There is no single right way to conduct an interview. Each interviewer has his own style and I think it is fine. I think giving the candidate a hint has a purp

There is no single right way to conduct an interview. Each interviewer has his own style and I think it is fine. I think giving the candidate a hint has a purpose and that is to keep the process of finding a solution progressing. Otherwise the candidate may get stuck and as an interviewer this is bad because we are now wasting time to let me know the candidate. At the very beginning I tell the candidate some of the things that I feel are fine or not fine. For example, I will tell the candidate that I am happy to give out names of functions and lists of parameters as long as the candidate can describe exactly what the function is doing. So I give these for free because in normal work I would expect he/she can find it in couple of seconds on the internet, anyway, and that's also how I do this. What I don't give for free (ie. mentally deduct points for) is give larger hints that would normally be thought as part of the solution. Likewise, when I start technical question section I tell candidates that "I give 5 points for not answering the question". Most people are quick enough to figure out this means I penalize bad answers and would prefer the candidate to say they don't know something rather than keep talking nonsense.