Yes, exactly! I've been in the tech (software) industry over 25 years now, nearly all of those years here in Silicon Valley. Worked in everything from 3 person

Yes, exactly! I've been in the tech (software) industry over 25 years now, nearly all of those years here in Silicon Valley. Worked in everything from 3 person startups to the largest of enterprises. I feel good about saying I've never made a bad hire (meaning: I've never come to regret saying "hire", everyone I have given the thumbs up after an interview has turned out to be a fine contributor). I don't ask candidates to code, I don't ask them to come up with whiteboard architectures out of the blue or any of these silly artificial techniques that don't measure anything relevant. Here's what I do: I carefully read their resume. I have a conversation about the projects they have worked on. I encourage them to talk about what jobs/projects/tasks they liked and disliked and why. What they found easy vs. hard and why. And what they want to work on next and why. That's it. Works extremely well. I wish everyone would try it. You'll find it is very easy to pick out those who padded their resume. You can't actually have a meaningful conversation about what you loved and hated about working on foo if you didn't do it.