[nolevels]

All these differing opinions on this tells me interviews are a crapshoot subject to the interviewer's whims. If I got you for an interviewer I would need to be specific, for others who replied to this, I'd need to be generic. Hopefully the interviewer is helpful in this regards and indicates his preference, maybe by asking what cache would you use and why instead of silently docking me points.

[_moof]

I loathe secret requirements in interviews and am up-front and explicit about what I'm looking for. Even with that guardrail though, lots of folks don't answer the questions I'm asking. So I guess a more general piece of advice would be: listen to the interviewer, listen to the question, and answer the question that was asked.

(This is the same advice I give people when I'm coaching them for FAA oral exams, incidentally. People really have a hard time listening to a question and answering the actual question.)

[manimino]

From the inside, it can feel like there are actually too many rules. The interviewer is likely running a fairly narrow script. The interviewer probably believes they are being fair or generous when allowing minor deviations from their structure.

From the outside, it all feels random: unless you know the rules the interview is playing by, you can easily make a mistake. Each place has a different interview script and priorities.