The story is really about what’s wrong with this process. You say the candidate should have written production code. And yet, this isn’t a production problem, i

The story is really about what’s wrong with this process. You say the candidate should have written production code. And yet, this isn’t a production problem, it’s a made-up CS101 problem. How does it make sense to ask a CS101 question, but not accept a CS101 answer? Likewise, how does it make sense to give a CS101 answer without knowing what the interviewer is looking for in an answer? How do we know this is the code this person would write in production if we don’t give him a real-world problem to solve and ask him to solve it in a real-world way? If it’s legit to assume that this person only knows how to write theoretical code from one answer, it’s also legit to assume that the company only has theoretical problems to solve from one question. In reality, it’s insane to presume anything from one answer. If you want to know what this person writes in production, you ask about that. This is an experienced programmer being interviewed, how does it make sense to terminate the interview after asking one poorly-given question? Really, this is about a failure to communicate on both sides. For questions like this, if you don’t make it clear what you are looking for, you aren’t really testing their technical competence, you’re testing their ability to guess the answer you’re looking for. Likewise, if you aren’t given clear guidance about what kind of answer the interviewer is seeking, your responsibility is to ask for guidance, not to rush off and give the answer you think suits your agenda for showing off or for sparking the conversation you want to have. Failing either or both parties actually talking to each other, this isn’t a technical question at all.