All my interviews are very simple: tell me what projects you did, how and why and give me some references so I can check. I might ask how do you solve some part

All my interviews are very simple: tell me what projects you did, how and why and give me some references so I can check. I might ask how do you solve some particular problem on conceptual level or how they would approach the task they'll be working on. After that it is either hired or not. I've long stopped asking those quiz type questions: knowledge of particular algos, how do you write this in language X/Y/Z etc. pass some ingenuity test etc. As I also do side consulting I expect the same from my potential clients. If they are starting to bore me with what does this construct in that language mean I apologize for wasting their time and go look somewhere else. I design and develop whole products and it takes particular kind of mind. I have it myself and I expect the same from the people I hire as it pays back big time. I do not care about deep language knowledge as the type of people I just described will do reasonable design in any. There are of course exception: if there is a need to squeeze last tick of performance for some low level codec, transform some insanely complex math problem into some meaningful algorithm then I would look for domain experts of course.