this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2025
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I disagree. I give live coding tests. I very much don’t want the candidate to be stressed. I provide a written and verbal description of the (simple) problem, and provide unit tests. And I talk them through it if they run into problems, but try to give them space to work it out.
I’m not sadistic. I want to see if they can write code.
The few times I skipped the live test because of practical reasons or they were “too senior” I absolutely regretted it.
You seem to be disagreeing with something that isn't the main point of the article.
That you take those steps doesn't mean candidates aren't stressed, despite your intentions.
Sorry an interview is stressful to candidates?
Fuck yes, and that's just a regular one.
fully agree. we're actually reintroducing live coding interviews into our process because so many candidates made it onsite who then showed that they didn't really know how to code
The article isn't saying don't check, it's saying that live coding interviews are a bad measure.
I'm not sure that offline or alone coding tests are any better. A good coding interview should be about a lot more than just seeing if they produce well structured and optimal code. It's about seeing what kinds of questions they'll ask, what kind of alternatives and trade offs they'll consider, probing some of the decisions they make. All the stuff that goes into being a good SWE, which you can demonstrate even if you're having trouble coming up with the optimal solution to this particular problem.
... that's why you do a follow up interview and review their code, and maybe leave some things a little ambiguous to see if they ask you questions (telling them it's okay to email questions and mostly expected)
Why did you decide to do ABC this way? What do you think about having done it XYZ way instead?
I know you didn't have time to write a full test suite, but what areas of what you wrote would be best to focus on tests and why?
You can ask them so many things about what they wrote.
That's like... how it works in the real world. They ask questions to product as they come up, they get questioned on their work in code reviews
Unless you work somewhere where you pair code 100% of the time anyway...
If you just look at it as a pass or fail and are not doing a detailed review with them after, you're doing it wrong.
hey, I love this idea, but we tried it and we kept getting candidates who managed to BS their way onsite and then waste our time ultimately.
it just didn't work. I really want it to work because I hated live coding too but it just didn't.
you can make live coding interviews that aren't actually difficult questions and are more about showing that you can think and write the most basic of code. that's what we do now.
Interesting. What do you think happened with those you didn't test? You think they were making stuff up or senior at their job is a far cry from senior at your job?
Not sure. One seemed either incredibly timid or just way in above his head on simple tasks. I assigned him a bug and had already narrowed it down to a particular return code, in a particular call tree. He could have set 20 breakpoints and found the bug in five minutes. Or put unique error codes and found the bug in ten minutes.
But weeks later he was still asking questions and eventually just moved on without solving the bug or even finding the cause.
Maaaybe he would have aced the live coding test, but I doubt it. He just never seemed to "get it" and I think the live test would have reflected it.
But by "senior" i mean decades of experience. No quibbling about job titles.