What are interviewers trying to identify with this question?
If you ask this in your interviews, can you explain your motivation?
Besides, someone with big goals needs the right motivation. How much more exciting is someone whose dream is to save the world climate because he loves polar bears than someone whose dream is to lie lazily on the beach and drink cocktails?
Most people would hear fibonacci and get into some recursive programming technique - that was not the right answer. The right answer was since you had unlimited resources, etc, was just to store all the fibonacci numbers in a hash table or what not and perform a lookup to see if it existed. Answer was much simpler than what it appeared on its surface, though I'm not sure why you'd want to do it that way.
Not sure what that question really establishes about a programmer, to me it seems like the hypothetical invites the answer "I'd hire the best firm available to do it for me", but that doesn't seem correct either. Anyways, when those questions come up it seems like they want an algorithm, but in the case I cited, it was a trick. Not sure of any other examples to draw on though - curious if anyone has other examples.
Given the unlimited budget, but given that companies only have a limited outlay, it would cause infinite harm to the company, while transferring me 10% of the company value in cash.
After that, I would create my company with this money, and hire this interviewer so he keeps silent.
If you're in front of someone asking you this kind of questions, your chances to be hired are very low.
Some of them used graphology or astrology not very long ago. One day they may ask a DNA sample to check if it's "compatible".
Let them with their silly questions and focus yourself on serious peoples.
"What would you do if YOU were in charge?"
Their motivation in this case could be to see if you could save the future of the company.
Honestly, upon some reflection and having done some talking to other people both currently in and (like me) formerly in recruiting, this question might indicate a place that's afraid of high turnover - or on a dimmer note, one where they're worried about the work environment might cause people to leave if they're not 100% bought-in on the company's methodology.