I've seen this borne out in practice after administering dozens of phone screens and in-person interviews over the years. I started off with questions that wer

I've seen this borne out in practice after administering dozens of phone screens and in-person interviews over the years. I started off with questions that were a little too hard and couldn't get a good read of the candidate unless they happened to have already done the problem on some interview prep site. Switching to more practical, simpler problems allowed me to really observe how they work and solve a coding problem. As the article said, I was also able to add requirements or features to the problem which let me see how the candidate adapts to changing requirements, or refactors their own solution to handle a new edge case. Simpler is generally better if you are timeboxed to 45 minutes.