Yup. I've seen candidates talk a deep technical game and turn out unable to write long term sustainable (well-organized) code.
Here's the fundamental asymmetry: what makes a good programmer great is their ability to build a cathedral brick by brick, alongside the architect, the other builders, despite the external circumstances, accounting for complications along the way. Ignoring the connotations of waterfall design that "cathedral" might invoke.
Building a complex system with many components takes weeks, even months, whether or not you're talking about MVP's, or service oriented architectures, and whether or not you're iterating rapidly.
A weak engineer will be fine for a few weeks, but the complexity will catch up to them. A strong engineer pushes that bar much, much further out. Possibly indefinitely.
Problem is, how do you tell that you're talking to that kind of person when you have only a few hours? It's an extremely difficult task because you must evaluate a person for a > 6 month job in under 6 hours. No matter what you do, you're going to have trouble.
Here's the fundamental asymmetry: what makes a good programmer great is their ability to build a cathedral brick by brick, alongside the architect, the other builders, despite the external circumstances, accounting for complications along the way. Ignoring the connotations of waterfall design that "cathedral" might invoke.
Building a complex system with many components takes weeks, even months, whether or not you're talking about MVP's, or service oriented architectures, and whether or not you're iterating rapidly.
A weak engineer will be fine for a few weeks, but the complexity will catch up to them. A strong engineer pushes that bar much, much further out. Possibly indefinitely.
Problem is, how do you tell that you're talking to that kind of person when you have only a few hours? It's an extremely difficult task because you must evaluate a person for a > 6 month job in under 6 hours. No matter what you do, you're going to have trouble.