I have a slightly strange problem. I need to hire average programmers. Reasons are many - but primarily budget and the type of tasks they are going to be assigned to - not cutting edge work.<p>I have been struggling to find good questions to ask. Fizzbuzz is too easy - and my other questions I try seem to be too hard. So what are your favorite interview questions to ask an average programmer?
Implement a bubble sort, then a binary tree.<p>Ask how they'd approach the travelling salesman problem.<p>Given an SQL query, a request, a set of objects and required output, ask them to optimise the whole process from start to finish. The smarter ones will ask about caching, look at optimising the query, look at the way the output is generated etc. The not so good ones will focus on the .NET/PHP/<language>
Do you really think FizzBuzz is too easy?<p>Hmm.<p>OK, here's one. Tell them to find out what a Bloom Filter is, and then implement it. Ask what decisions they had to make on the way, and why they made the choices they did.
Ask them to show you something they have coded and ask questions about their implementation. If you can't do it yourself, invite one of your senior devs to join the interview.