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I even go as far as avoiding writing code in the first place. You can give a very simple imaginary problem to solve and see how they think. I believe good software engineers are essentially problem solvers, the code just happens to be the tool for it.

I have asked to estimate the amounts of skittles in a litre cube box.

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If nobody at your company requires a candidate to write code, you won't filter out the candidates who can't code, and they'll be working with you, not with companies that require candidates to write code.

Even the easiest five-minute coding problem is better than nothing.

Yes, but the OP asked for an idiot-filter first.

We end up applying multiple filters throughout the process, but try similarly to keep them as simple as possible not to too strongly bias for one thing.

I find that a horrible question.

I've not had skittles in years, are they as big as smarties? I think a little smaller? Sure, you can start your estimation by laying them down in a 10x10 grid, and stacked 20 high, but that's very far off. Maybe 13x13x20? So that would be the most loosely packed version, if we shift them off so that layer+1 is in the depressions of layer+0, maybe we can stack 30 high. So yeah, that's my best mathematical approach and I guess it's at least 50% off.

Did I pass?

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