The fact that a person with years of experience solves an interview question more slowly than a fresh out of college grad should be a huge red flag that our interview questions are bullshit and don't reflect real world challenges.
Have a chat, discuss experience and see how well they actually understand the things they have put on their resume. Dig as deep as you can and see if they actually understand what they say they have done. Also, references are at least as important as the interview.
In either case, there are questions that have multiple difficulties of responses. The more experienced/capable they are, the more nuanced and complete their answers will be. For example, ask a Java person how GC actually works. Most people have very little idea, but the best talent knows a good bit more.
But there are other variables. I've known perfectly intelligent and productive coders who took months to build a really complex well architected system that didn't solve the business problem and hence were a bad hire.
That's an interesting statement. Isn't it usually the job of product managers (or someone in management) to determine whether or not what's being done is actually wanted? It is not typical for developers to be brought on under the broad banner of "make us money please" and then set loose to email users and determine 100% of their own direction. Wouldn't the fact that the wrong program was being built have been caught in an informal "let me see how it's going" sort of status update?
Reality: piles of legacy code that requires deep insight into product, legal, and marketing details to understand and untangle.
Guess which one leetcode script kiddies will suck at?
The question isn't how much you should hold it against older developers, but how much you hold it against leetcode as a way of assessing developers.
Seems like basic logic to me.
The expectation in the industry is that Senior people would be even better at it, because of their years of experience.
This,however, is not what I’ve seen on the ground. Most senior devs that I interviewed, who were clearly smart and experienced took much longer than new grads to solve most of the questions. Personally, I try not to hold it against them, if they can clear the bar, but I wonder how many other people do the same.
Also, I know in music they do blind interviews, were people perform behind a curtain to avoid any biases they might have (gender, race etc).
May be it’s time to do something similar in Software, since we already are prioritizing white board interviews above anything else?
Edit: I am not advocating for Leetcode types of questions. I do believe that most companies hire like this (including my current company, where I get minor if any say in hiring process). So just pointing out my observations regarding the status quo.