[t0mas88]

What role were you interviewing for? Sure anyone with a serious CS degree at some point knew the difference between a char and a string. But if you're hiring a VP or product in a larger org, it doesn't matter whether they remember because the people they'd be managing wouldn't even need to know.

[lumost]

It’s quite possible to avoid learning this. A trivial way is to do all of your coding in python, and then never do anything more advanced than a todo MVC app. Do this for 3 years then get promoted to management and stop coding.

When money was cheap, delivery didn’t matter for a while.

[squeaky-clean]

I've interviewed and approved people for hiring who probably did not know the actual difference between a char and a string. And they've done more than a TODO MVP. They were great employees. For python dev work you really don't need to know about that, since it doesn't have a dedicated char type. They could probably answer questions about Django and RabbitMQ that OP couldn't.

But I'm assuming OP is hiring for a lower-level language role where that knowledge is necessary. I've interviewed people with similar levels of incompetence. Again for that Django role, people who did not know the difference between GET and POST. I'm amazed they made it past the first phone screen with our hiring manager. And I'm curious how bad the people who did not pass the phone screen were.

[alex_lav]

> It’s quite possible to avoid learning this.

Could it be inferred? It feels kind of self explanatory...

[ethbr0]

Customer-facing implementation engineer, more or less.

[ionwake]

I find people who judge others on how they answer a tech question to be sus highly judgemental and often wrong about their hunches

But I could be wrong

[ethbr0]

That's why I try to ask open-ended questions. Get to a solution. Might not be my solution, but at least get me there.

How do you run candidate interviews?

[ionwake]

I dont interview, I just hire based on their portfolio, and increment their work load as results come in.