I do almost all of the technical phone screens for my company. The process starts with a "where-do-you-see-yourself-in-5-years" personality screen, with an H.R. drone or outside recruiter. It moves on me, and then on to a brief "homework" coding exercise that we ask people to write and submit. If we like their code sample, then they come in for the panel of "whiteboard-exercise" people who conduct the face to face round. At my stage, I seldom bother with certification style questions about the programming language, or with highly abstract thought exercises, because other people will do those things in the face to face stage.

Typically, I ask questions that give me an idea about the candidate's depth of experience and awareness. For example, "I see that you've spent X years using Subversion for source control. What are your opinions on trunk-first development vs. branch-first development?" I ask questions that speak to practical experience and design ability, without getting into too much depth. For example, "Pretend that you're using an OO language to build an application for <insert purpose here>. Just off the top of your head, what are some classes that you would expect to see in your class diagram?". Etc.

I find that this level of questioning is a much better screening tool than trick questions about programming language quirks or the minutiae of frameworks, or cliche puzzles about how many golf balls fit on an airplane. However, I groan and roll my eyes when I hear people challenge the need for technical interviews at all. Yes, they are necessary.

Having performed a thousand interviews by now, I am awestruck by how poor the software development talent pool is. I am aware that the Bay Area is overrepresented in HN's readership, and that crowd tends to take for granted the talent level found in the technical equivalent of Mecca. However, I assure you that the rest of the planet is dominated by sleepy line-of-business developers... who have all the passion beaten out of them in the first 5-10 years, and spend the rest of their career just phoning it in and not growing.

I sometimes ask candidates what the letters "MVC" stand for. The successful response rate is around 50/50. I ask candidates to briefly explain the advantages of the Model View Controller pattern, and only 10-20% can field the question. We bring in Java and C# candidates who have been working with their respective language for 10 or 15 years, and they get COMPLETELY EXPOSED during the face to face round when asked a series of basic certification exam style questions. Nothing tricky, just core fundamentals.

People who post here are not the norm. The "norm" is atrocious. So yes, unfortunately we all must endure technical interviews... to filter out people who have enough confidence or personality to excel in the other interview segments, yet are utterly useless.

Let's put it this way: the more experience I've had with interviewing, the more selective I've been in my own job searching, and the more aggressive I've been in my salary negotiations. If you are really good, and are located outside of San Francisco, then you are worth your weight in gold and should value yourself accordingly. You wield tremendous leverage once you make a strong showing in a technical interview.