Followed by

> You're not the only programmer on the team.

It sounds like you're implying some connection between the two, whereas most successful teams don't require the behavior your team is demanding. Including the ones with good communication skills.

I can write code well. I can discuss it well. I simply don't need to do both at the same time. Unless people are in a pair programming session, they don't need to openly discuss the code while they're thinking about them and writing them. They can discuss the problem before and after. Why do they need to discuss it while coding?

It's like telling journalists or authors "Hey, if you can't discuss your story with the editor while you are authoring it then you can't succeed here."

That so significantly fails to resemble the claims being made that it strains credulity that it could be a good faith interpretation of the conversation.

>You won't be coding the correct thing unless you can talk about what you're doing.

Maybe, but that has no bearing on whether they need to be done at the same time, which they do not in just about work environment. I guess there's probably somewhere that does mandatory pair programming for everything, but I've certainly never seen it.

I personally find system design interviews pretty tough - it's not a mode of operation I ever experience on the job. To solve them at Big Tech, you pretty much have to memorize many design patterns and be able to regurgitate them on the spot. Like algo questions, it's testing your ability to work hard to prepare more than anything else.

Not to say this doesn't have value as a filter, it's just not testing the thing you think it is.

And that’s English and mostly just writing what people are talking about, not thinking up novel things to write.