I hired an engineer who couldn't invert a binary tree.

Best hire I ever made.

• He hadn’t done LeetCode in years.

• Said, “Honestly, I’d Google it.”

Most companies would’ve passed.

But I gave him a real-world task:

And he nailed it.

He didn’t guess:

• He could debug like a detective.

• He asked smart questions.

• He explained his thinking clearly, even when under pressure.

Six months in, he was leading projects:

• Shipping clean, working code.

• Mentoring juniors.

• Making everyone around him better.

That’s when it hit me:

I’d rather hire someone who knows how to think,

than someone who just remembers how to answer.