Some of the best hires I’ve ever made would’ve tanked that sort of interview question. Being able to efficiently work through those puzzles is probably decent positive signal, but failure tells me next to nothing, and a question that can fail to give me signal is a question that wastes valuable time — both mine and theirs.

A format I was fond of when I was interviewing more was asking candidates to pick a topic — any topic, from their favourite data structure to their favourite game or recipe — and explain it to me. I gave the absolute best programmer I ever interviewed a “don’t hire” recommendation, because I could barely keep up with her explanation of something I was actually familiar with, even though I repeatedly asked her to approach it as if explaining it to a layperson.