[josephorjoe]

I've seen the coding questions we ask candidates... whether or not i would pass would depend 100% on which question(s) I was asked.

Something relevant to the work I do all the time? yes, I'd probably pass.

Something about some data structure or algorithm I haven't needed to use in four years that i now have 30 minutes to implement in code? I'd likely fail.

When something comes up in my actual job where i need to solve a problem i'm not familiar with, i first do some research on the problem and learn/remember what i need to know about it and related algorithms/data structures before doing any actual coding.

i certainly do not "immediately write code as fast as possible" when presented w an unfamiliar problem.

if you must ask candidates to work on coding problems, i believe that you should give them 3 or more problems and let them pick which one to work on for the actual "coding test" part of it.

Then maybe have a conversation about the other problems to get a sense of how they would think about/approach them w/o actually making them write code.

[actually_a_dog]

You nailed it, man. I don't do terribly well on Leetcode interviews, on average, but, for my last job, my interviewer told me some time after I got hired that I had done the best on that interview that she had ever seen. That's because it was a real world question as part of a structured interview process, as opposed to "let's just 4 engineers to throw random problems at the candidate."