> The property of a puzzle is that you either know the answer to it or you don’t. It doesn’t tell you anything else. It has nothing to do with future performanc

> The property of a puzzle is that you either know the answer to it or you don’t. It doesn’t tell you anything else. It has nothing to do with future performance, being smart, capable or anything else whatsoever. Knowing a particular answer does not mean you have an apparatus to solve real problems in a generic and predictable way. The only thing it tells you is that the person has been in a situation when someone shared a solution with him. Nothing more, nothing less. Just stop already. Oh come on. It's true that people seeing the problem before is a major confounding factor, but it sounds like the author is saying that nobody ever solves the puzzle in the interview and it's a pure coin flip. That is obviously not true. The puzzle type questions probably aren't a great fit for startups, but they're not meant to be. Big tech can afford the vast numbers of false negatives that they produce. In return, they're able to effectively conduct IQ tests of candidates without running afoul of the law.