Steve Yegge discusses this in his "The Five Essential Phone-Screen Questions" blog post[0] from 2004 and states that his team-member (at Amazon) produced the li

Steve Yegge discusses this in his "The Five Essential Phone-Screen Questions" blog post[0] from 2004 and states that his team-member (at Amazon) produced the list of phone-numbers in an hour: Here are some facts for you to ponder: 1. Our Contact Reduction team really did have exactly this problem in 2003. This isn't a made-up example. 2. Someone on our team produced the list within an hour, and the list supported more than just the 2 formats above. 3. About 25% to 35% of all software development engineer candidates, independent of experience level, cannot solve this problem, even given the entire interview hour and lots of hints. [0] https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential-phone-screen-questions https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential-pho...