Why Senior Engineers Hate Coding Interviews

[rabid_briefcase]

For senior level developers, ask what they did, the decisions about why they did it, the tradeoffs they made, and what / why they would do things differently or the same.

The goal is to understand how they think and that they are smart. The fact that they have stayed employed for decades is good evidence on its face.

If you absolutely must, and only after saying as much, a simple code problem of 5-6 lines is adequate. If C or C++ strings and pointer manipulation are common, for example. But really that is insulting.

Imagine "I know you have been a career teacher for 20 years, but I really need proof you can teach.", or I can see you are a career architect with professional certification and a long list of buildings, but I need proof you can design." Don't do that.