“Let’s go thru it one more time,” he said. I’m sitting across the table from Bram Cohen, the creator of the BitTorrent protocol. In front of him lays a printout with a dozen lines of Python code.

“Well, I’m not sure what this code does anymore,” I replied. I was nervous. I did not expect to be asked to reverse engineer an algorithm on the spot like that. Specially not as a first interview question for an engineering management position and in a language I knew nothing about. In fact, I did not know what to expect at all when I stepped foot in that San Francisco office.

It’s 10:43 am and the candidate is standing by the white board, giving me a blank stare. With fifteen minutes left in the interview, I still can’t decide whether the guy is faking it or simply nervous.

I walk over, grab the marker and draw a rectangle, setting up the stage for my perennial technical question that should settle this for good.