[danjl]

A good senior developer should be able to go out to lunch with a candidate and determine if they are a good fit. No need for coding tests. No need to sit in a small room and work out problems on a whiteboard or chat about your most difficult problem at your last job. Just get lunch. Any good developer can evaluate another developer after a few minutes of conversation, and you can tell if it's a reasonable cultural fit. Just lunch. That's all you need.

[danjl]

I would argue that a brief conversation with a senior developer provides as useful information as any coding test or fancy interview question. The only way to really know if someone is going to be a good fit for your organization is to hire them and work with them for a couple weeks. After just a couple weeks, you know everything you need to know about the candidate. Unfortunately, most of the world makes a hiring someone for 2 weeks difficult. If you want to fix something about the hiring process, find a way to let people work together for a couple weeks before hiring them as full-time employees. I've done this with contractors in the past and it works wonderfully. I still hire people and fire them if they don't work out after a couple weeks. I also tell people I will do this during the hiring process.

[disqard]

This sounds rather holistic, and avoids many pitfalls of the "leetcode hazing" approach.

I do want to point out that anyone trying to line up their next job while staying employed, would probably not be able to take 2 weeks off their existing job. It would then come down to "quit your job and take a leap of faith".

[danjl]

Agreed, the requirement for currently employed people who have to take a leap of faith is the main issue with our hiring dynamic, IMHO.

[rufus_foreman]

Exactly. This is the same as it is with hiring musicians. If you're hiring a musician, you don't need to have them play an instrument for you so that you can hear and see them play.

Take them out to lunch, they can describe their playing style, talk about what they are able to do or not do on the instrument and you will get absolutely all the information you need.

If you pay close attention, by the time they order their meal you should be able to tell whether they are actually proficient or not. Sometimes you can even tell a musician won't be a cultural fit by paying attention to them on the way to the restaurant before you even get there.

[danjl]

I love this analogy!