No one I generally know writes good or relevant code in 15 minute increments. In my own experience, I generally get warmed up by the 3rd or 4th interview, and

No one I generally know writes good or relevant code in 15 minute increments. In my own experience, I generally get warmed up by the 3rd or 4th interview, and it's an acting class as I regurgitate stuff. "What was your approach to the problem?" = I pretend to think for a few seconds, then answer. You're basically just figuring out if I've encountered your almost exact interview previously and I've got the canned answer ready. Currently we have a timed programming exercise we let people do at home, then review and ask questions like this over email as a filter, it seems to work fairly well. In person, I just like to ask people about their work experience, especially painful failures and learning experiences they've encountered. Things like variable names are meaningless, imho. Every company tends to have an arbitrary set of rules they like to follow, unless someone is using things like 1a a1 11a1 a1a1 altogether where I can't read it, I've gotten over caring.