So true. I learned this the hard way just like the author, by making some very bad hires. I had always thought it was insulting to ask interviewees to write a

So true. I learned this the hard way just like the author, by making some very bad hires. I had always thought it was insulting to ask interviewees to write a simple two-line strcopy() function. Of course they can -- they've got a CS degree! So I would take that as given and move straight to more abstract non-coding questions. It took me a long time to accept the fact that many people can talk about programming very glibly but can't actually do it. At first I felt like a jerk by making people write so much simple code in interviews, but it's led to much better hiring results.