I'm not a fan of technical interviews, at least not whiteboard ones, or asking people trick questions, or algorithm analysis bingo. I like to work through a pr

I'm not a fan of technical interviews, at least not whiteboard ones, or asking people trick questions, or algorithm analysis bingo. I like to work through a problem. The problem is synthetic, unfortunately, but anything actually relevant will give too much of a leg up to people who are familiar with frameworks. Steps: (a) discuss the problem and come up with potential solutions, and once we've agreed on a solution (b) turn the solution into code in any language they want, as long as we can easily install it on Ubuntu. An explicit non-goal is actually coming up with a solution to the problem: it's great if they do come up with a solution, but far more important is mind-melding on a problem and solution, and being able to convert agreed solutions into working code. The idea is to simulate work: I assume that everyone we interview has at least basic ability to code (we use a Codility pre-check), so I create a scenario where I'd be helping set up a team member to work on a functional piece of the application. Communicate and ensure we have a shared understanding of the problem, discuss a solution, and see them actually produce a solution. Once we have a solution, I do want to know if they understand what the performance characteristics are; that's a very practical concern, as the company I work for deals with data batches ranging in 100 items to 10 million items, so code should be written to scale linearly at worst.