Technical Interviews: Just Stop.

Technical interviews. Ugh. We all do them. It’s like some ingrained tech industry… thing. Need to hire a programmer? Whiteboard coding. LeetCode grind. System design questions that are, let’s be honest, mostly bullshit. Everyone’s doing it, so it must be the way, right?

Wrong. It’s cargo cult hiring, plain and simple. We’re going through the motions, hoping to magically conjure up good programmers, but the whole damn ritual is fundamentally broken. We’re mistaking the performance of rigor for actual, you know, rigor.

Think about it for a second. What are we actually testing? Are we finding the people who can build great stuff? Or are we just finding the people who are good at… technical interviews? Massive difference. It’s like focusing on a completely irrelevant skill.

The whole thing is just… artificial. You shove someone in a room, under pressure, ask them to solve some contrived puzzle that has zero to do with real work, and then you think you’ve learned something useful about their ability to program. Come on.

We’re obsessed with algorithms and data structures. Like that’s it. Like that’s the whole game. It’s part of it, fine. But it’s a tiny, tiny sliver. Real programming, the stuff that actually matters, is about:

• Figuring shit out, not textbook answers. Real programming is messy; interviews are pristine.
• Readable, working code, not just test-passing tricks. Maintainability and user value are key; interview cleverness, less so.
• Shipping product, not solving puzzles. Iteration and user feedback drive real development; interviews are a vacuum.
• Teamwork and decency, not isolation and stress. Collaboration is essential; interviews are often adversarial.

Technical interviews are optimized for… well, I’m not even sure what they’re optimized for. Maybe filtering out people who are completely clueless. But they also filter out tons of perfectly good, even amazing, programmers who just aren’t wired for this particular brand of bullshit. And they let through plenty of interview pros who are actually mediocre coders. Signal-to-noise ratio is terrible.

So, what’s the fix? We gotta get real. We need to evaluate programmers based on… wait for it… actual programming. Wild idea, I know.

1. Real Projects. And Pay For Them.

Take-home projects get a bad rap, I know. Companies abuse them, turn them into free labor. But done right, they’re the closest thing we have to sanity in this whole mess. Give a candidate a small, focused project that’s actually like the work they’d be doing. And for god’s sake, pay them for their time. Treat it like a short consulting gig. Ethical? Yes. Smart? Absolutely. Attracts better people.

Then, look at the code. Read it. Understand it. Is it clean? Does it make sense? Is it… good? This tells you a thousand times more than any whiteboard scribble. It’s a much more relevant evaluation.

2. Look At Their Damn Portfolio.

Programmers build things. That’s what we do. Look at what they’ve built. GitHub, personal projects, open source contributions, even just code snippets online. Dig in. See what they’ve actually done. Ask them to walk you through a project they’re proud of. This is real evidence. Not interview theater.

Ask about the process. What went wrong? How did they fix it? What did they learn? That’s where the gold is. That’s how you see how they actually think and solve problems.

3. Trial Period. The Ultimate Reality Check.

Want to really know if someone can do the job? Hire them for a week. Two weeks. A month. Trial period. Integrate them into the team, give them real tasks, and see what happens. This is the ultimate test. The most honest evaluation you can get.

Yeah, it’s more upfront work. But the cost of a bad hire? Massive. Investing in a decent evaluation process is just… smart. And again, pay them fairly for this trial. Don’t be cheap.

Pair Programming Interviews? Hard Pass.

Pair programming interviews? Just… no. Awkward, stressful, and usually tells you nothing useful. It’s not how most people actually code. Skip it. Focus on the other stuff.

Enough with the BS.

Technical interviews are BS. They’re a performance. They’re a waste of everyone’s time. We need to grow up and start hiring programmers like it’s, you know, the 21st century. Not some weird medieval guild.

Stop the whiteboard charades. Stop the LeetCode obsession. Stop pretending that solving algorithm puzzles is the same as building real software. Just stop. And start hiring like you actually want to find good programmers, not just good interviewees. Your company, and your future hires, will thank you for it.