So, where did you put your hidden camera on most of my recent interviews? What you described sounds a lot like the interview process at most "cool" and "trying to be cool" companies around here (Atlanta, GA US). The interview process right now is probably the worst and most broken it has ever been at any time in my 30 year career and that covers the dotcom bust and the 2008-09 recession.

There's also the phone screen Trivial Pursuit round where you get asked a series of obscure language questions or the like. The 'best' calls like this have several people on a conference line where the connection is bad or choppy and several people are talking over each other.

If you're lucky, you might get to do a video conference version of trivia. Not only do you get the same problems as the phone screen but you get to add the additional video connectivity issues.

The very worst are those that put you through an offsite wringer, multiple phone/video interviews, coding tests and the like, then bring you into their office for your interrogation uh, interview. Then, after all that hostility, they rudely send you on your way with an abrupt "NO". That really gives you a good impression of the company, doesn't it?

I suspect that a lot of this newer, hostile, way to doing interviews has passed down from the way Google, Apple, Facebook and other tech giants do it. It's really unfortunate and even the tech giants have come to realize that they're doing it wrong. However, this hasn't filtered down yet.

The better way to interview mid to senior level developers is the old way, just have a conversation. You can easily figure out if the person is someone you want on your team simply by talking about their past projects and development philosophy.

Why I don't whiteboard.

A disclaimer, first of all: I believe in always treating people with kindness and respect, no matter who they are.

Now, the problem. Look at the interview from the other side of the table. We are having to watch out for some unfortunately common problems:

• People who are completely unqualified and are overselling themselves,

• People who have egos the size of Texas, making them more of a liability than anything,

• People with toxic personalities that would do damage to our existing teams,

• People whose idea of a coding job involves copying and pasting from StackOverflow.

• People who, while completely hireable, are so busy overselling themselves that we're liable to put them in a position where everyone loses.

In encountering the above, I've learned some things the hard way.

A smiley-friendly interview reinforces "the script". It's a basic principle of communication psychology - when people get positive feedback for a behavior, they continue that behavior.

Literally everyone is acting when they sit down for an interview. No exceptions. It isn't malice; it's survival. We are taught to make ourselves look like what we think the hiring manager wants, but that never matches 100% with who we are. With the exception of crazy HR people, hiring managers want, above all, to see what they're getting! We have a broad range of somewhat flexible expectations. What we don't want is to be bamboozled!

So, if we're sunshine-and-rainbows friendly to someone out of the gate, and persist in that, we are providing positive emotional feedback that will reinforce the current deception.

That doesn't mean that we should be angry or cruel; far from it, as that would provide negative emotional feedback, triggering the other person to switch up their deception. Instead, I've learned to show little to no emotion at all. I smile, shake their hand, and switch off all emotional cues. The result is that nearly everyone I interview, about ten minutes in, clearly goes through an internal thought process of "ah crap, to heck with the script, I can't tell what he's thinking. Either he's going to like me or not." When I started doing this, I actually saw a significant drop in the number of people who turned out to be "not as advertised," and thereby our retention went up, although our incoming hiring stats were otherwise unaltered.

I've been the interviewee as well, and I have learned not to take it personally when I get this "no smiles" treatment. If anything, I take it as a complement: this manager is interested enough in considering me that he's doing everything he knows to do to vet me, and that he's probably done the same with my potentially future co-workers. An all-smiles hiring manager is going to get taken in by a lot of smooth talkers, just as a natural side effect of their style.

By the by, I also have them code in front of me. I've learned that this is critical. Honestly, I don't care if they can make a doubly-linked-list from scratch. What I care about it how they approach the problem. Where are they taking mental shortcuts? What is their coding process? If someone can't write code in an interview, they can't write code that has to "ship to production in one hour or we're all doomed."

Now, I understand that the no-emotional-feedback approach, paired with a position-tailored open-ended question set, and some in-interview coding, is terrifying. Most people I interview are scared out of their minds. And yes, this means they won't perform at optimal quality...I account for that in my assessment. But I've also learned the hard way that the final interview needs to be a bit scary, for one simple reason: only an oversized ego can prevent you from having no nerves in that style of interview.

So far, in five years of interviews, that has held 100% true. I've even tested it out, bringing people on despite a sneaking suspicion that their strange confidence hinted at an ego...and it did!

So, interviews are scary. They're nerve-wracking. They're not friendly, cozy, let's-have-coffee-and-chat-about-code affairs. Nor should they be if you want to build and maintain a healthy, proficient team. It won't kill you, and you can have confidence that you AND your co-workers were hired for yourselves, not for your act.

That leads to my last point: in my experience, people that have to fight through an intimidating interview are less likely to leave the job for petty reasons. Why? Simple emotional economics: it's worth more to you.

Sorry for a second comment, but I have to address something directly.

A senior developer has, most-likely, already heard of OOP by now!!!

Not necessarily! Here's a few people we might encounter:

• The guy that majorly padded his résumé,

• The gal who worked in COBOL for 25 years, but hasn't ever used an OOP language,

• The guy whose knowledge is 90% skimming StackOverflow answers and blog posts.

In hiring, you never ever EVER take "most-likely" as a reason not to ask a question. If OOP is part of the job, you have to make sure they actually know it!