I gave this interview 100+ times and my criteria boiled down to: did they propose a hypothesis and then follow it to a conclusion? Doesn’t matter if it was wrong, just mattered that they were able to falsify it or find the solution.
At the end, I would have them walk me through the bug, its cause, and the fix in very high level terms to make sure they could articulate the path we took.
At the end, I would have them walk me through the bug, its cause, and the fix in very high level terms to make sure they could articulate the path we took.