A bit tangential perhaps but a key thing in interviews is always dig a little on the 'why' of a question. Most can rote learn the 'what' but you want people who

A bit tangential perhaps but a key thing in interviews is always dig a little on the 'why' of a question. Most can rote learn the 'what' but you want people who know 'why' whether they're junior or senior. It may seem obvious but I've seen some otherwise good candidates get undone after an initially reasonable "you mention working with X, what is X" exposes only a superifical understanding of "why X"? e.g. candidate mentions upgrading a service from JSON to gRPC/binary, why..? Most will claim "it's faster" but you want to know why it's faster. I've found digging a little is great for finding good juniors but also 10YOE who can't explain UDP vs TCP to a level that matches their background. It also exposes insight to their underlying ability to reason which is, ultimately, what I'm looking for. We're in an age where, increasingly, knowing the what is automated but knowing the why is still crucial - if only to interrogate the LLM on its decisions.