Point #4 is about interview anxiety, and the confrontational approach used by too many interviewers. These are the kind of interviewers that keep asking technical questions until they find something you don't know, just so they can deflate your ego during the interview.
And yes, it's a problem that less-aggressive guys have to deal with as well. Sometimes we have to choose a bad situation, and sometimes it causes us to work for a competitor instead. But that doesn't mean it's not a problem, a pain point for some people, which could be solved.
These are the kind of interviewers that keep asking technical questions until they find something you don't know, just so they can deflate your ego during the interview.
If I ask questions at difficulty levels 1-7, and you flunk 7, I know you are a 6. If I stop at 4, all I know is that you are >=4.
Or you could discuss concepts at difficulty levels 1-7 and gauge how well I'm keeping up. The conversational interview is just as effective, more disarming, and more pleasant. I'd dare say it's more humane.
True, but that's not what he's referring to. He's talking about one-upmanship, which I've seen more of than the sensible testing you're talking about. I call the former "dick-waving contests", usually followed by suggesting they put their ego back in their pants.
The problem here is the pressure of the time limit which is only compounded by starting off easy in the beginning where there is more time and then ending with the hardest problems which take the longest to solve. Then the question as was raised in the original point 4 is what are you really trying to interview for - speed or the ability to develop a solution in a collaborative manner given a minimum expectation of intelligence?
You can start with a higher-level discussion, such as this:
"Tell me about a time when your team's site/service went down at a critical time (like 10am Monday morning, or maybe it got "slashdotted" on launch day), how you determined the root cause, and how service was restored."
Lots of people are good at BSing such discussions. It's a lot harder to BS with code. Why waste time with a coarse filter when I can start immediately with the fine filter?
A lot of really smart engineers that I know personally are really bad in interview situations because they are extremely artificial and stressful, while they perform really well in normal (yet potentially also stressful) work situations. In fact, one guy I know flunked an interview exactly because of this even though I know he's really good at what he does (because I've known him a long time).
I think a lot of it is about interview anxiety and, if in general you are in a market where the perception is that you may not be as good as other candidates simply because of your gender, the baseline interview anxiety for women might be higher so you would expect to see worse performance just because of this.
>These are the kind of interviewers that keep asking technical questions until they find something you don't know
Don't make the mistake of assuming that asking harder and harder questions must mean I am trying to deflate your ego. I am trying to hire people who are smarter than me, and know more than me, and can bring something I am lacking to the team. I need to ask harder and harder questions to find those people.
And yes, it's a problem that less-aggressive guys have to deal with as well. Sometimes we have to choose a bad situation, and sometimes it causes us to work for a competitor instead. But that doesn't mean it's not a problem, a pain point for some people, which could be solved.