Sadly I've seen this kind of interviewing from lots of places; maybe it's a technique they teach in college or something.

Interview questions like this are useless as they are not an accurate approximation of a real work scenario. I've frozen up at a whiteboard in an interview before, and then figured it out on the drive home.

The best approach I've found is to do a send home quiz, and then ask them questions about the quiz to test understanding. The test also shows coding habits, which tells you a lot right there.

Bonus: put some typos in the quiz that don't matter. Red flag for the people that get hung up on that.

An accurate approximation of a real work scenario would be sitting in a conference room for two hours while trying not to fidget or visibly look bored as co-workers make a mountain out of a molehill.

I always give people a ton of leeway in an interview because nobody is at their best in that situation. I once got asked how to use window functions in SQL, with like 10 years of SQL experience using window functions and froze.

I much prefer a pair programming interview or something where you can really see how they work through a problem they don’t necessarily have to finish or do perfectly.

Please no. No and home quizzes