I've interviewed at a startup once. Just once. Never again. The first 5 (!!) rounds of interviews were with all sorts of people. From recruitment to tech to design to the CEO himself, and someone I forgot. The 6th interview was with 3 of their senior developers. They asked me only 1 question:

Can you tell us about design patterns?

I'm an autodidact. I taught myself. I've been programming for multi-billion-Dollar companies for years. I've been a developer for 15 years. I'm an amazingly efficient and good front-end developer; I get shit done, and I'm the unicorn that bridges design and development without flaw. And I write my own tests.

But I have no CS background. I started working full-time at age 17. Because I was pretty good back then (in the early 2000's). So "design pattern" didn't mean anything to me until I researched it after that 6th interview.

When I winged it and told them about "well, designers have certain patterns in UX to follow because blah blah" they were not impressed. Rightly so, I'd imagine, but they never tested the essential knowledge they were actually asking me about.

If they had given me a problem–any problem–I would've solved it equal to their own ability, or better.

Interviews are fucking weird. I've been an interviewer for over 50 candidates. So many great interviewees turn out to be crap. So many crap interviewees turn out to be amazing. And so many in between.

Turns out, what this writer of this article also states: real-life practical examples work best. Look at your bug stack, pick one, pair program it until it's fixed. See how the interviewer reacts to problems, see how this person thinks. That tells you a shitload more than any, and I mean ANY, other interviewing technique.