I've had candidates I knew 15 minutes into the session I would sell a panel on "no hire" for, still say I was the best interview they've ever done in their life. This is not so much because I'm actually good at it, but going by the substantive content of that and much other feedback I've received especially in the last four years, I earn these rave reviews instead mainly because:

- I'm not afraid to admit where a candidate knows more than I do, and

- when someone seems so nervous it may be confounding their performance, I gently remind them that I've been through this before, it's hard on everyone and I don't hold that against people, and it's okay if they need to take a deep breath and recenter.

It's systemic, and it isn't even about being able to derive a reliable signal from the interaction. The problem is way more fundamental, in the same sense that you don't fix "Lord of the Flies" by reminding everyone regularly to be polite and not swear.

I mean, as I've just discussed, I can't even trust the good feedback I get from candidates, because any signal on actual improvements I could make is totally swamped by the noise of people practically ready to lick a hand in exchange for not being treated like something you'd scrape off a boot heel.

Which is also not something I hold against anyone on an individual level. The system that so consistently produces such outcomes is another matter. I used to think it was shameful people so rarely bother to represent their company in a good light, in the one formal occasion when most engineers ever actually do so. But in retrospect, I think I was the one who was wrong: the median level of representation in this area is more or less exactly accurate to what is deserved.