[kstrauser]

I've been on the other side of that table. The interviewer stated in advance that the questions would get harder until I couldn't answer anymore, and that's OK because he wanted to see where my knowledge stopped. That clarity made it much more fun than stressful. I felt alright saying "I think the answer is X, but it could possibly be Y, and here's what the different implications would be".

But for the luvagod, please state that up front. It wouldn't have been nearly so fun, or informational for the interviewer, if I'd felt like I was failing a quiz.

[actsasbuffoon]

I like that idea, and I may need to steal it. I have this tendency of asking candidates questions, and if I feel like they’re demonstrating very strong knowledge then I may toss them a few extremely obscure questions for bonus points, but I never expect candidates to get them right.

But this up-front approach of setting expectations seems like a better way to go.

[kstrauser]

Please do. I think you'll get more signal, too. If I were worried that I've forgotten something very basic I'm expected to know, you're not going to learn much about me other than that I don't do my best work during interrogations. Tell my I'm not expected to know a thing, and then there's lots of room to talk about it, and I can show you that maybe I'm at least familiar with the ideas even if I've forgotten the particulars.

[lokar]

I do this, but with the goal to find a specific thing they don’t know in an area they do know. Then I want to see them work out what a reasonably possible answer would be

[kstrauser]

I'm 100% fine with that. I had one interview where we ended up talking about the best data structures for a visual editor to store text files in-memory. It wasn't related to my day job at all, but I walked away feeling like I'd learned something, and the interviewer got to watch me reason my way through unknown territory to see how I handle such things. That was fun. I have no idea if I got the "right" answer or not, but it was at least defensible, and I stumbled across some ideas that he seemed to find unexpected and interesting. I ended up getting the job.

What made it enjoyable was me knowing that I wasn't expected to know the gory details of how text editor internals work.