What worries me a lot is the proliferation of these puzzle solving interview sites which waste candidate's time and prove almost nothing except that the candida

What worries me a lot is the proliferation of these puzzle solving interview sites which waste candidate's time and prove almost nothing except that the candidate can solve high school olympiad problems. Many companies require this as a first step, before even talking to the candidate. Apart from the problems being totally unlike what your future work will be like, the time constraint proves .. what ? That a candidate can "think fast" ? What about code quality, architecture, design patterns, build systems, concurrency, etc ? Here's what I've decided to do when they reply with a coding interview task: I charge my clients 50 EUR an hour. If you want me to spend 3 hours on a coding interview as proof that I can code, then I'll expect you to pay me 150 EUR as proof that you can pay. I think this is fair. Otherwise, I'm going to knock on someone else's door, were I can talk programming with an actual person, share "war stories" and get excited about building something cool together.