Being recruited in the USA
Wow, having someone implement a square root algorithm on the spot, that's quite a question to ask. I agree that is a terrible question because not many top developers would be able to answer it on the spot unless they had recently happened to have implemented it. It's not like it's an obvious algorithm. I could mention the existence of Carmack's root algorithm, which I don't have memorized but I do know he got from someone else, and flop around a bit.<p>It's weird there are so many companies claiming to not be able to find people but you hear about their hiring process and it's no wonder.