I have two upcoming interviews coming up that will be “pairing coding sessions” and both of these are going to be with principal/staff engineers (one of them even has a fancy tech talk on youtube). Whats been peoples experience coding and interviewing with these advanced and experienced minds? (I know, I know they are just humans, but in my case its obvious they are advanced)
Usually better than the alternative because at those levels, people are more likely to have better soft skills and higher EQ and have seen much more code, good and bad alike. There are exceptions, but most aren’t going to nitpick your code conventions, try to create “gotcha” moments, or spend the entire interview stone faced and emotionless. Seniors by contrast seem to love doing all of that.
There is no clear cut answer for this. There are many companies with inflated titles with diminished scope and even more people in most companes with even more inflated egos. Knowledgeble or not I would mostly hope that you just get to interview with a good empathetic interviewer, thats what would counts more towards your having an actually nice experience.