I've been on both sides of the interview table and I can't think of a better way to test someone's skills than breaking out a coderpad and having them solve a few problems. It sucks. It's a grind. We all know this. Yet if you're an engineer worth your salt, you'll pass a question like the "Valid Parentheses" question every time without having to study for it.

I'm not going to ask you esoteric trivia questions about the Go compiler. I'm not going to ask you to implement a BST. I do have to see you write something because my team has been burned in the past because we hired someone who could talk a big game but couldn't deliver. We didn't have them write code in the interview.

Answer this: would you hire a welder for your construction job without running them through a couple exercises first to see how good they are?