First, I must confess I needed to read wikipedia on what NCO is, as never been in the army, and also in the country where I am from there are no NCOs currently, but I think I understood the idea.

I can agree regarding “safety valve” part, and probably being a liason to management, and about intuition of what can or can’t work, plus the dynamics part.

But then all this does not really negate seniors having whiteboard coding skills! Senior developer should have those, like NCO should be able to shoot enemies or perform melee attacks if needed. I’d said, senior dev can be expected to code on par or even better and faster, than the “lower rank” team members (with the better or comparable quality).

Having to solve some small programming puzzle, if it’s not the only criteria for hiring seniors, does not harm. I’d even did it for software architects.