[nitwit005]

Those puzzle questions weren't just used to hire software engineers. Hiring fads sweep corporate America, despite no evidence of effectiveness, and despite economic incentives to hire well.

Yes, they did move away from it, but that doesn't mean we aren't now in the grip of equally bad fads.

> but rarely do I see much examination around why those particular hiring processes appear to work fairly well for the likes of Google, Apple, etc.

You assume they work well, but you don't have any data to support that. That's sort of assumption is basically where these hiring fads come from.