[bogomipz]

Good points. I know how I want to spend my time - working on something creative not "training up" for a potential interview. Companies only started doing the "throw the CLRS book at them" style interviews when they found out that was Google was doing. I'm sure Google has their own reasons for that. However why would a smallish start up want to emulate what works for a company that has 65K employees? This whole training up for Google/FB/MS/AWS style interviews has actually given rise to a cottage industry that has sprouted up around helping you train - "Cracking the Coding interview"/Hacker Rank etc. I would rather hire someone that:

A) Has good experience

B) Has the ability to reason about problem domains even if they can't scribble out a perfect implementation with all edge cases considered on a white board in under 30 minutes.

C) Has good interpersonal skills.