The goal here is to see if the candidate understands the domain (generic distributed systems) well enough on their own. For more senior roles I look to make sure they can then communicate that understanding to a team, and then drive consensus around some approach.
This is why I’m stuck at Senior lol. I can craft incredibly deep technical documents on why X is the preferred path, but when inevitably someone else counters with soft points like DX, I fall down. No, I don’t care that the optimal solution requires you to read documentation and understand it, instead of using whatever you’re used to. If you wanted to use that, why did you ask me to do a deep-dive into the problem?
Making the dependencies of "it depends" explicit is the whole point.
This also means there are 100 builders in my area who only build stick frame houses and won't even talk to you if you want something else and only 1 or 2 who will even think about those other options. (they do compete with the other builders so costs are not unreasonable)
