> and quite frankly it's unlikely that the daily tasks involved in the next job will bear a strong resemblance to the kind of synthetic tasks or problems you are asked about in an interview setting.
The blog post mentions in passing that their interview.io site gives users a choice between practicing traditional "synthetic"/algorithmic questions and a different approach focused on "systems design". I'm not entirely sure what the latter involves, but it seems like it could strike quite a bit closer to the generalist knowledge that would be required in "day to day work", while preserving a desirable problem-solving component.
One might even imagine using both approaches in combination, e.g. using algorithmic puzzles as a sort of tie-breaker to choose among candidates who seem about equally strong in the 'systems design' domain.
Algorithmic coding tasks and system design questions are the two types of things you get asked in SWE interviews. They just have practice interviews for both. It's not novel.
The blog post mentions in passing that their interview.io site gives users a choice between practicing traditional "synthetic"/algorithmic questions and a different approach focused on "systems design". I'm not entirely sure what the latter involves, but it seems like it could strike quite a bit closer to the generalist knowledge that would be required in "day to day work", while preserving a desirable problem-solving component.
One might even imagine using both approaches in combination, e.g. using algorithmic puzzles as a sort of tie-breaker to choose among candidates who seem about equally strong in the 'systems design' domain.