Even something as boring as FizzBuzz can foster an interesting, if short, conversation. I've had candidates bring up everything from unit testing strategies to

Even something as boring as FizzBuzz can foster an interesting, if short, conversation. I've had candidates bring up everything from unit testing strategies to the implications of branch prediction. It can also help less confident candidates to start with a softball. Anyway, it is just the first question and we are usually past it in five minutes. Then we discuss, in general terms, the types of problems we are solving and the related computer science topics. It certainly isn't meant to insult. I hope I haven't insulted anyone and, if I have, they've never made it known to me. I will say that it'd be a huge red flag to me if a candidate acted like this was beneath them. The reality is that, while we will be solving some cool and hard problems, there will be lots of problems that are beneath us, too.