For a while I experimented with giving easy problems like that during 'phone' screens (usually over google meet, with a shared text editor link), and whatever t

For a while I experimented with giving easy problems like that during 'phone' screens (usually over google meet, with a shared text editor link), and whatever their first answer was I always asked if they could think of another way to implement it. I liked the simple "is this odd/even?" question, and could prod for alternates by asking to use or not use a loop/modulus. My favorite alternate answer was someone doing the bit-and moral equivalent in base 10 by converting the number to a string and checking the last character. I felt like it gave good bang-for-buck with respect to https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential-phone-screen-questions https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential-pho... in that it takes hardly any time, it's probably about as good as fizzbuzz in catching out applicants who for whatever reason literally can't seem to program (only encountered two of those but that was only after someone else had screened them and passed them on), and it's an opportunity to show awareness of the 'bit nature' of these things (not very important to the work and lacking it isn't a sufficient reason to reject, but all else equal, I'd rather take someone with that awareness than someone without).