[j45]

Another angle of this question is often to elicit what kinds of problems you have solved in your personal time, ideally technical, but not necessarily so.

I have had great conversations with someone who has built an automatic pet feeder that lead to the work.

It shows a different facet of one's personality. This, in turn may come in to play when creative problem solving is involved. Quite often even non-technical problem solving around the home can transfer to work

It can delineate the difference between a developer who sees what they do as a profession, vs those who started with it as a passion and continue to solve problems.

[MisterBastahrd]

The guys who try to heal people with crystals are way more passionate about their jobs than the people who went through med school. Passion doesn't equal talent. I'll choose the guy who gets his job done on time and under budget all day long over the guy who needs to reinvent the wheel because he saw a blog post and thought the idea would be cool to implement on company time.

[invalidOrTaken]

This is presumptuous of a level of trust that is not there.

There is no talent shortage, and if there is, it's of management, not the ability to write code. The difference between a good developer and a code monkey is that the first is self-managing. They have to be, to do their job. But even they can't do it without clear communication about the project---and cash, of course.

That the shortage is of management, not developer talent (if you protest that there is a developer shortage, I have bad news for you about where the shortage of management ability is), means that the interviewer is generally in the power position.

Ergo:

How great can the conversation be on such unequal terms? I'm not saying I haven't had good conversations with interviewers or interviewees, but it can't be expected to be a regular thing. What I really think is a smorgasbord of hunches, folk wisdom, and Alan Kay quotes---but I would never be so rude as to express such in an interview.

Buy the girl a drink first, sheesh.

[marcinzm]

Pre-pandemic I've found that in many markets there is a shortage of good senior developers. Good defined by those who can interview well in whatever the current in-vogue interview style is. Or more specifically those that could get jobs at Google, Facebook, etc.

[invalidOrTaken]

I feel like the caveats prove my point.

[marcinzm]

It's more that you can't lump all developers into one category and make blanked statement like you did. Some developers in some markets aren't in demand. Some developers in some markets are absurdly in demand.