>> The best process was the one where I finally got a job. We talked on the phone for an hour and a half and by the end you could just tell we had that, "developer bond". His approach was the best I'd seen. He just talked through some of the problems he had, I proposed solutions and we talked through pros and cons. He treated me as an equal from the start. After that we had the face-to-face HR questions (how do you resolve conflict, etc.) which they have to ask because it's a big company, and another one with another manager but by then it was pretty much a done deal.

I've had the same experience, and I absolutely agree. Just about all my best interviews were with someone where we just hit it off and talked deep tech for an hour. On most of these we had to consciously cut the conversation off because we went long. I don't think that, when this sort of interaction occurs, you know the person is going to be good at writing production code. But at least you do know they're the "sort" of person you would expect to be good at it, and frankly none of the other methods discussed do a better job at providing that assurance.