[lawn]

> With this approach, he claims he can always understand if someone is a competent programmer, and he has never seen it fail.

I'm curious, how can he be so sure? How does he know that he has never failed a competent programmer or that he has never passed a poor programmer?

Just because he hasn't seen it fail, it doesn't mean his process hasn't failed.

[plasticchris]

I’ve seen it fail, having tried it for a few years. There’s a type that passes this no problem but isn’t productive.

I switched to a battery of knowledge questions centered on the type of programmer I was looking for, it works much better and is even predictive of coding ability as it helps you learn this stuff.

[epolanski]

There's not much ways you can spot a skilled but unproductive BSer from interviews.

[indy]

False positives are easy to spot if you have to work with them.

False negatives are harder, but in small, close knit industries you sometimes hear of a person you rejected doing well