I am completely against written tests or questions that ask abstract questions and ask you to write algorithms. Unless you're going for a position that requires a PhD in computer science and your job will be writing algorithms and solving overly complex problems, the pen and whiteboard approach just doesn't work in 2013.

Hiring a developer shouldn't be as complicated as some companies make it out to be. Maybe for the likes of Google it has to be a lot more complex than others because they have an image and large workforce that depends on people being excellent self-managers and workers that require minimal management.

For smaller companies you are wasting your time and my time asking me questions that test my ability to remember things more-so than they do to search and find answers. Lets face it, most developers these days are hackers. I've never met a developer who knows the answer to everything, I've seen the best of the best using Stackoverflow to find an answer to their question.

The difference between a good developer and a great developer is knowing a little and for the stuff you don't know, knowing exactly what to Google when you encounter a problem you can't solve off of the top of your head. As Albert Einstein famously said, "Never Memorize What You Can Look Up in a Book" — that doesn't mean don't learn anything, but get the basics down and eventually you'll know what to Google when you don't know something.

The real test of any developer is if they're a good fit for your team, have good work ethic and can get the job done. You can find the smartest developer in the world but they might not be a good fit for your team. Culture matters as does a good work environment with compatible people.

The best way to test a developer anywhere in the world is to give them access to a computer, an IDE and their environment of choice. Then ask them to build you something. Don't ask them to write binary search code if they're being interviewed for a front-end position, ask them to build something.

Welcome to your interview; build us a blog, build us a todo app, write a simple Wordpress plugin, write a jQuery plugin or what my current employer did: they brought me in for a trial for a couple of days (paid) and asked me to get my hands dirty on a real project they were currently working on. Just threw me in the deep end and after two days they had a good idea how I worked and if I was a fit.