Is anybody going down the path of giving the candidate X hours yo complete a project, shoe iterations via source control history, showcase documentation and the overall build - plan? I would think you'd find the high performers easier in this light.
Not being a programmer by day but proficient in bash and Python I was in an interview last year where the person asking the questions did just not get it. In one example he asked me to count the number of files that had a specific string in the name. I excluded the file descriptor based on his ask. So, he said I got it wrong. I explained the way it was presented I was making the problem harder, and more exact, but he wouldn't budge. The point being, I could easily do what he asked, but wasn't actually measured on that.
My best explanation is that a lot of programmers have Asperger's syndrome, and in a pinch, some of them will be called upon to take part in an interview loop.
I once had an interview where the interviewer asked me to write him a partial template specification in C++. Any time I gave him anything that wasn't exactly right syntactically, he would just say "uh uh," with no further feedback. I did eventually get it, at which point he moved on to bit manipulation questions, which I must admit were somewhat outside the box of what one normally expect from an interview, so I'll give him credit for that. Needless to say, I didn't get the job.
Later that day, I Googled the interviewer, and found his home page, which had a collection of clever bit twiddling hacks he'd collected over the years. I guess that's important or something.
That's how we operate technical interviews at Grubwithus. After a short phone screen and a ~2 hour test for basic competency, we invite candidates into the office to work with us on a 1 to 2-day project where both we and the candidate get to see how we like working with each other. We get the chance to evaluate the candidate's ability in a (sort of) normal working environment as they tackle actual problems they'll face in the day-to-day job, as opposed to a high-tension technical interview with irrelevant/meaningless questions.
The problem with this is that it can take a significant amount of the candidate's time. Scheduling a project (here's a spec, you have 3 days) is a major inconvenience for a lot of candidates.
Not being a programmer by day but proficient in bash and Python I was in an interview last year where the person asking the questions did just not get it. In one example he asked me to count the number of files that had a specific string in the name. I excluded the file descriptor based on his ask. So, he said I got it wrong. I explained the way it was presented I was making the problem harder, and more exact, but he wouldn't budge. The point being, I could easily do what he asked, but wasn't actually measured on that.