offbynull

Many years ago I was on a team where the team lead decided to outright accuse one of the members of bikeshedding. The accusation turned their relationship toxic, so much so that the team member was switched off to another team shortly after the accusation.

Let's say you're of the opinion that, whether consciously or unconsciously, one or more team members are engaging in bikeshedding. How would you handle the situation? Are there things that can be done beforehand to help steer people away from bikeshedding?

We're about to start interviewing for an SWE role. Rather than asking each candidate to do leetcode questions or take-home assignments, we're going to be asking them to present some existing code they've written and pair with a team member to modify it in some meaningful way. The team member and the candidate work together as equals to add in a new feature, switch to different data structures / algorithms, fix a bug, document, etc..

Has anyone had experience with doing something like this in the past? Everything I’ve personally experienced has been leetcode or take-homes. My hope is that ...

1. the candidate feels more comfortable during the interview since it’s their code.

2. the candidate and the team get a better feel for how each other works / how they work together.

3. it helps the candidate interview us as much as we're interviewing them.

4. it’s more respectful of the candidate’s time (no take-home or grinding leetcode required).

EDIT: I should mention that we have backup problems in place if they don't feel comfortable sharing. The context will be the same, both the candidate and the team member will be working as equals to address the problem.