That sounds like a bias towards people who make time to learn, not to mention interest and academic aptitude.
I don't know how you can frame this as something you wouldn't want to bias for. But I do acknowledge many great engineers will not have that skill.
It's understanding something, even if it's not the job skills. Can you imagine someone who performs well at these kinds of challenges being a bad hire?
It's no better than any other evidence of effort
> Can you imagine someone who performs well at these kinds of challenges being a bad hire?
I don't have to imagine; it tends to lead to hard-to-maintain 'clever' code, with little ability to deal with less-than-clear requirements.
I think one thing that's better is it has a hard IQ floor that can only be compensated with a huge amount of memorization and practice, but that's a worthwhile skill on it's own.
I've gotten way better at these problems from practice. Am I suddenly an amazing programmer as a result? I wish that were the case, but sadly I don't believe my job skills are improved at all.
That suggests we're measuring something fairly independent.