It's a bit of both 1) The companies that do this interview a TON, so there are bound to be bad experiences, and those are the ones that people blog about 2) T

It's a bit of both 1) The companies that do this interview a TON, so there are bound to be bad experiences, and those are the ones that people blog about 2) The questions are supposed to be hard, but achievable. So you get two scenarios: A/ candidates who are not good enough and are not aware of it. "How am I supposed to know if the hashmap/dicationary data structure in the language I say I'm best at maintains insertion order? I just google that every time - everyone does!". Sorry, bucko. That's the kind of in-depth understanding of your tools that we DO expect you to give a shit about B/ Immature interviewers with a bar that's too high that are using overly complex questions and don't get noticed right away by the more experienced interviewers. So ultimately, YEAH, the questions I ask, for me to want to move forward with a candidate, I expect you to solve the problem. But I'm not expecting you to solve it in the most efficient way or GTFO