[photochemsyn]

I do wonder if the real purpose of the 'ridiculous and demeaning puzzles' is more psychological assessment than skill testing in many or most cases.

Granted, there is the problem of academic cheating in CS so for people coming right out of college into the job market, so it's likely an acceptable filter for screening out people who haven't ever really written their own code from scratch, but otherwise. for people with proven track records in the industry?

Maybe the thinking is: "We've got this mess of a codebase, it's poorly documented, if it ever got out how bad it is we'd be very embarrassed, and we want compliant team players who won't shake up the boat or demand we overhaul the whole thing, as we care a lot more about revenue than code quality, and this thing does work, sort of, most of the time, and we sure don't want anyone writing memos about massive security holes to upper management... now, will you jump through these degrading hoops like a good little poodle or not?"