help them build a narrative about that code.
Probe for the boundaries. If they show you code they like, ask them which parts were their least favorite. If they show you something useful, ask them which part of the code they never ever used.
Why? Because it shows you how they think about code in the abstract, which is what you should really care about. What do they notice? What parts to they take for granted? How would they improve the code? What are the tradeoffs? Which parts are clear and which are fuzzy?
You're getting their eye for detail, their cultural alignment, their opinions, and more. All in their own words, without any inference.
And if you're an AI-optimistic company, it also shows you which parts of the AI generated code they're going to pay attention to, and which parts they'll miss. That should tell you more about how they're going to impact your codebase than solving some leetcode BS.
That's it. That's my entire tech interview. Have them build for you a story of how they relate to code. That's all it needs to be.
I like your approach of having folks show you something they made. It’s shocking how people still pretend that torturing candidates with a timebox exercise is somehow a predictor of competence and good character. When I run or assist, I like to have a friendly conversation about programming and work philosophy instead. We can get into architecture, design approaches, what they’ve learned from successes or challenges, etc. Most applicants are a bit flabbergasted at first, and sometimes it takes a little bit of them to get them off the leetcode mindset. I’ve had multiple folks (some who got offers, some who didn’t) send me a note afterwards to thank me for not making them do the kind of “dance for me monkey!” interview that has ruined our industry.
Meanwhile I’ve got this live coding interview in a couple of days. Any chance we can get this to really blow up in the next day or so?
Hallelujah. What is worse, they are asking those rudimentary code questions on the QA Automation interviews. Not the testing logic, not the test data handling, but some logical coding that will never be used in testing. We don't change data, we test it :-)
100%. Couldn’t agree more. Conversation and discussion can determine someone’s skills. If you need more, a simple project that lets them work thru a solution, explain their code, etc. and in today’s era of AI, if they use it but understand it and spot any issues then I find that not a red flag. It’s more of poor coding an reliance on AI and not seeing the issue that’s the concern imo