*raising hand as another software nerd here*
My "standard" interview question involves "Write a function to return the Nth
Fibonacci number". (For those of you who aren't software nerds, this is a freshman-level six-line coding problem). I like it because it's simple and because it allows various follow up questions. Others in my group ask far more devious questions ("delete a node from a binary search tree", "reverse the order of a linked list", etc.)
The number of people who can't do it greatly outnumbers those who can to the point where I'm amazed when an interview candidate can actually do it. (And if they can't do it in less than five minutes, your chances of getting a job offer are exactly zero). New college grads, those with previous experience, etc. -- batting average is the same. I've had people stare at the whiteboard for a solid half hour trying to think of how to do this.
Maybe I'm selective, but I want this guy: