This is not new advice. People have been giving this same advice for years. And frankly, people are sick of hearing it, and it borders on patronizing. However,

This is not new advice. People have been giving this same advice for years. And frankly, people are sick of hearing it, and it borders on patronizing. However, that's not to say that it's a bad idea to aim for. The problem with this kind of advice though, is it only tells you what proficiency to aim for, and not how to get there. People only have so much brainpower to use during an interview. If you have to use every ounce of it in order to solve a "hard" problem in the first place, then diverting some of it to explaining things will distract the candidate. The real secret here is to make sure that you have that extra brainpower, so that you do not have to expend your brain's full capacity while solving that hard problem. So the first step is to practice interview problems until they're second nature. The second step is to practice doing those same problems, while explaining a thought process. Once that is second nature, you can further practice by throwing in unique types of explanations, or using the opportunity to make the conversation more interesting, to make the interviewer more impressed. I hope that some readers out there understand as well as I do, that the entire job interview process is a farce, and selects for sales skills more than it does for engineering skills. The pervasive idea that you have to explain your work only serves those who learn the type of methodology I described above. There are many brilliant candidates out there who believe that it would be a huge waste of their time to refine these skills, instead of engineering skills or other things that they may want to learn. After all, it would only serve to increase your odds of getting your foot in the door at those companies that use such irrational means to select their employees, and why would a brilliant engineer want to join such a team? This is the ultimate tragedy for (some, but not all) who are passionate about engineering and rationality, but not necessarily passionate about money. I think we can do better, folks.