> Luckily i never had to go through these interviews to get some work

Lucky you.

> Programming is essentially a detective work of high level problem solving.

Agreed. What are the questions you ask to determine their detective abilities?

> Agreed. What are the questions you ask to determine their detective abilities?

in my experience, talking to a candidate across a couple of rounds and asking some generic question that can create discussions, will get some answers. sometimes, designing a system together can help a lot (as always reminding the candidate that there are no wrong answers).

at the end of the day, interviewing is a flawed process and you will get it wrong -- the question i don't see being asked is: what do you do if you get wrong?

My interview at Atomwise introduced me to a fun way: pick a Stack Overflow question that includes some code, use the dev-tools to nuke any answers, and print the question (player's choice about leaving any clarifying comments intact). Then have said candidate answer the question for you. Obviously it requires some curation to find the not-facepalm-stupid questions, but I'd bet there are plenty in each language

It can show the ability to read code, experience with any language or framework footguns, how to work with a malspecified problem (it is S.O. after all), etc, depending on the kinds of risks the screen is trying to drive down in your specific team