Imagine you have one position, and 15 people were screened for an interview. What would you do with 15 contractors? Even if you run a Microsoft department it would not make much sense.<p>Trivial problems are a good filter, as long as you manage to maintain a non-stressful interview environment. Whiteboard coding is a good thing, because it shows that one really understands things, not just memorised keystrokes.<p>Doing about 80% of my work on a piece of paper, I cannot really comprehend all the moaning about whiteboard being &quot;detached&quot; from anything practical.