This is a fair point, even tough it doesn’t answer my question. When I interview I split up the coding and the algorithms assessments: if someone quickly and co

This is a fair point, even tough it doesn’t answer my question. When I interview I split up the coding and the algorithms assessments: if someone quickly and correctly implements the naive solution, I consider myself justified in grading them as solid in coding and moving on and having an algorithmic design discussion for the rest of the interview so I can speak more to their algorithms abilities. If someone fails to design anything more sophisticated than number 1 despite my guidance, or takes an unreasonable amount of time to implement it, that’s a signal. Also, let’s keep in mind a hiring recommendation isn’t a judgment of a person’a abilities as an engineer, it’s a judgement of how badly we should be trying to hire them relative to other candidates. My LNH is a statement that the candidate is solid but not stellar enough to extend an offer to. If our hiring pool were restricted or we needed to hire more people my assessment would be accordingly softened.