[groby_b]

1) Games are somewhat easier, because C++ is pretty common. It'd also work for larger companies, because you can group candidates by languages. I don't have a good answer for companies that can't do that.

2) That's why there's an observer with the team the whole time. If there were a truly toxic person, they'd have the power to pull them. I didn't see it happen (likely because everybody is on their best behavior during interviews), but I did see a few large egos - and they were pretty much always shunted into a corner of the project.

3) You obviously shouldn't do that if you can't afford to hire everybody. Which means it's likely not the right process for smaller companies.

4) Both by the embedded observer, and by looking at commit history. But it rarely comes down to that - what you want is "smart, and gets stuff done", and that fairly clearly separates out without counting commits. Or maybe we just got lucky.

5) All we told candidates is that we'd expect them to have a working game by end of day. Grading was less by cooperation, and more by how much of a positive contribution people were. We e.g. had candidates that up-front said "look, I work best by thinking quietly, and I'm an expert on X - would you mind if we carved out a subproject around that, and we reintegrate from time to time". And we did hire them - because a person who knows what their style is, and how to collaborate with a team with a different style, is a huge win.