What tells us most about a candidate is how they behave in code they did not write. We hand over a real piece of an inherited system and watch. Do they start suggesting rewrites, or do they first ask what depends on this and what breaks if it changes? Almost all production work is joining something already running, so a careful reader who asks that question is worth more to a client than a fast rewriter. Worth deciding what the first question should be for someone on day one in your product.
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