I would think that the type of person that is a designgineer is likely to be informally trained, usually starting as a design person and becoming increasingly more technical over time.
Because of this, I reckon they would do poorly at a lot of the types of technical interviews that are in fashion today, such as puzzle interviews and data structure/algorithm questions that you'd probably only do well with if you had a computer science background.
"Tell me how you would go about building an efficient maze generator" is the wrong kind of question for these people. "How would you go about building token-field interface from scratch in javascript" would be a better question.
Sites like InterviewStreet and CodeSprint don't optimize for hiring this kind of person.
I think you are right, I suspect that is a drive to invent things and a passion for technology, that is at least how it works for me:
web design as a kid + DT at school + always inventing things -> Industrial Design at uni -> interest in developing product from both the user facing side and technology behind it.
Because of this, I reckon they would do poorly at a lot of the types of technical interviews that are in fashion today, such as puzzle interviews and data structure/algorithm questions that you'd probably only do well with if you had a computer science background.
"Tell me how you would go about building an efficient maze generator" is the wrong kind of question for these people. "How would you go about building token-field interface from scratch in javascript" would be a better question.
Sites like InterviewStreet and CodeSprint don't optimize for hiring this kind of person.