[Enginerrrd]

Yeah this test is terrible honestly. I fix all my own appliances and vehicles including complicated and time consuming repairs and at the office I'd be the first in practice to fix the coffee machine myself too if I thought I could.

But in an interview is almost certainly say something like "after checking for a few obvious things related to normal operation of the machine per the owners manual, I'd inform and defer to my supervisor." Or something like that.

Because anything else is a liability. I know that in fact, no corporate manager wants to go on record authorizing someone who isn't a certified repair technician to attempt repairing an appliance. Some may not want me as an expensive guy wasting my expensive time fixing something that a cheap guy can. It wouldn't take long before the correct aanswer is: order a new one.

Now you could nitpick that how I'd act in actuality doesn't match what I'd say I'd do, and in some contexts that's fair, but most of the time, an interview is about saying the "correct" answers even when you know that's not how the world actually works.

That being said, there is ONE trait I think is a good universal gotcha if you can find a way to test it. To borrow a term from the Army: is the person a BF? ("Buddy Fucker"). I e. The same person who will use the last of the coffee grounds without telling anyone or replacing them is the same person that will leave your team hanging in other contexts. It's a personality thing and it leaks out all over the place. Not that that's the best example, but the type of person to be incredibly inconsiderate to the person that comes behind them is not the guy you want on your team messing up your codebase.