I agree that variety is nice, but the underlying thrust of this article is that programming on a whiteboard is an inferior metric to programming on a computer (

I agree that variety is nice, but the underlying thrust of this article is that programming on a whiteboard is an inferior metric to programming on a computer (at least that's what I took away). It also makes very little sense to have a Mexican restaurant that ONLY cares whether it's Chef's can cook desserts. Whether or not you can do bit twiddling is far less relevant to a PHP coding position than being able to write PHP. This is not to say that a bit twiddling problem could be added as extra credit, but you should be far more concerned with their understanding of PHP. So, to incorporate both of your interview styles, it would be a good idea to have the chef cook Mexican food, desserts, and some other stuff rather than just cook a single Mexican dish. This would give you a more complete view of his qualities. Then a decision can be made based on a variety of data rather than a single data point. But flexibility can be too extreme. I've seen job postings for people who are good at programming AND can photoshop good UI. To me these are such completely unrelated fields that it would be very hard to find someone who is good at both. You would probably have better luck hiring two different people for those positions.