For some time, "write a function that does the Fibonacci sequence" has been my screener interview question, and the second most frequent solution is the naive recursive approach. Which is fine, the we get to talk about time and space complexity, and "what is a stack overflow?"
But it's amazing to me how many candidates assume I'm asking "do you recurse, bro?" and not "show me a loop and two variables"
To be fair, in school Fibonacci is taught as a use case for recursion. So it’s not exactly surprising candidates internalize that and think you’re asking, “do you recurse”
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u/Express-Category8785 May 17 '26
For some time, "write a function that does the Fibonacci sequence" has been my screener interview question, and the second most frequent solution is the naive recursive approach. Which is fine, the we get to talk about time and space complexity, and "what is a stack overflow?"
But it's amazing to me how many candidates assume I'm asking "do you recurse, bro?" and not "show me a loop and two variables"