> You give them a Guitar, or Drums or Bass and you ask them to play something. You will know right away if they are the Guitar player or Drummer you are looking

> You give them a Guitar, or Drums or Bass and you ask them to play something. You will know right away if they are the Guitar player or Drummer you are looking for. The equivalent of this in software engineering is to give them a coding problem and asking them to write code to solve it and test it, which does happen in interviews. The theoretical concepts are also often discussed in technical interviews. This is useful as it proves the ability to have a discussion with other engineers without getting bogged down in fundamental misunderstandings. If someone doesn't know what an array or a hash table is, that's going to generate difficulties for collaboration. I think an orchestra is a better analogy than a small music band, when it comes to big companies. You wouldn't hire a violinist who can't read music or understand all the theory required to interpret written music.