I completely agree. I once asked an interviewer to leave the room and come back in 5 mins. Another time I asked him to just continue doing his work while I wor

I completely agree. I once asked an interviewer to leave the room and come back in 5 mins. Another time I asked him to just continue doing his work while I work away at the code. Both times I produced near perfect code. On other occasions, the result was somewhat disappointing. I think (may be because it applies to me) an interview is not quite an accurate predictor of performance on the job. I for one, have no interest in remembering arcane sorting algorithms or how to implement a red black tree. Yes, I've done it in school and when I need them, it usually only takes an hour tops to figure it out and write at least the skeleton code for them. I consider myself a good s/w engineer, perhaps not great, but good. I personally know people at Google (friends from college, more than a few) who were average at best in college or grad school. But they seem to do well in interviews (much of it I attribute to preparing well) and hence are now Googlers. I know I suck at interviews but have performed very well in my job working on distributed systems software. I think the worst part I hate about interviews is some guy sitting there judging my capability. Perhaps, that is why I need to be my own boss (I'm usually very harsh on myself) =)