Having done hundreds of interviews, I'm sorry to say that even seemingly "senior-level" people (people with years of programming "experience" on their resume) have shown an inability to do basic coding from scratch. It seems there's a subset of developers who cobble stuff together and code-and-fix to make things work. This is ironically less of a problem with entry-level people.

Yes, if you have a public repo of code, I'll ask you about it, but I want to see you live code something, both to see the code you write and your thinking process about solving the problem. If you feel that's a waste of your time (and if you're truly senior-level, it really won't take very long at all), that's fine, but I will continue to do it.

I wouldn't have believed you a few months ago (and your statement is still stronger than my experience), but I've finally seen people who are so maintenance-bound, that even though they're good at _that_, they've never managed to learn the language (the corners, idioms, and semantics) they've been maintaining. It's probably a sign of heroism that they picked up enough to do so on the fly, but, you wouldn't hire them to write new code.

As a leader, a senior developer needs to be capable and willing to do anything that gets done underneath his area of responsibility if that's the key thing that needs to be done right now and everybody else is busy doing the thing that they need to be doing. If they're not willing to do whatever it takes, then they're not the kind of senior leader I need.

The larger the organization, though, the more room there is for people who are too good to do various kinds of work. But smaller teams, where the highest productivity is, need flexible people.

FizzBuzz provides a great level setter for folks who lack a clearly searchable, well-known code repository.

One half-joking suggestion to anyone using your GitHub repo as a resume: make yourself a FizzBuzz project. You can include basic one so the box can be checked, but as a hiring manager, it'd be fun to see novel and humorous solutions to it that show cases your particular background (e.g. front-end developer? Show me the CSS3 solution.)

I don't agree about DRY; the whole point is that the data has not been adequately provided until you see it. You do see people with apparently great CVs who are unable to demonstrate the skills in person.

From the employer's point of view, it's all about determining the most effective way of finding out if you're a fit or not. In my personal experience and confirmed by the research I've done, asking basic coding and simple problem solving is the most effective way to eliminate applicants on which you don't need or want to waste your time. Most common "exception" is if one is interviewing what he considers a superstar, but then we are not actually talking about an interview, but rather a sales pitch.

I find that Brian has put it perfectly in the last paragraph: "A solid answer to FizzBuzz is like a firm handshake when meeting your new boss or like opening the door for your date. It’s an introduction that sets a minimum bar and guarantees that neither the interviewer nor the candidate is wasting the other’s time."

And then you ask for Github, resume, whatever-you-find-relevant.