[holman]

It depends on the company, but I'm a big fan of pairing with a developer on something they're working on for an hour or so. The dynamics of the interview completely changes from "I need to figure out hidden knowledge that the interviewer knows already" to "I need to work with this person to find out a solution together", which I think is quite a bit less stressful. You're also working on real problems that — though they might not be a glamorous interview question — will be much closer to what "real" work at the company will be.

Put another way: I've probably done a dozen or two product interviews this year, and have still never seen a full stack web request. I mean, I haven't seen a controller action, or a view, or even a model for that matter. And that's the area that's my entire job, really: I build screens and hook things together and make things work for users. As much as feasible, I'd like to be able to demonstrate those types of talents in the interview process.

[DavidChouinard]

In general, anything that moves the interview from adversarial to collaborative is a big win. In many ways, interviewing is a lot less about assessing skill and a lot more about creating affection between two strangers.

[hosh]

That fits -- it's difficult enough to recruit people, let alone people that you can work with, or building out a gelled team that can work through on a lot of challenging things (and not all those challenges are technical).

[vdnkh]

I had one of these "pair" things by a startup touting how different their process was. It consisted of two developers doing work while I solved a thinly-veiled CS101 interview question alone, on a setup I wasn't familiar with, in an editor I couldn't change. I tried to ask questions but the typical answer is "we really cant help you". I'll take the whiteboard, thanks.

[ricardolopes]

Completely agree with pairing. If possible, with more than one developer, to avoid possible biases.

In addition to those reasons, I also like pairing because it also reveals what kind of team player you are, and going to be if you're hired (are you just redirecting blame, are you taking any initiative, what kind of questions do you ask...). Which is one of the most underrated skills when hiring, IMO.