What were software engineering job interviews like decades ago?

When I was entering the workforce twenty years ago, I interviewed several times with Microsoft, without success. I recall string manipulation questions, linked lists, and puzzles. I probably spent the most time preparing for the latter. Before Google made algorithm questions popular, Microsoft's brainteasers were legendary. There was even a prep book - "How Would You Move Mount Fuji?".

My first job ended up with a small, self-funded company where the technical portion consisted of a multiple choice quiz that the CEO put together. I still remember that one of the questions was "Which is the Debug shortcut key in Visual Studio 6?" Terrible question, but I knew the answer, so it worked out ok.

Small software company in the UK. I was interviewing for a junior programmer position (no devs back then). There was a short technical test first - done in the company's office rather than at home. A small project set up that accepted an input string, and I had to write the code to count the number of words in the string. Most applicants failed.

This was followed by a harmless chat type of interview. In retrospect, I can see that the chat was to see how we got along - the small coding test was the 'is he capable' part of the interview.

This was 1998. I didn't encounter the online test nonsense until 2021 in Dublin. Not Leetcode, but 100 gotcha questions in a row.