[noirbot]

Or, you know, you don't cram for the interview and just do as well as you can and let them evaluate on that. If you give me a meaningless take-home assignment, I have to actually write working code for it that looks good. If there's a trivial problem in an in-person interview, I can often "blah blah blah" through the more rote parts unless they really ask for details.

There's no wiggle room on a take-home. The code you write either does the thing or it doesn't. If you don't remember the exact way to do something in an in-person interview, you can express your general understanding to the interviewer and probably get some/all the credit of actually knowing it.

[endtime]

> Or, you know, you don't cram for the interview and just do as well as you can and let them evaluate on that.

Sure, depends how much you want the job and what your general approach is. If it's a competitive job then you want to optimize for the interviews. Last time I interviewed, the potential impact on my income and net worth over the next decade was significant, so I took it pretty seriously.

[noirbot]

Oh sure, but then as the interviewer, your take-home is also likely to be gamed by someone cramming for that too. Motivated people can always do too much work for a project. Whether it's a live coding thing, a take home exam, or a whiteboard problem, none of them really give a solution where someone isn't going to spend 100 hours prepping.