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HiringProcess5 min read
The interview question that predicts what no test does
Coding tests measure coding under pressure. They miss the thing that actually predicts performance: how someone thinks about a system they didn't design.
Most technical interviews are still iterations of "solve this puzzle in 45 minutes." That measures something — but not what matters most on the job, which is reasoning about systems you didn't build.
The better question
Hand the candidate a real, recent decision your team made. Show them the artifacts: the design doc, the PR, the postmortem. Ask: what would you have pushed back on? What's missing? What did the team get right that you might have gotten wrong?
What it reveals
- How they read other people's code, which is most of the job.
- Whether they have taste, or just opinions.
- How they handle disagreement with prior decisions.
- Whether they can compliment what's good before suggesting changes.
You don't hire people to write code from scratch. You hire them to live in code other people wrote.