> Why would you even do any of that for a senior role?

I used to think like that ... then we hired a batch of 3 "senior" devs who could not do simple, everyday coding tasks, even in their ostensible languages of preference. All had come with exceptional resumés and personal recommendations.

So now, no one at any level one gets hired without demonstrating that they can at least write a fizzbuzz and commit it to a repository.

Now, I doubt that senior engineers in other fields have to do this sort of thing. But, most other engineering fields have licensing/accreditation with accompanying post-graduate academic curricula. We don't (but probably should).

I've come around to the idea that all people who will be expected to write code as part of their job need to be evaluated for their ability to write code as part of the interview process. I've seen too many people write convincing and impressive resumes without a single ounce of technical ability to their name.

Why wouldn’t you? How should one evaluate a senior position, in your opinion? Are you suggesting a senior dev shouldn’t need to demonstrate any coding skill? (If not, why not?) Or are you suggesting that there are other faster ways to show coding skills?

What would you waste your time with?

I exclusively give pairing interviews, usually just 1 hr. The variance between good and bad candidates is amazing, and you wouldn't guess at all from resumes or casual conversations. Most candidates have given me very positive feedback. Why wouldn't you want to be interviewed like this?

Because all evidence[0] I've found has shown that work-sample tests and repeatable, structured indicators are the best indicator of job performance. I understand that a lot of devs think they can get a feel for a candidate by just having a good ol' conversation with them, but the body of study on the subject says that that's just wrong. And so I have people do a task that's as close to the actual job as humanly possible and evaluate them on that.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283803351_The_Valid...

Because for a senior role you need to hire a person with senior role skills, I suppose. Just N years of experience at X company doesn't provide that. I'd rather look at someone's github repo than talk to their reference tbh.