IME it's not about asking easy questions, it's about asking questions about "programming in the small" that are relevant to day-to-day work. I conduct lots of

IME it's not about asking easy questions, it's about asking questions about "programming in the small" that are relevant to day-to-day work. I conduct lots of technical interviews and I've found that it's just as important to ask the 10+ year veterans about the fundamentals as it is to ask the new grads. It's just way too easy to talk about programming while actually being incompetent at it. Only by having a candidate write real code can an interviewer detect the difference.