Perhaps Technical Interviews Suck Because Technical Interviewing Sucks

>Rationally speaking, the only people who should prefer interviewing to other things are the people that benefit from hiring talented people, which primarily is equity holders of the company.

I've actually been burned by this one a couple of times. Some people on the interview team recommended against hiring me. That wasn't because they thought I was a bad programmer. Actually, they were concerned that I was too good of a programmer, and they didn't want the competition.

Feedback from hiring manager: "I thought you were great, but some people on my team had doubts. Therefore, no hire."

If the interviews are conducted one-on-one in private, nothing prevents the interviewer from falsely saying that you bombed the interview.

That's one reason "Only hire if everyone on the interview team says yes." is a bad idea. Some people will say no to good candidates, precisely because they don't want competition. Only someone with meaningful equity in the business wouldn't have that incentive.

Interviews only exist as a tactic in the goal to bring on valuable people. While it's surely important to bring on good people - and not bring on bad - this just seems to be one of those nebulous skills like 'leadership'. Everyone trying to 'nail it', and its not a skill you're going to get exactly right anyway. I'm tending towards - give up on trying to nail the optimal method of accessing talent.

You have to interview there's no substitute for having a conversation with someone. Then, hire someone as a contractor. You'll see how good they are on the job with a more limited investment, and hire them f/t later if they're good.

Also, I find these 'code for me now' sessions rather undignified - but its a world of young people, and young people are more likely to put up with demeaning worthless crap.

> Rationally speaking, the only people who should prefer interviewing to other things are the people that benefit from hiring talented people, which primarily is equity holders of the company.

Citation needed. Most people understand that "adding more people in their group" will lead to "less work per person", so they will benefit from the new hire. I also assume most people see the benefit in choosing their new co-worker, because letting the Boss choose is not in their interests. (I've actually had a boss tell me "I'm not going to take your needs into account because you may not be here down the road.". I made sure I wasn't.)

> Some people will just really like interviewing, [..], but clearly they are in the minority given the complaints about technical interviews.

The reason people don't like interviews is simple: We're trying to figure out a skill (programming) by proxy (simple exercises and whiteboard sketching). Writing software takes hours or weeks to truly understand a problem enough to write really good code. In fact, sometimes I'm more productive alone with a piece of paper than in front of a computer. It's hard to "test" for that skill.