Picture this: You're a senior developer with five years of experience building production applications. You've scaled systems, mentored junior developers, and shipped features that millions of people use daily. But tomorrow, you're going to stand at a whiteboard and try to remember how to implement a binary search tree while someone watches you sweat.

Welcome to the wonderful world of tech interviews, where nothing makes sense and the points don't matter.

The Algorithm Obsession

Let's start with the elephant in the room – leetcode-style algorithm questions. When was the last time you had to reverse a linked list at work? Or implement quicksort from scratch? If you're like most developers, the answer is "never, because that's what libraries are for."

Yet somehow, the ability to solve these puzzle-style problems has become the gold standard for measuring developer competence. It's like judging a chef's ability to run a restaurant based on whether they can solve a Rubik's cube blindfolded. Sure, it shows they're smart, but does it tell you anything about their ability to manage a kitchen during the dinner rush?

The Pressure Cooker Problem

Even if you know the algorithms, performing under pressure while someone scrutinizes your every move is a completely different skill. Some of the best developers I know turn into nervous wrecks during interviews, not because they can't code, but because they're not used to having their thought process dissected in real-time.

In real work, you Google things. You read documentation. You take breaks to think through problems. You collaborate with teammates. None of these normal developer behaviors are allowed in the traditional interview format, which creates an artificial environment that bears no resemblance to actual work.

The Experience Paradox

Here's the really frustrating part – the more experienced you are, the worse you might perform at these interviews. Senior developers have spent years learning to leverage existing solutions, delegate complex problems, and make pragmatic trade-offs. They're not practicing algorithms; they're designing systems and solving business problems.

Meanwhile, that recent computer science graduate who spent months grinding leetcode problems might sail through the interview, despite having never deployed code to production or debugged a performance issue in a distributed system.

The Bias Problem

Traditional interviews are riddled with unconscious bias. The whiteboard coding format favors people who are comfortable performing under pressure and thinking out loud. The algorithm focus favors recent graduates and people who have time to practice competitive programming problems.

This approach systematically excludes talented developers who might be introverted, have different learning styles, or simply haven't had the privilege of spending months preparing for interviews instead of, you know, actually working.

What Companies Really Need

Most software engineering work isn't about implementing sorting algorithms. It's about reading existing code, understanding business requirements, debugging issues, and making incremental improvements to complex systems. It's about communication, collaboration, and making reasonable decisions under uncertainty.

The skills that make someone a great developer – the ability to understand complex systems, write maintainable code, and work effectively with a team – are barely tested in traditional interviews. Instead, we're optimizing for people who can solve contrived problems quickly, which is about as useful as hiring basketball players based on their ability to juggle.

The Talent Pipeline Problem

This broken interview process isn't just frustrating for candidates – it's actively hurting companies. How many great developers are being filtered out because they can't invert a binary tree on command? How many teams are missing out on experienced engineers who could actually move the needle on their products?

Meanwhile, companies complain about talent shortages while maintaining interview processes that would make a medieval guild proud. The irony is thick enough to cut with a knife.

What Good Interviews Look Like

Some companies are starting to figure this out. They're doing pair programming sessions, code reviews of real projects, and system design discussions. They're asking candidates to debug actual problems or extend existing codebases. These approaches actually test the skills developers use every day.

The Bottom Line

The traditional tech interview process is broken because it optimizes for the wrong things. It tests memorization over problem-solving, performance anxiety over actual ability, and academic knowledge over practical skills.

Until companies start focusing on what developers actually do instead of what they learned in algorithms class, we'll keep perpetuating a system that frustrates candidates and fails to identify real talent.

But hey, at least everyone knows how to reverse a linked list now, right?

Why Tech Interviews Are Broken (And Nobody Wants to Fix Them)