If you’re looking to get hired as an individual contributor somewhere else, maybe you should. But judging from this and other posts of yours, you’re not, so you’re probably not doing it wrong.
It’s just that when interviewing, it can few easier to evaluate some algorithm puzzle than to figure out what it means and whether it’s true that “the app is gonna be great.”
Well, that screed I wrote, is a fairly typical "geeky conversation" that can be invaluable, in an interview.
I used to hire pretty senior-level engineers. They would be writing C++ image processing pipeline code, to some insanely exacting standards.
My technique was usually to get them relaxed and comfortable, then start asking them for stories about the projects they've worked on. It was always a joy, when I could get them to start chattering, like the post above. I would look at the enthusiasm, and the passion, as much as the technical detail. I'd love hearing them talk about discovering problems, and how they addressed them.
Hm, sometimes when I’m interviewing someone who I know is a “no” it feels like I’m leading them on if I go through the full interview. I thought it would be more respectful of their time to let them know that early, but maybe I am wrong about that?
I’ve also heard (via HR) about candidates being surprised to not get the offer in cases where I kept the interview going and pretended things were going well.
The interviewee already has their schedule booked off during that window, that extra 20 mins is not saving them any time. If your concern is their time, I would assume they'd "waste" more time stewing on an early interview exit and thinking about it rather than if it just ended normally.
Finish the interview, and provide feedback if asked why it was a 'no'.
Interviewing isn't just for fun, and even if you don't get the job, you can go through the interview to practice, and hopefully to figure out what went wrong.
If after 20 minutes they just say 'I think this is a no so go home' I wasted a lot more than 20 minutes and got nothing out of it.
Same, I switched after a long stretch in 2020 where Slate bug fix PRs stagnated. I find the ProseMirror API less intuitive but overall it has fewer bugs and I have been able to customize it pretty heavily.
I loved math drills. In first grade we would get a sheet of simple math problems and the teacher would give us 5 minted to complete as many as possible. I was good at it, and it was one of my first experiences of competition and being better at something than my peers. I don’t know if any of that is a good thing, and it definitely would have sucked if I had been slow at math.
Yes, my partner and I recently went out to eat and did not bring our phones. I said, “We don’t have our phones.” The server brought us paper menus, and we were all OK.
It’s just that when interviewing, it can few easier to evaluate some algorithm puzzle than to figure out what it means and whether it’s true that “the app is gonna be great.”