As a self promoting post I think the author did a good job. As an interview format, I would rather work somewhere less ego driven development and more real problem oriented workplace. But that is just me. Someone could prefer these kind of interviews. I also did a set of questions for java engineers in the past and I always felt there is something really icky. I also noticed the engineers with huge ego revel in these kind of candidate assessments as it makes the feel good, but the candidate performance is poorly tested. Thats what the probation period is for. Just ask the candidate whats his experience. Asking these "cleverly" designed problems is nice for the interviever importance of keeping his job, but is not really usefull. You could even miss a good engineer. Perhaps i see this too narrow and you just really want to observe what the candidate is thinking, but you could make a couple of not really complicated questions and you could see where he is at. I dont bite this head-game at all.
I agree to a point. For me, what chaffs is the convulted prompt that goes against all my instincts for how to design something simply and clearly.
"Ok, but if you had to code something convulted and illogical..." I tend to have trouble with these sorts of black box problems not because of the challenge but because of going down the path feels wrong I would expect my day to day at the company would be surrounded by too clever solutions.
Also, recognize a minimum requirement to solve this under interview pressure is a lot of low-level futzing with Javascript async and timeout details. Not everyone comes in with that knowledge or experience, and it's fine if that is a hard requirement but it seems ancillary to the goal of "interviewing engineers". I can't imagine anyone solving this or even knowing how to prompt AI in the right ways without a fair bit of prior knowledge.
