> I’ve had success pair programming together on a problem you both don’t know the immediate answer to.
This is not different to what is being described in TFA -- you do discuss with the interview in order to reach the solution, and as many have said in these comments already, if you just lash out the solution without revealing your thinking process, many interviewers get disappointed and may throw you another problem.
They are not simply asking you for your leetcode ranking (or whatever the name of the-site-of-this-week for this type of problems). That may actually be much more fair, but it is a much worse experience.
> I’ve also had success with allowing candidates to choose take home assignments.
I was giving take at home assignments until one candidate basically scolded me for wasting his time with these. I think he actually had a point -- I would probably refuse a take at home assignment myself -- and I have since stopped giving them (we hired that guy and he became a friend of mine). They are also not very fair -- they are skewed towards people with more free time at home -- and very prone to cheating, so you have do the whiteboard discussion afterwards. Overall I find this one of the worst experiences.
> I’ve also had success doing what every other other industry does: trust their resume, ask them to talk me through projects, and talk to references.
In the same way that the whiteboard interview is the only practical method I know for junior positions, at some level of seniority this becomes the only practical way to hire people. But like the whiteboard interviews, this is practically the opposite of fairness. Like in every other industry indeed.
>This is not different to what is being described in TFA -- you do discuss with the interview in order to reach the solution
It's very different. If the interviewer already knows the answer and is careful not to give it away, it creates an artificially adversarial process that is completely divorced from the reality of the job.
Working together to solve a common problem is a much more accurate work sample test.
>if you just lash out the solution without revealing your thinking process, many interviewers get disappointed and may throw you another problem.
Knowing the answer upfront makes it much easier to explain your thought process in a way that makes you look smart. Many (most?) companies doing leetcode interviews are more interested in you correctly solving x number of medium-hard problems than they are in hearing how you think.
>They are also not very fair -- they are skewed towards people with more free time at home
That's why I've given them as one alternative among several.
>so you have do the whiteboard discussion afterwards.
You can talk to them about the problem and ask them to explain their decisions. Also if someone cheats and the result is that you hire a fake programmer, fire them.
>this is practically the opposite of fairness
Leetcode interviews aren't more "fair" they just test a different skill than other types of interviews. The hope is that the skill they test is more correlated with job performance than other types of interviews. I don't think that's true.
This is not different to what is being described in TFA -- you do discuss with the interview in order to reach the solution, and as many have said in these comments already, if you just lash out the solution without revealing your thinking process, many interviewers get disappointed and may throw you another problem.
They are not simply asking you for your leetcode ranking (or whatever the name of the-site-of-this-week for this type of problems). That may actually be much more fair, but it is a much worse experience.
> I’ve also had success with allowing candidates to choose take home assignments.
I was giving take at home assignments until one candidate basically scolded me for wasting his time with these. I think he actually had a point -- I would probably refuse a take at home assignment myself -- and I have since stopped giving them (we hired that guy and he became a friend of mine). They are also not very fair -- they are skewed towards people with more free time at home -- and very prone to cheating, so you have do the whiteboard discussion afterwards. Overall I find this one of the worst experiences.
> I’ve also had success doing what every other other industry does: trust their resume, ask them to talk me through projects, and talk to references.
In the same way that the whiteboard interview is the only practical method I know for junior positions, at some level of seniority this becomes the only practical way to hire people. But like the whiteboard interviews, this is practically the opposite of fairness. Like in every other industry indeed.