What are they interviewing for, low level disk experts? While I agree that "disk" stuff is "low level" compared to a web developer, it's definitely a very rele

What are they interviewing for, low level disk experts? While I agree that "disk" stuff is "low level" compared to a web developer, it's definitely a very relevant question. You might ask it and if the candidate is interviewing for a web developer position rephrase it after getting a blank stare: Why is it bad retrieving 50 users from a REST endpoint like `/api/users/{id}`, one at a time? Oh sure, print-based debugging is awful, you just have to read stack traces from unfamiliar projects in the blink of an eye. That's actually pretty relevant. If you want to be nice, make it something that uses the same stack as you're hiring for but even if not, it can tell you something about the candidate. Some candidates might react like you did in this reply. Not hired. Some candidates might go "oh well, that looks like python, which I'm not familiar with but let's see, ..." and then they try to figure something out from the function call naming and error messages shown. In any large enough company you will definitely be looking at unfamiliar stack traces, potentially from a service you are unfamiliar with and potentially a different stack than you're used to. Happens all the time at my place for example. I can't just throw up my arms and ignore it. Gotta dig in and use generic problem solving skills. Ah yes, the reductive "everything is a CRUD app" - this interviewer doesn't understand that most applications don't fall under the simplistic "CRUD" moniker!!!! Or maybe it's a simple test of "OK, so all of the other questions the candidate sort of failed on. Can he at least do 'stackoverflow copy and paste programming'?" Whether it's a CRUD endpoint or something else entirely doesn't matter. The point is: can this candidate work w/ something potentially unfamiliar and still get something done? Happens all the time in any large enough code base. Happened to me just this week where I had to implement something I needed in a old python service we have. I don't like python and I don't know any of the python frameworks used there. I copy and pasted, adjusted and google some basic python syntax and got it done in like half an hour. That's what they're testing for there. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.