I don't think your second sentence is a good conclusion to draw. If nothing else, it's very difficult to find companies which will offer the highest compensatio

I don't think your second sentence is a good conclusion to draw. If nothing else, it's very difficult to find companies which will offer the highest compensation packages (or better) without also asking these questions. You're going to come across these questions no matter which of FAANG you apply to; the same applies to hedge funds. We're not talking about tens of thousands here, either. The top companies have packages which (including liquid RSUs) involve low hundreds of thousands more in compensation. Not everyone is optimizing their career for income maximization, but if you are it's hard to do so without being at one of these companies. On another note I've found that, at least in my experience, there is basically no correlation between whether or not people ask brainteasers/trivia in interviews and how competent they are or nice to work with. There probably aren't any interesting conclusions you can draw about personality based on interview formats without being biased in one direction or the other.