[dwild]

> Package manages often determine the success of an entire ecosystem.

Nobody said it wasn't great, just that whether he is good to make a package manager, doesn't determine if he is a good fit for anything else. If that hiring position was to build a system to manage packages, sure, he is probably the best hire for that, but theses skills are specific to exactly this task.

A great interviewer though would have kept his contact information though and would have tried to put him somewhere else though. He may have not been a good fit for what they were looking for, but they can clearly use his skill in some ways some where else.

[swat535]

You're absolutely right. the best metric is to see how quickly he can reverse a binary tree. now that is grounds for instant dismissal !