You make a fair point, but an interview is not solely about programming skill. It's also about being a co-worker. And the question "what does this person do in X situation", where X is "they don't know the answer to something they need to know'" is highly relevant. So there may be a better way to go about it, but the parent's desire is reasonable.
The deal is when you’re interviewing me we’re _not_ co-workers. You hold all of the cards and decide my fate.
A big part of interviewing candidates well is breaking down that dynamic. There are many ways of doing it - I get up on the whiteboard first and write out my problem, and stay there until they’ve explained themselves and I need to get back to my notes so I don’t forget stuff. I phrase questions like “I need help implementing this function...” or “how are we going to solve this edge case”.
I don’t think either side of a tech interview is easy. The problem is only one side is evaluated.
I'm not sure I agree here. Granted I work for quite a small company, so it's pretty different than working at a company with a significant reputation to help candidates make decisions. But when I interview candidates I'm very aware that they are evaluating me whilst I'm evaluating them.
I actually think this is a good thing. It incentivizes me to make the interview a more pleasant experience, and perform it in such a way that it feels collaborative, like a real work situation, and not as standoffish as some interviews can be. That said, we still do ask hard technical questions solved on whiteboards or in code, and setting them up in such a way that the candidates feel comfortable asking questions on things they don't know / are unclear about is definitely challenging.
To be honest, something I think we (as in the software community at large) lose sight of some times is how unique and challenging performing interviews is. We see stories like this pretty frequently, and we're used to the idea that being interviewed is a fairly distinct skill, orthogonal to what we usually perform in our day to day work life. Something that's talked about a lot less frequently (understandably, more of us are getting interviewed than performing them) is that interviewing others is also a separate skill, and one that really isn't practiced or honed enough in my opinion.
> The deal is when you’re interviewing me we’re _not_ co-workers.
Not yet, but the purpose of the interview is to figure out whether we should be. (And I disagree that it is one sided; this whole topic is about an interviewee's evaluation of the process.)
I tell all of my friends that it's your job to interview the interviewer as well. The company is about to get 8 hours of your day for the next few years. figure out how you can figure out if it's the right place for you.
Obviously, if you are in dire straights and you need to take what you can get, sure, but the questions are still relevant and will prepare you for whatever poo you might find yourself stepping into.
