It sounds like you're screening out people who question the status quo and always try to be working on something meaningful. Is that what you want? In a good p

It sounds like you're screening out people who question the status quo and always try to be working on something meaningful. Is that what you want? In a good programming job, when given a task, it's an excellent response to say, "Why on earth would I want to do that?" (Though maybe not worded quite like that.) That way you get context, refine the requirements, and eliminate unnecessary work. If that behavior is required by the job, then you should expect it in the interview. It's an important point. If the job involves writing FizzBuzz type code, give them that in the interview. If the job is writing kernels and databases and distributed whatevers, go ahead and hand out some hardcore computer science questions. If the job is fiddling with CSS and filling out TPS reports, be honest with yourself about that, and go ahead and hire some mediocre programmers, because anyone else is just going to get bored anyway. It's kind of a sore point because when I interviewed for my current job, they grilled me on robust algorithms for keeping data stores synchronized. Cool, I like this stuff. I got hired. Guess what? We don't even use database transactions here. I'm serious, people consider them too complicated. I spend my time in meetings, in the bug tracker, doing code reviews, occasionally coding something less complicated than what I cut my programming teeth on 20 years ago. That's the actual job. FizzBuzz misses the point for jobs like this.