> I always ask people to write code in a technical interview, and I usually start with a fairly easy warm-up question — some sort of a toy problem like an opera

> I always ask people to write code in a technical interview, and I usually start with a fairly easy warm-up question — some sort of a toy problem like an operation on lists or trees, often the kind of thing that has a neat recursive solution. Interview questions that have a "neat" solution are usually bad interview questions and more a reflection on the fact that the interviewer is trying to feel smarter than the interviewee. On top of that, if the interviewee writes the neat solution right away, what have you learned exactly? Either she's very good or she already knew the neat solution, so you're going to have to ask additional questions to clarify. Why not skip the gimmick question and get to the real interview part?