How I’d Revise Engineering Interviews for 2026
A bad hire is incredibly expensive: salary, recruiting fees, technical debt, and toll on team morale. Yet, interviewers still rely on the wrong signals. After running over a hundred interviews in the past couple of years, I want to share the common traits I’ve been looking for as an interviewer to help de-risk the hiring decision. Software engineering was never about writing code; it’s always been about solving business problems. Despite this, most companies I’ve talked to in the past 12 months are still interviewing with LeetCode and Kubernetes trivia. If an AI agent can pass your technical test, not only is your process broken but you’re also sending a bad signal about your engineering culture. ...