I feel your pain. I started in 2008 and have been running various R&D related development contracts through the same core employer but am in the process of moving locations.
When I interviewed around 2008, there was whiteboarding, but only psuedo code based which I could do just fine. The majority of interviews focused on questions regarding time/space complexity trade offs, design choices, etc. not on-the-fly fully optimized implementation solutions, first pass. The worst thing I ran into was having to write merge sort as the FizzBizz of the time.
Now, it's an absolute circus. Most in the industry really don't know what they're looking for and how to adequately assess abilities. They're far more concerned with trivia and memory recall and filtering any remote risk of a false negative than actually accomplishing the tasks for the position at hand.
The current process is very well designed on multiple fronts to attempt to delegitimize professionals and is quite optimized at grabbing fresh grads desperate for work experience or finding cheaper labor without raising red flags on illegal hiring processes. Why people have put up with this practice boggles my mind.
The vast majority of roles don't need Alan Turing, Donald Knuth, or Jon von Neumann to accomplish some basic business goals so let's be realistic and stop pretending they do.
When I interviewed around 2008, there was whiteboarding, but only psuedo code based which I could do just fine. The majority of interviews focused on questions regarding time/space complexity trade offs, design choices, etc. not on-the-fly fully optimized implementation solutions, first pass. The worst thing I ran into was having to write merge sort as the FizzBizz of the time.
Now, it's an absolute circus. Most in the industry really don't know what they're looking for and how to adequately assess abilities. They're far more concerned with trivia and memory recall and filtering any remote risk of a false negative than actually accomplishing the tasks for the position at hand.
The current process is very well designed on multiple fronts to attempt to delegitimize professionals and is quite optimized at grabbing fresh grads desperate for work experience or finding cheaper labor without raising red flags on illegal hiring processes. Why people have put up with this practice boggles my mind.
The vast majority of roles don't need Alan Turing, Donald Knuth, or Jon von Neumann to accomplish some basic business goals so let's be realistic and stop pretending they do.