One thing I find increasingly strange is that it is extremely taboo for the candidate to ever ask any technical questions of their interviewers of the same variety the candidate is asked.
As I've grown more senior in my experience it has become increasingly important to me that my peers and coworkers are as technically competent as they expect me to be.
An example: I was interviewing at a company that has the reputation being fairly elite. The role wasn't my ideal role, but given the reputation of the company I would happily take a less desirable role if the team was truly world class and passionate about engineering.
While some of the interviewers were clearly excellent, there was one point in the process where I was being grilled on Python internals. It became increasingly clear that the interviewer's depth of knowledge was very likely limited to the set of questions they were asking me. The topic of threading in Python came up, and so I gave usual mentions of the GIL and IO bound vs CPU bound tasks, the trade off of multiple processing versus threads etc.
However I personally find the design decisions behind the GIL really interesting since it brings up a nice discussion around memory management in Python. I brought some of this up causally at the end just to chat with the interviewer a bit, but it was clear that this well outside of their understanding of the interviewer.
I just find it odd that it's fine for companies to aggressively grill you on a range of topics and walk through complex algorithms cases, but you aren't really supposed to try to get a feel for how technically skilled your potential new colleagues are.
But, to your point, the companies that I've enjoyed the most are ones where a technical discussion (rather than grilling) naturally breaks out during the interview.
I wasn't certain whether he was trying to avoid being asked questions, but the questions he asked were insightful and useful to help evaluate him.
The solution is simple. Make the meeting more conversational, at least initially.
It's a form of dating, if you will. No one wants to be interrogated. No one wants to do all the talking or all the listening. Yet most inteviews are some derivation of what would be a bad date by most reasonable accounts.
More eHarmony. Less Tinder.
p.s. I'd even recommend that prior to the first meeting, the company send an email / docs titled FAQs that covers the obvious stuff. Is it a new position or a back fill? How long is it open? Next steps in the process? Not only does this inform the candidate it's great context, it shows a level of thoroughness and processionalism, etc.
"How you hire is whom you hire."
Along the same lines, for the candidates, I might now have to add:
"The question you ask* are as important as the answers you give."
That said, unfortunately, quite often the candidates' side of the process is a second class citizen. If I had $20 for everytime the candidate was tossed token "We have 5 minutes...got any questions..."* I'd have Bezos' FY money.
And now we're back to where we started: How you hire is whom you hire.
*If they give you sufficient time for questions.