For coding interviews or take-home challenges, I like to ask applicants to solve questions that are a microcosm of the type of work they would be doing for us d

For coding interviews or take-home challenges, I like to ask applicants to solve questions that are a microcosm of the type of work they would be doing for us daily. The questions have nothing to do with brainteasers or puzzles or even algorithms, and the coding challenge isn't even particularly difficult. A baseline solution requires only 5th grade math and a day's experience with the framework we use - but is flexible enough that the developer we're looking for will solve it differently than the one we're not. That's because the work we do isn't groundbreaking technologically and doesn't require technical rock stars, just basic technical competence. We're more interested in how they think about a problem that's similar but not identical to those they've solved before; how they use the time allotted; how they structure their code; whether and how they communicate about their decisions in comments or a README. Those traits are much more indicative of whether they'll be successful on our team. And the coding challenge isn't just about testing their skills. It's also a jumping off point for discussions in the interview about how they think and communicate about code and problem solving.