“Real problems” aren’t something that can be effectively discussed in the time span of an interview, so companies concoct unreal problems that are meant to be good indicators.
WE saw this last year with all the "AI can now pass the bar exam" articles, but that doesn't lead to them being able to do anything approaching practicing law, because AI failure modes are not the same as humans and can't be tested the same way.
If my problems could be solved in the time span of an interview, why would I waste my time doing that interview instead of just solving it?
I'm also not sure what the alternative is? Just not hiring?
You just described a contrived, “unreal” problem.
> I'm also not sure what the alternative is? Just not hiring?
The alternative is to come up with questions that are representative of skills related to “real problems”, as you just did, and use those instead. Unfortunately candidates consistently complain that such questions aren’t realistic.
Mind, I work in very small companies and never had to give input for filling 10 positions at once... just one at a time.
And, I've also had people speak very well, doing great with the verbal explanation and questions, even good pseudo code, and then be unable to write a simple for loop, of any kind, in any language. These people also often have a resume full of short runs.
So, I structure mine around a, fixed, work related problem that lets me clearly justify the yes/no in a way that upper management can stomach, but then just bias my feedback a bit based on the "personal interpretation" things like what you describe (which I think are usually better indicators).
Also, resumes are 90% fiction, from what I've seen, especially from certain demographics (not allowed to perceive that though). I don't bother believing them or talking about them, unless there's time after.
Yes, this mostly works in small organizations. I'm mostly in positions where I have to pass the feedback once, or at most twice up the chain.