I’m mostly making sure they didn’t completely lie about being able to work in the language and can explain what and they would do, why, and how they respond to feedback. I expect people to be varying levels of nervous and that’s fine. I work with people to get them focused and take the edge off as much as possible.

What I ask for usually is related to what we need to implement, but a more basic chunk of it to, for example, show that the candidate understands concurrency and can use basics in the language to do something with that (which we do frequently).

For many positions, we do not have homework and this is the only coding we get (kinda depends on role and project).

As a newer company and still technically a start-up, the boss paying the bills can decide we need to chase something else and he isn’t being talked out of it. This can lead to very fast collaborative design and coding of PoCs which can be more intense than the interview. I don’t like it but it is what it is. Not everything we do is nice, stable, and long-term.

I can relate to needing that job; I’ve been homeless, so I definitely kno the hat that pressure feels like and why nerves alone are never a deciding factor for me.