Please stop the coding challenges

The part I always feel like is missing from the coding interview discussion is:

"Are you testing the candidate on what the job will actually require, and ONLY that?"

With an onsite whiteboarding challenge, you're most likely testing if they're really good at thinking and talking in front of a crowd when extremely nervous, not writing code.

Same with a live coding challenge over zoom (CoderPad style) - this tends to be a test of nerves more than coding ability. But, if you're planning on a lot of pair programming, and want them to be able to dive into that on day one, maybe it's the right way to interview.

I find take-homes often the most accurate way to interview, as it most closely reflects the reality of most coding jobs. You're on your own, you don't have to deal with the extremely odd (and for some of us terrifying) feeling of someone watching you type. Hopefully, the take home questions are carefully designed to reflect what the job requirements will be. As almost every other comment has pointed out, debugging an ancient code base without documentation may be a perfect question, or it may be completely irrelevant and unnecessarily eliminate candidates.

But please, make the interview match the requirements you're actually hiring for, otherwise, everyone's time is being wasted.

> Are you testing the candidate on what the job will actually require, and ONLY that?

As a hiring manager, I strive to evaluate for potential and adaptability, not a highly specific list of skills. I think many candidates prefer that, too, that they will be allowed and encouraged to learn how to do this job. I do not want to hire people that don’t want to learn or can’t do things they haven’t done before. And I may or may not even know exactly what the job will require. Do not assume your interviewer can tell you exactly what will happen once hired — they can’t! One thing I do know, for sure, is that the job will require communication with others, adaptability to changing requirements, and a willingness to learn the company’s workflow. I need to make sure those boxes are checked, sometimes more than I need to see how well someone knows jQuery or CUDA or sorting algorithms.