As somebody who just dealt with about a dozen rounds of these kinds of interviews as part of a job search, this post was extremely close to home. While I never got a question nearly that intractable, I did get a lot of questions that toed the line between "this is a useful algorithmic test" and "this is about minutiae and what you remember."

One thing I've found interesting was examining the various ways different companies handle the tech screening process. I've had everything from no real tech screen to back to back algorithm-based interviews. It's definitely possible to suss out what a company cares about from the sorts of questions they asked.

The biggest issue for me was that I never really was unable to get the right answer, but that wasn't always what the interviewers were looking for. I got told at least once that they expected me to simply be faster. I wasn't sure how to take that.

Looking back, all but one of the several companies from whom I received job offers had processes requiring coding-intensive tech screens that placed only minimal restrictions on the time one could take. The job I took was actually with the company that had the MOST intensive process (though that wasn't really a factor in my decision).

I don't think I'm incapable of doing the jobs at the algorithmic-questions companies who rejected me, any more than I think myself incapable of the job I was hired for. In fact, the work at each organization was quite similar. So, am I missing something, or are they, or both?