> I've never understood why techie interviews aren't simply replaced with the sort of discussions programmer co-workers have amongst themselves daily. I think

> I've never understood why techie interviews aren't simply replaced with the sort of discussions programmer co-workers have amongst themselves daily. I think the answer here is simple: scale and trust. The smaller the company, the more likely you are to get this sort of "just a chat" interview. But larger companies invariably feel the need to standardize their hiring process across huge numbers of people. And it's just very hard to trust the "just a chat" format at that scale, and can seem much "better" to build a bank of questions with answer keys. The solution: work for smaller companies!