alt Hacker NewsMany interviews now involve automated exercises on websites that track your activity (don't think about triggering a focus change event on your browser, it gets reported).
Also, the reviewer gets an AI report telling it whether you copied the solution somewhere (expressed as a % probability).
You have few minutes and you're on your own.
If you pass that abomination, maybe, you have in person ones.
It's ridiculous what software engineers impose on their peers when hiring, ffs lawyers, surgeons, civil engineers get NO practical nor theorical test, none.
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At least in the US, lawyers, surgeons, & civil engineers all have accredited testing to even enter the profession, in the form of the bar exam, boards, and FE & PE tests respectively. So they do have such theoretical tests, but only when they want to gain their license to practice in a given state. Software doesn't have any such centralized testing accreditation, so we end up with a mess.
"don't think about triggering a focus change event on your browser, it gets reported)."
So .. my approach would be to just open dev tools and deactivate that event.
Show of practical skill or cheating?
The major difference between software devs and lawyers, surgeons, and civil engineers is that the latter three have fairly rigorous standards to pass to become a professional (bar, boards, and PE).
That could exist for software too, but I'm not sure HN folks would like that alternative any better. Like if you thought memorizing leetcode questions for 2 weeks before an interview was bad, well I have some bad news.
Maybe in 50-100 years software will have that, but things will look very different.