[ColinWright]

I have interviewed many people for programming positions. Some could write apparently reasonable pseudocode, but never actually convert it into working code, even in the language of their choice. A worryingly large number couldn't write the simplest routine to perform trivial tasks, even in the language of their choice.

Some of the above claimed to have 10 years experience in the field.

There's a lot of push-back against requiring FizzBuzz, and I understand that. So the approach I took was to say - "Let's start with a simple FizzBuzz routine and we'll discuss some issues that arise from it."

But you get complete jerks in recruiting, just as you actually get complete jerks everywhere. If you don't like the atmosphere the recruiters/interviewers are creating, would you want to work there? You need to assess how representative these people are of the company as a whole.

In the end, it's up to you. Sometimes to accomplish something you simply have to schlep[0], put up with the tedious and annoying for the sake of accomplishing your goals.

[0] http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html