I interviewed for a software engineering role. They say they want to steer away from brain teasers. Which already is a red flag to me since, that implies that they believe they have a better way to assess candidate. Anywho, the challenge is implement something in React with their given criterias. The idea is to simulate real working environment. Welp, This of course doesn't work. Because, in a real environment you don't get penalized when you found took the wrong turn in implementation choice. In the real world, you simple revert your changes and restart where things were working. But in the interview, you must know the perfect path to implementation in one go. In short, be prepared to read the interviewers mind and get the most optimal implementation from him within the time constrain and while he is watching you code. If you don't implement it in the way they expect, you are out. Well, so much for improving the brain teaser questions traditional way. While brain teasers are not perfect, they are still around because they avoid exactly this issue. The issue that, the passing/failing of a candidate is not depended solely on the opinion of the interviewer rather there is a clear score that puts a number of the candidate. The score certainly does gauge the candidates competency but at least, it's a game with clear boundaries.