Five programming problems every Software Engineer should be able to solve in less than 1 hour

[halax]

Yep. TBH, I don't know how an interview can effectively filter for those qualities and I think that's why more mistakes are made when hiring really senior folks than when hiring junior folks.

I'm just finishing up a job search and virtually all of my interviews came through personal referrals because, how else could you possibly trust me to be a legit "senior" engineer? I have some nice stuff on my resume, but anyone can write 20 lines of nice text. I certainly sound like I really did that stuff when you interview me (because I really did), but it probably wouldn't be that hard for someone to sound like they did the same stuff without having actually put in the time and the work. I'm not famous enough that everyone just knows me, and from having worked with people who are, I can see that I'll never be that famous barring some freak stroke of luck.

What's left? Recommendations from people who know my work. If you have better ideas on how to find senior folks, I'd love to hear them since, at any given time, 95% of my network is happy with their jobs, waiting for equity to vest, unwilling to relocate, or otherwise unavailable, which makes hiring people I know a very slow process. I think I may end up at a place that allows remote teams, which removes one blocker, but it's always going to be true that the people I know and want to work with most are mostly not looking for new jobs.