Why not? People can't fake their way through a deeply technical, probing, 2-hour conversation.

You'd be amazed just how much you can learn about someone's actual skills and experience (or lack thereof) through long-form discussion. I think we don't truly talk enough in our currently broken interview process.

Funny enough, I got into my one only and hopefully last BigTech company without a single coding interview even though my job description required me to know how to code. It was all behavioral. It was for a cloud application architect position at AWS ProServe (yes direct hire with the standard 4 year structure between base + bonus + RSUs).

My current job was also behavioral where I am a staff architect at a 3rd party company and it does require coding. As an interviewer, I also only do behavioral interviews. But let’s be realistic, it doesn’t take much to be a competent enterprise dev or even an enterprise architect.

The type of hard problems that BigTech has to solve is completely different. While I would never have trusted any developer I ever met at AWS within 100 feet of a customer, they also shouldn’t let me within 100 feet of the code that runs any of the AWS services.

Even at my medium size consulting company we have a 0.4% application/offer rate. Can you imagine what it is at BigTech? How do you filter just by talking to someone?

Now imagine there are 1000 people who are capable of submitting an application that appears to match the job description. Do you have a way to help either winnow out the 750 worst or (better) identify the 50 best of the lot to start to engage in these 2-hour deeply technical discussions?