The dystopian world of software engineering interviews
Whenever I've interviewed people I've always made sure to them feel comfortable, so any anxiety does not get in their way.<p>Then, we talk and I look for all the qualities they /do/ have.<p>Sadly, lots of interviewers get a kick out of finding out what the interviewee does not know, so they can feel superior.<p>Coding challenges should be:
-1. take-home
-2. concise
-3. relevant to the job
-4. take no more than 4 hours<p>One example of such a decent test that I came across involved having to read a file, parsing it and turning its contents into some basic HTML. During the interview we talked about things like "what if the file were really big", e.g. let the candidate  reflect on the limitations of their implementation. 
This was enough to suss out where somebody is, professionally. 
And nobody had to have a bad day.