> Say, I am happy and confident to do all your leetcode/homework assignments + 8h interviews, but I want to be also top candidate as result.
Perhaps not a 100% guaranteed one. Some interviewers just do a bad job.
For example, in some of my recent interviews, the (always young) interviewer posed brainteaser questions that have approximately nothing to do with the skillset and knowledge that the job requires.
I'm sure those questions are good for identifying candidates with very high IQ and/or familiarity with that particular puzzle. But as a very experienced developer, it really pisses me off to be passed over because I didn't answer those to the interviewer's satisfaction.
Long story short: interviewing well is a skill, and as a candidate you can't guarantee a good interviewer.
> as very experienced developer, should it be part of your skillset to deal with all kinds of people in the group efficiently and achieve your goal?
If you know of a way to convince a 20-something interviewer, during the interview, that the puzzle they picked isn't a good way to winnow down the list of candidates, I'm all ears.
Dealing with people is absolutely a good skill for senior developers. But there are limits to how much interview nuttiness can be overcome by mere mortals.
Go for small firms, apply direct, see if you can mingle with the employees or even hiring manager somehow - a meetup they are attending, friends of friends, who knows.
One time around 2008 I was at a horrible conference put on by Blackberry (even then it was clear they were going to die), and I wound up talking to a guy for an hour about this and that, and it ended with an offer for a job at his firm.
Essentially you just need more hustle. When the standard situation is mass applications that are ignored, you need to try something novel and higher-effort.
if there is an OSS project that you have your eye on, you can easily get noticed by engaging with them and starting to fix/address small issues or convenience features. I know a handful of people who got hired this way.
I think this is very unreliable channel, but something worth to try in parallel.
To be specific, I am not looking for a job atm, but current approach seems broken, and wondering why companies don't like to use more efficient ways to hire.
Perhaps not a 100% guaranteed one. Some interviewers just do a bad job.
For example, in some of my recent interviews, the (always young) interviewer posed brainteaser questions that have approximately nothing to do with the skillset and knowledge that the job requires.
I'm sure those questions are good for identifying candidates with very high IQ and/or familiarity with that particular puzzle. But as a very experienced developer, it really pisses me off to be passed over because I didn't answer those to the interviewer's satisfaction.
Long story short: interviewing well is a skill, and as a candidate you can't guarantee a good interviewer.