Not surprising in the slightest. I work in machine learning and no longer trust most papers I read. A lot of papers have fabricated or dishonest results, and the people who publish these results are often the ones who get recognition, jobs at FB etc. It happens in all fields of so-called "science".
"Do they not want promotions or pay increases at their current jobs before leaving? Usually you have to do good quality work to get promoted."
In my experience, algs interviews are far, far more fair than promos. You don't need to do good work to get promoted, just be friends with the boss or lie about how much "impact" you had, at least that's what I've seen in big tech and it's been extremely frustrating. Learning to code well definitely doesn't matter much, the measurements for promotion are gamed by the dishonest and/or subjective enough to let the bosses promote their best friends.
While doing well on interviews isn't the only way to be recognized, it's the only consistent way the market continues to pay you properly if the company decides not to promote you. Suddenly my code was considered amazing once I brought another offer.
I don't think it takes a long time for people to realize it's all bullshit. Playing the game and being purposely deceitful is the type of behavior that gets people promoted, so that's what people do. To get promoted to a senior you usually do need to BS about vague nonsense like "independence", "ownership" and "impact".
I once had an interviewer who said my O(N) solution was actually O(2N), so my solution is wrong. There algs interview evaluations are very, very subjective and inconsistent. If places like google actually cared about getting good candidates they would have standardized tests instead.
Doesn't have to be a standard IQ test, I would be fine with the test being about algorithms and systems design type questions. Just please remove the biased human component from interviews and use a more standardized metric across a group of people instead of randomly chosen questions for each candidate with subjective evaluation.
The current process is not great even for people with good tech skill due to the randomness and subjective evaluation factors.
Also you are wrong about standard IQ tests not being able to measure relevant skills for tech companies. They not perfect but I bet even those would do a better job than the current process. The psychometric research is clear that they are useful for predicting results across a wide variety of domains.
Well I appreciate these interview loops because at least they are still far more objective than big company promo processes when whoever lies the most and forces others to do their dirty work gets promoted.
I do wish the interview process was even more objective, just administer and extremely difficult IQ Test instead.
https://www.google.com/patents/opnpledge/patents/
Of course, their "open" excuse is all nonsense to begin with.