Here's what I remember: I had interviews in the 80s in Silicon Valley with technical firms. There were no quizzes. Typically, much of the interview was based o

Here's what I remember: I had interviews in the 80s in Silicon Valley with technical firms. There were no quizzes. Typically, much of the interview was based on your resume. Interviewers were very good at drilling down on what you wrote. (There was none of the present fears about "but what if they lied on their resume?" Well, you asked good questions and you found out.) The resume served as a basis for discussion. The other half of an interview might be the interviewer describing the work they did, and seeing how quickly you caught on. As far as general programming knowledge is concerned, one early Mac programming shop where I worked didn't bother asking Mac-specific questions in interviews, since the platform was so new, but they particularly sought out software engineers who had experience with two or more different programming languages, at least one of which used pointer arithmetic, and verified that you had used them. Even if you were going to be programming in C or Pascal, knowledge of assembly language was considered a plus. They wanted to see how adaptable you were to different programming paradigms, since you would probably have to learn a lot about the new Mac platform. I don't remember there ever being more than two days of in-person interviews. Typically, the person who would be your supervisor would do the first interview, and then decide whether you were worth bringing back for more (and taking up other people's time). The second, longer, set of interviews would be with your potential co-workers, maybe your boss's boss, and someone from HR. Then, everyone would meet for maybe 30-45 min. and decide whether to make an offer.