I don't know what it is about technical interview-style code puzzles, but I have always been terrible at them. Every time I go through a job hunt, I end up with at least one fabulous flameout where I just can't do something that would normally be very simple for me. It sucks. I have fantastic experience, good references, a degree from a top university, but you put me in a room with someone looking over my shoulder as I write code and I just turn into mush often enough that it makes passing a many round technical interview a statistical improbability.

The good news is that more and more companies (and especially the small ones that I like to work for) do the coding sample/test code thing. And every time I get one of those I absolutely crush it. I've never once been denied an offer when asked to write an offline code sample - and the offers have been from a number of the top startups in the game.

What does any of this mean? Well, in the last two companies I worked with I ended up rising to be the top technical person on my team. I've never had any kind of negative review of any sort. And in the last round this happened after I was denied an offer from two different companies because I couldn't code.

So I guess I'm that guy. I've been rejected from Google 3 different times because they keep begging me to interview based off my experience/internal recommendations, and then I interview and their interview/hazing process weeds me out. It would be nice if they woke up and realized that process isn't an effective filter, but I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime there's plenty of companies who will happily hire me after they see me do work that's actually relevant to the job. And when I interview people for my team I steer clear of trying to stump them under intense pressure, and instead ask for a mini project. I guess it doesn't feed the ego quite like breaking someone with a super awesome whiteboard question, but screening candidates more effectively makes up for that.