Comment by necovek

I do all my interviewing in a very similar way, but I don't use that to "level" an employee: I want most of the engineers in my team to have this mindset, and the only difference between seniority levels should be in the size/scope of the initiative they led and took ownership of, and obviously, the level of exposure to wrong things they had a chance to do and learn from. I will sometimes take someone where I believe they were not put in a position to do this, and who I believe I can support to develop this mindset.

I know I've done all of this since day 1 of my professional software engineer career (and well, before that too). I've also been "side-moted" to a Tech Lead after 2 years of starting my career in a strong tech company too.