[mbell]

The biggest problems I've found in tech interviews are:

1) Bad problems - implementing string reverse is a silly question. It has little to do with 'real world' optimization, which is often more about architectural issues: caching, etc.

2) Markerboards - I never, ever write code on a markerboard. Why ask me to write code on a marketboard in an interview? Markerboards are great for high level concept organization, they are terrible for writing code. In the real world I often write a crap implementation of something and make it work, add tests for it, then refactor till it's not crap. Demonstrating that workflow on a markerboard is nearly impossible.