I'm not quite sure where you got the impression that fizz buzz is the only interview question that got asked. I'm fairly process oriented so I find a lot of value in observing how someone works. But at some point it's just not worth it to proceed further.
I like fizz buzz because it's both a good low pass filter and a good jumping off point for further discussion. If you can't read the Wiki entry and wrap your head around fizz buzz, you're probably not a good fit. If you can then there's the opportunity to ask all sorts of questions (e.g. why did you choose this language, how would you test this, what would you do differently) and maybe even move on to a more complex program.
For the one candidate who struggled with bash, we started offering input around the ten minute mark. Stuff like "is there something else you could use instead of the modulo operator", leading questions to encourage them to check the man page (or google it), inquiring maybe a different language would be a better fit. That this person could wrap their head around fizz buzz was only a minor detail. That they were fixated on making a specific implementation work was a big miss. At this job specifically the tech stack was fairly diverse so there was a lot of value in being able to suss out the right tools for the job and less value in being able to bang out a more complex algorithm in clojurescript or whatever.
I like fizz buzz because it's both a good low pass filter and a good jumping off point for further discussion. If you can't read the Wiki entry and wrap your head around fizz buzz, you're probably not a good fit. If you can then there's the opportunity to ask all sorts of questions (e.g. why did you choose this language, how would you test this, what would you do differently) and maybe even move on to a more complex program.
For the one candidate who struggled with bash, we started offering input around the ten minute mark. Stuff like "is there something else you could use instead of the modulo operator", leading questions to encourage them to check the man page (or google it), inquiring maybe a different language would be a better fit. That this person could wrap their head around fizz buzz was only a minor detail. That they were fixated on making a specific implementation work was a big miss. At this job specifically the tech stack was fairly diverse so there was a lot of value in being able to suss out the right tools for the job and less value in being able to bang out a more complex algorithm in clojurescript or whatever.