But then the interviewer trots out the old adage "but we're not testing your ability to reverse strings. I want to see how you approach solving problems." And yet, a wrong answer is an almost guaranteed no hire. I can't tell if these people believe their own bullshit or if I'm being lied to my face.

"I want to see how you approach solving problems"- Is almost always bullshit.

One person I knew at work had a question he used to always ask in interviews. One day while discussing this I asked him to show me some working code for his question. He struggles for a while then gives up(Note, this is his own question). Then he repeats the same trite - "We are just testing their approach".

And I was like "Oh sure, Their approach towards something whose answer you don't even know, to evaluate against."

I don't know many of these interviewers (I myself interview but I would never ask people to do these silly tests) but I spoken to one of them from Boston a while ago at a party and he said he just has this list of questions and they need to be answered correct; he himself would not even be able to recognise if the person was attacking the problem right or wrong but he says 'I want to see how you approach solving problems' as that is what he has been taught. So in my 1 point empirical research I would say you are being lied to.

Well, now I know! thanks. :)

> I want to see how you approach solving problems.

Which correlates nicely to "You didn't solve it the way I would have, so you're obviously wrong."

HackerRank

Too easy to 'cheat' at. Just look at the comments page for the challenge and the answer is usually there. In the end, you just have to take a risk when hiring people, remembering that it is a 2-way street, and that you have to put in effort to make your employees great ones.

Also their tech is not great. I had one question in the python set which would've been very easy to solve if i could import a pkg from the standard library but it didn't let me.