I'm one of those people who doesn't have to work, but I do because I enjoy it. I moved to the silicon valley nine years ago, and in that time I've done half a dozen or so job interviews. I got no offers, so now I run my own company. It was different story each time, but the upshot (IMHO) is that the interview process seemed to assume that I was a fresh-out undergrad. In one case, they asked me to debug some Ruby code despite the fact that I told them well in advance that I have never worked with Ruby.
There was one notable exception, and that was my experience with Triplebyte. They have a much better technical interview process than any I have seen anywhere else. There is really only one way to assess someone's ability to write code, and that is to have them write code in a language and environment with which they are already familiar. Modern coding is so complex and requires so much infrastructure that productivity hinges as much or more on the impedance match between a person and their environment as it does on their actual abilities. Even the most brilliant coder will stumble if they use emacs day to day and you force them to use vi.
If you want to assess my ability to come up to speed on a new environment, I have a solution for that too: hire me as a contractor and give me a week or two to do a real project for you. I really don't understand why more companies don't do that.
There was one notable exception, and that was my experience with Triplebyte. They have a much better technical interview process than any I have seen anywhere else. There is really only one way to assess someone's ability to write code, and that is to have them write code in a language and environment with which they are already familiar. Modern coding is so complex and requires so much infrastructure that productivity hinges as much or more on the impedance match between a person and their environment as it does on their actual abilities. Even the most brilliant coder will stumble if they use emacs day to day and you force them to use vi.
If you want to assess my ability to come up to speed on a new environment, I have a solution for that too: hire me as a contractor and give me a week or two to do a real project for you. I really don't understand why more companies don't do that.