Communication is obviously being tested in both phone screens and onsites. It's not like a candidate in a coding interview can simply start coding silently, fin

Communication is obviously being tested in both phone screens and onsites. It's not like a candidate in a coding interview can simply start coding silently, finish, and then pass to the next stage because their code works. A big part of a coding interview is working with the candidate. > the ability to read code How do you test for that in isolation? There are exercises that do that: you show the candidate a piece of code, and ask them to find the bug. They have all the worst issues that folks here are complaining about, amplified: stressful, awkward, etc. In my experience these types of exercises are also more random: i.e. depend more on luck. Sometimes great candidates fail them, and poor candidates get them right on a fluke. So they are overall less indicative. Ultimately, though, it's back to the first point: how do I test if the candidate can do their job, i.e. code? A candidate may communicate really well, say all the right things in best-practice questions like the one you mentioned, write well in English, but still unable to code their way out of a matchbox.