&gt;  We get candidates (HFT) with a CS degree from MIT or something, with 15+ years of industry C++ experience as a senior software engineer...<p>Sounds like your expectations are part of the problem.<p>Why do you expect someone 15 years out of university, working in the now enormously wide software space to have your pet questions memorized?  C++ is well known for being too big and needing to be subset(-ed).  And, why not realize that such a person could become an expert in those questions in less than an hour of googling and reading?<p>The bigger problem is that companies are not willing to invest even four hours of training into employees!