[aykutseker]

This is uncomfortably close to a normal interview task now.

Someone sends you a repo, says the install is broken, and asks you to take a look.

A lot of developers would run rpm install before thinking twice, especially if they were tired or looking for work.

[suyavuz]

The interview context makes it worse. You’re trying not to look slow, so you skip the part where you ask whether you should run it at all.

[munificent]

At least now there is a blog post that you can link to and say "Sorry, but I don't run npm install locally because of the risk of phishing attacks."

[bitfilped]

A skilled employee would never skip that step, why should you do so in an interview context? Skipping that step seems like a task failure to me just as much as any other part of the question from an interviewer perspective. Maybe I shouldn't hire the guy that blindly runs code just because someone "senior" to them asks.