[lostcolony]

But optimizing for them? I've been out of school over 7 years; I'm currently a tech lead. I can guarantee you that, while I can likely solve most binary tree related questions you'd care to throw at me, it will take a lot more work, thought, and likely mistakes on my part now than it would have when I first got out of school. It's not an area I've spent -any- part of my development career on, nor is it an area I find particularly interesting. Whereas when I left school, I had actively been dealing with such problems within the past couple years, -and- had boned up on them specifically to prep for interviews, since I had nothing else in my favor.

Hiring a junior with such criteria might make sense; hiring a more seasoned person, probably not so much. Because the seasoned person will just not be as compelling as the more junior person, due to having spent the past few years working on other things.