Interesting, my experience is the opposite. I find various leetcode and "software architecture" questions extremely hit-or-miss, and my experience interviewing is, either I fail at the very beginning stages (CV review or first 2 interviews), or get to the end (offer stage). The very bimodal distribution is inconsistent with both options in your hypothesis (i.e. either the "terrible" or the "good" candidate).
> either I fail at the very beginning stages (CV review or first 2 interviews), or get to the end (offer stage).
I can echo this, same experience here and ended up landing a nice role at a big company while being rejected for objectively worse roles at tiny companies and startups. For the last round of applications, I applied to 10-15 companies, only got an interview with 2 and got an offer from both (and both raised their offers to counter the other).
>The very bimodal distribution is inconsistent with both options in your hypothesis (i.e. either the "terrible" or the "good" candidate).
it is completely consistent. When you fail at the very beginning you're a "terrible" and when you get offer you're a "good" one. The "terrible"/"good" isn't innate characteristic, it is in the eyes of beholder ... err ... interviewer. Most places pride themselves on taking only top 1|2%, and thus most candidates at any given place are "terrible" by definition, and thus the interview is built as the filter described by GP. Of course everybody hiring top 1% means that pretty much anybody would get to be a "good"
at some place.
