I like to ask simple questions, and then dig further into once they answered it correctly. You would be surprised how many ex-employees from FAANG like companies fail it.

Simple questions, as in simple leetcode questions?

FWIW, most FAANG employees seem to admit that if they had to redo their interview, odds are they're more likely to fail than pass. Goes to show how much luck is involved in the process.

I think it's gotten harder too. Maybe in the past it really was about trying to see how the candidate thinks and solve problems. But now it seems like all all of that is secondary to getting the optimal solution. Two of my friends in Google who got in ~10 years ago say that it's definitely gotten harder from what they see.

> Simple questions, as in simple leetcode questions?

I believe they mean e.g. "tell me what happens when you type https://example.com" in a browser.

You can go deep into tcp/ip, dns, how ssl encryption works, how urls on a server get mapped to specific ports, load balancing/round-robin etc.

I have been in that situation and I still have no idea what I'd do.