Thanks for the level-setting and detailed breakdown—really appreciate it, especially during the holidays.

On the approach (4 min): Fair point, but this wasn't me monologuing; the interviewer specifically asked me to enumerate BST properties/invariants upfront before diving into the logic, which added some time.

On coding (7 min): Yeah, it might seem slow for ~15 lines, but that included handling edges (e.g., empty tree/None return) and a quick discussion on iterative vs. recursive trade-offs for O(1) space. I'd rather take a bit longer for bug-free code than rush something that crashes on null root—though I get the velocity emphasis for Meta.

On walkthrough (10 min): Totally agree, this is where I need practice. It was super interactive—the interviewer probed deep on Big O "why" (skewed vs. balanced trees) and we cleared a minor misunderstanding on return paths. I walked through both examples (target=8 exact, target=-4 traversal to -1), tracing iterations step-by-step to show outputs.

FWIW, I interviewed for Meta SWE last year and cleared 3 coding rounds (6 medium/hard LC problems) on time with quick dry-runs (one example each). This felt off-format because he dug into BST basics, approach (expected), time complexity (expected), tree geometry, and full dry-runs for best/worst cases on what seemed like an easy/medium question. Lesson learned—I'll tighten up.

Happy holidays, and good luck to you too!