Companies in Silicon Valley seem to approach interviews with the idea that the candidate is a blank slate. There isn't a lot of discussion about things you've d

Companies in Silicon Valley seem to approach interviews with the idea that the candidate is a blank slate. There isn't a lot of discussion about things you've done in the past; the general approach is to ask you to design for hypothetical scenarios, or to write code on the whiteboard for algorithmic problems. The Silicon Valley approach seems to throw out a lot of good information that could indicate a candidate's quality by focusing only on the now, rather than any historical data. One of the reasons given for this is that a lot of people are good at talking about stuff when they haven't actually implemented anything, but it seems to me that an in-depth conversation about someone's background followed by coding exercises would provide a better indication of their quality than abstract questions in a vacuum. I think another reason why interviewers don't ask a lot of questions about candidates' backgrounds is to avoid potentially hearing something that the candidate's previous employer might consider confidential information. This is a fair concern, but it does lead to what seems to me to be a sub-optimal evaluation process. There also doesn't seem to be as much urgency to hire someone now as the author indicates -- companies can and do take time to schedule interviews and make up their mind. Perhaps it's different in NY.