I think the root of the technical interviewing issue is distrust. For some reason, too many programmers seem to have a inherent distrust in other programmers; a kind of "guilty until proven otherwise" mentality, where everyone else is a hack / fraud in disguise.
Whenever I see people defend the current practice, they tend to back it up with anecdotes like "I once had a technical manager who couldn't code his way out of a wet paper bag","We once got this fresh CS grad that couldn't even write basic control statements, ridiculous!", "I have a co-worker that can't code".
I'm not sure why this field is more affected than any other I've been in. Other than "tech", I've been in regular business, and in electrical engineering (at big global corporations) - and the technical grilling is absolutely nothing like what you see in coding-focused tech.
I think technical interviews have their place, and are legit, but not when they're being used the wrong way.
Some guy breathing down your neck while expecting a 100% correct recital of some esoteric data-structure or algorithm, for the sake of correctness, seems like a terribly flawed way to go on about things - yet it's something you can expect to experience in this industry. Reminds me more of quizzing than interviewing.
So yeah, that's my observations on the current atmosphere. There are good companies with good practices out there, but sadly a ton of low-effort stuff that probably hurts both parties in the long run.
I'm an EE who has worked with and interviewed a lot of SWEs. Software is a uniquely "fake it till you make it"-compatible career path. There is an oversupply of people who look pretty good on paper but execute poorly.
Whenever I see people defend the current practice, they tend to back it up with anecdotes like "I once had a technical manager who couldn't code his way out of a wet paper bag","We once got this fresh CS grad that couldn't even write basic control statements, ridiculous!", "I have a co-worker that can't code".
I'm not sure why this field is more affected than any other I've been in. Other than "tech", I've been in regular business, and in electrical engineering (at big global corporations) - and the technical grilling is absolutely nothing like what you see in coding-focused tech.
I think technical interviews have their place, and are legit, but not when they're being used the wrong way.
Some guy breathing down your neck while expecting a 100% correct recital of some esoteric data-structure or algorithm, for the sake of correctness, seems like a terribly flawed way to go on about things - yet it's something you can expect to experience in this industry. Reminds me more of quizzing than interviewing.
So yeah, that's my observations on the current atmosphere. There are good companies with good practices out there, but sadly a ton of low-effort stuff that probably hurts both parties in the long run.