These kind of FizzBuzz stuff is not an issue I believe (although, "going blank" during the phone call or in similar situation is as well legitimate). The main

These kind of FizzBuzz stuff is not an issue I believe (although, "going blank" during the phone call or in similar situation is as well legitimate). The main problem is that interviewers (BigCo's) ask questions that require inventing Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm or K-D trees on the spot, whereas researches spent months... Of course I assume that the interviewee is not aware of these a priori (or it's been a decade since he last heard about these).