I interview tons of software engineering candidates (pre pandemic it was at least one or two a week). At least half of my senior candidates fail basic phone screener questions.

These are questions that reflect something they'd be doing day to day in the role, but also are incredibly standard in our field.

The issue in most of them is that they've taken their support network for granted. The tons of developers before them who laid groundwork, and the others currently who take care of many tasks they consider junior.

Well that leaves them in a weird spot where they've not actually done a lot of the foundational work their predecessors set up for them, and they've let a lot of their skills atrophy by delegating to juniors. They'll even say as much and say "oh so and so does that, or they had it set up and it's great"

But then what am I hiring them for? Certainly they're not bringing a wealth of programming ability over, so maybe soft skills? That's hard to hedge bets on for a SWE, maybe as an product manager or something.