I would say that even being demonstrably good at the job has an imperfect correlation with being productive on the job. Because people lose motivation and procrastinate.
A given programmer might blaze through an interview task like a superstar, yet take two days to get started on it if it's an actual job assignment.
Everyone can put on their Gets Shit Done hat in an interview, in other words
That is why interviewers ask questions about previous job experiences and contact references.
> Doing well at interviews has low correlation with being good at the job, simple as that.
That's true, but only because companies are bad at interviewing. It is possible to do much better than companies typically do at this. It's just a really hard skill to master, and involves more than just standardised testing.
A kinder rephrasing of "companies are bad at interviewing" would be that finding out who is a good fit for a company (and vice versa) is a very difficult problem, more so given the resource constraints.
A given programmer might blaze through an interview task like a superstar, yet take two days to get started on it if it's an actual job assignment.
Everyone can put on their Gets Shit Done hat in an interview, in other words
That is why interviewers ask questions about previous job experiences and contact references.