Being a good programmer has a surprisingly small role in passing programming interviews. To be a productive programmer, you need to be able to solve large, sprawling problems over weeks and months. Each question in an interview, in contrast, lasts less than one hour. To do well in an interview, then, you need to be able to solve small problems quickly, under duress, while explaining your thoughts clearly. This is a different skill. On top of this, interviewers are often poorly trained and inattentive (they would rather be programming), and ask questions far removed from actual work. They bring bias, pattern matching, and a lack of standardization.

Being a good programmer has a surprisingly small role in passing programming interviews. To be a productive programmer, you need to be able to solve large, sprawling problems over weeks and months. Each question in an interview, in contrast, lasts less than one hour. To do well in an interview, then, you need to be able to solve small problems quickly, under duress, while explaining your thoughts clearly. This is a different skill. On top of this, interviewers are often poorly trained and inattentive (they would rather be programming), and ask questions far removed from actual work. They bring bias, pattern matching, and a lack of standardization.