> Personally, and for many people I know, cramming was not necessary because we had a conceptual understanding - maybe a week or two of doing 2-3 a day and you

> Personally, and for many people I know, cramming was not necessary because we had a conceptual understanding - maybe a week or two of doing 2-3 a day and you would be set. Apologies for being pedantic about word use but that time commitment is longer than what's normally meant by cram. Traditionally a cram would be up to a day or two of hard work before exams. What you outlined would just be study (an even larger barrier). > Anything you do in an interview is going to be an artificial signaling value. I think LC is a much better signal than the talk-out-your-ass approach you seem to favor, and I've done both sorts of interviews. I prefer the talk out your ass approach personally, but maybe with a detour to asking the candidate to describe something technically challenging they worked on. If the interviewer is fast their your feet and the candidate is skilled at explaining then you can go reasonably deep. After this the interviewer can usually weigh the talk-out-your-ass claims accordingly. > The difference is also pretty obvious in the quality of your peers based on what sort of interviews your firm does. Our firm (fast growing series a startup) struggles with this, so take all of the above with a grain of salt. Our problems seem to be more related to not being able to generate a large enough talent pool, not with inaccuracies cherry picking candidates. We hire about ~25% of genuine applicants and find our main problems post hiring are if they are willing to take initiative and be self directed.