> Two things I worry about: if the interview isn't "binary", how do you decide whether the candidate passed? Is doing just the simpler version fine as long as you ask for low pay? Or are you still failed? Or does it depend on whether other candidates did better, which is another way of saying you failed? It seems to me it's still binary.

When I did interviews, I did a problem in a kind of similar way (although I skipped most of this article, so I dunno). I'd give the same problem to all candidates, but expectations were higher for candidates with more experience.

For any candidate, there was a minimum bar (essentially needed to be able to program a loop that did what they said it would do), and failure was a very clear signal; although I had a couple candidates that the only signal I got was anxiety.

How much over the minimum the candidate got would help decide between weak to strong hire. And then there's a group decision based on the results from everyone.

> And the other thing is: if the candidate did great in 10', please don't ask additional questions.

Part of the job as an interviewer is to fill the whole time though. If we're done in 10 minutes of a 45 minute slot, that's a lot of time to fill. Usually the next interviewer is busy until the next one. A candidate doesn't usually have 35 minutes of questions, and a trip to get snacks or drinks, etc doesn't take that long either. At that point, you just have to ask them about projects and see if they've got anything they want to talk about --- but since that's not my interview role, I won't judge that.

I did have one candidate who I was the last interviewer of the day and they didn't like my question and asked for something else and wouldn't participate at all. We were done in under ten minutes, so I just walked them out and we both got 35 minutes of our life back.