Facebook's Recruiting and Retention Problem 17 years ago
I got asked the same SQRT question from FB (this was over the phone mind you). Not sure if I should give the the name of the interviewer. I bet it was the same guy. Anyway, the interviewer asked me to go to a FB site where we can collaborate and he can see what I am coding. He asked me this question and did not budge away from it. It was just ridiculous. For the life of me, I tried various different methods, even going to wikipedia but it was extremely complicated to code that up in a short period of time. We spent half the interview on this question. I decided to go work for Google, a much better company, instead.