i think you're mixing several different things together, based on your personal prejudices. by your metric, i'm definitely a B programmer - i am far more passio

i think you're mixing several different things together, based on your personal prejudices. by your metric, i'm definitely a B programmer - i am far more passionate about making sure a product is elegantly engineered than about the specific business requirements of that product. all that means, though, is that i need to recognise where my strengths and my limitations lie, and am thereafter a pretty valuable person to have on your team. i'd never try to be a product manager, and i have no ego problems when it comes to working under a lead programmer, or deferring to someone who understands the customer better than i do when arguing over features. i will also make sure that the code that gets checked in not only solves the problem at hand, but is easy to maintain, extend, reuse and integrate into future code (which, at the end of the day, is what elegance is all about). i also enjoy puzzles, and would probably be one of the people who solved the puzzle in the interview screening test just because it was a fun thing to do. i would never, however, use tricks or puzzles in an actual interview, and my focus is strongly on encouraging the candidate to put his or her best foot forward, and supporting them while they do so. an interview that lets me get a feel for the best the candidate is capable of is far more valuable than seeing who does and doesn't get tripped up by some random trick or either-you-get-it-or-you-don't puzzle. and finally, i now work at google, and my interview was pretty straightforward algorithm problems - no "how would you move mount fuji" conundrums or random rec.puzzles-style brainteasers. i'm not sure if google actually did use that sort of question at one point, but they certainly didn't last year. (anecdotal evidence, yes, but i had six different interviewers, and surely at least one of them would have trotted out a puzzle if it was still a prevalent practice).