> > My anecdotal experience is that you never want people who can't write a for-loop or whatever in your team > Yes, you don't. But you don't need to ask them

> > My anecdotal experience is that you never want people who can't write a for-loop or whatever in your team > Yes, you don't. But you don't need to ask them that directly, or have them code live. I am not being flippant, but why not? Asking seems to be the simplest way to know. Also, you're making a strong assumption regarding the type of tech questions that OP is asking. You go from fizzbuzz (probably described by the interviewer, not just "do a fizzbuzz") to a sorting algorithm from memory. That's clearly not the same. My personal experience interviewing candidates is: At the end of our first interview (discussing their work, projects, experience, what they are looking for in the next 1-2-3 years etc.) I ask a very simple coding question that should take 1 min to solve if they were by themselves, with no complex algorithm and requiring no prior knowledge beside the language they are using. Typically, a fizzbuzz. To solve that 1 min question, they have 10-15min where they can ask for guidance, help, etc. The goal is just to exclude people who just can't code. And surprisingly at least half of the candidates fail this. Now maybe this is because our recruiters are not good enough, but this 10 min coding is super useful to prevent wasting more time on a candidate that is not a fit for us.