I don't think the problem is the format, i.e. a 30-50 minute interview on simple coding with DS&A problems, but the escalation.
The reality is, fizz buzz got us 75% of the way there. It turns out when pressed, a lot of people can't write code. Yes, there's false positives, but there's also people brute focing their way through via copy & paste.
This doesn't manifest as a person who can't do any task, just as a person that's slow, delivers weird abstractions, and would take a lot of your time to get anything useful from.
But those people are also making those arguments, because, as you said, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars in it.
The reality is, fizz buzz got us 75% of the way there. It turns out when pressed, a lot of people can't write code. Yes, there's false positives, but there's also people brute focing their way through via copy & paste.
This doesn't manifest as a person who can't do any task, just as a person that's slow, delivers weird abstractions, and would take a lot of your time to get anything useful from.
But those people are also making those arguments, because, as you said, there's hundreds of thousands of dollars in it.