> my group of engineer friends came up with on why all the FANG companies pursue those heavy memorization algorithmic interviews I think the most likely explan

> my group of engineer friends came up with on why all the FANG companies pursue those heavy memorization algorithmic interviews I think the most likely explanation is that "elite" of CS grads usually do competitions like ACM ICPC and olympiads, which are full of problems like those watered-down interview questions. As there is no real authority on what makes a developer good, but there was a measurable outcome of those programming competitions, leading to high status and pride displayed by winners/participants, it was simply taken from there and dumbed down to fit into interviews. Some top colleges even have special prep courses for those competitions and comparing to them FANG interviews are super trivial.